This has been the first DVD recorder we have bought and compared to some we looked at the instruction booklet is very easy to understand.

Couldn't agree more on the above review. I got the Panasonic after the disastrous Sharp DVHR 300H recorder I previewed earlier; the one where I had to exchange it three times due to a clock that was always 25 mins slow per few days on all three units.

The clock on this Panasonic is spot on, to the millisecond, even after two weeks.

The only thing is why (and this isn't just for the Panasonic) have almost all these DVDs gone to this awful, mirror and chrome a-la seventies silver finish ? Everything else in my Audio / Video cabinet is a nice professional looking black matt. Only my kooky and narcissistic parrot likes it!

I was looking for a DVD recorder to take over from my VHS machine and to transfer a lot of older VHS material to DVD. I decided on a hard disk machine because the superior editing facilities would allow me to easily remove ad breaks etc before burning. I am delighted with this Panasonic DMRE85HEBS - I had read that earlier Pannys were good but not very easy to use. This machine set itself up perfectly and I have found the menus very intuitive. I have not had to use the instruction book very much at all - when I have, its comprehensive and easy to understand. I have recorded films from analogue signal input and they seem indistinguishable from the transmission. I can then leave them on the hard drive to watch or burn them to DVD at my leisure. The editing facility allows me to tidy up my old VHS recordings by removing ad breaks and accurately trimming start and stop points. As a standalone DVD player, the Panny produces noticeably better pictures than my JVC player - motion is smoother and pictures are a little more detailed. My only gripe is that the machine goes through a self check on power up which is a good 15-20 seconds and nothing happens until this check is completed. This obviously is to allow the hard drive to spin up. However if you just want to watch a DVD, it seems pointless to have the hard drive on at all. Perhaps a better solution would allow the hard drive to spin up when it was called upon by the user or the timer. Overall, I think this machine is great, and I now have a lot of my VHS archived onto DVD with nice little menus and instant access to favourite scenes - fantastic !