The Panasonic DMR-E100 DVD recorder - a top flight Panasonic machine
(Reviewed 8/18/05)The Panasonic DMR-E100 DVD recorder, introduced in the summer of 2003, has a 120 Gigabyte (GB) hard drive.
As with all hard drive recorders, you can begin watching a program while it is still recording and skip through commercials while you "catch up" to real time. Overall the Panasonic DMR-E100 DVD recorder The picture has excellent resolution and good color rendition. To make copies of DVDs on the Panasonic DMR-E100 DVD recorder you will need another DVD player as the input. You can make excellent copies of existing DVDs (even copies of commercial DVDs can be made if you have certain available devices which counter copy protection - obviously such copies are illegal other than for personal use (acceptable under "fair use" laws). There's no built-in program guide so you have to learn the timer recorder function. This DVD recorder can't control the channel switching of a cable box but there is a work-around for this. Almost all cable boxes today allow the user to program the cable box to switch channels according to a timed schedule for many weeks in advance. So once you have programmed the Panasonic DMR-E100 DVD recorder to record “the what” and “the when” you then program the cable box to channel switch with a corresponding schedule. No not as easy as TIVO but still simple to do and no monthly fee is necessary. The editing function (“shorten section” function) is intuitive. You mark a start and an end point. But the recording is not frame accurate so you need to leave a frame or two of extra space at the beginning and end of an edit point to avoid clipping off a bit of program material. Be warned - the "shorten segment" function voids the ability to do a high speed burn of a DVD from the hard drive. Here’s a tip for removing commercials. Use the "Playlist" function to snip out the portions of a recording you want to burn to DVD. "Mark" the commercial breaks as you watch the show so you can convert to the playlist without commercials. The Panasonic DMR-E100 DVD recorder "flexible recording" (FR) mode allows you to optimize the compression rate so that it will fit exactly 2:10 worth of material onto the space available on a blank single-sided DVD. This gives you quality indistinguishable from SP mode for recordings a little longer than 2 hours. DVD playback on the Panasonic DMR-E100 DVD recorder is adequate. It has good progressive scan performance, but it's limited in the feature department (no SACD and only two-channel DVD-Audio support). A true home theater and surround sound videophile will want a dedicated DVD player with more advanced features. Here are the main drawbacks to the Panasonic DMR-E100 DVD recorder: You need the Panasonic DVD-RAM discs to dub from its own internal DVD drive to the Hard Disk Drive. To copy from a standard DVD to the hard drive, you'll need to use a separate DVD player but you can take commercials out on the Hard Drive or DVD-RAM, then later transfer those to DVD-R. It also allows transfer at high speeds between the Hard Drive and RAM discs. The unit cannot record on the DVD+RW, DVD+R or DVD-RW discs. You can record on standard DVD-Rs (which are compatible with the largest percentage of home DVD players and computer drives). Panasonic uses the DVD-RAM format as erasable media. DVD-RAM is not compatible with most standalone DVD players. Panasonic recommends only using Panasonic, TDK and other top tier brand names for blanks. The Panasonic DMR-E100 DVD recorder The manual isn't the greatest but Panasonic has excellent technical/operational 800 support. Back to DVD Recorder Review Home Page
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is a fine choice for most people. Truly disciminating videophlies should wait until the Hi Def DVD recorders come down in price.
This DVD recorder excels at transferring VHS to DVD with no picture quality degradation. The unit's digital (firewire) input allows you to transfer home movies from digital camcorders.