1. Lots of titling, marking, and file systems 2. DVD-RAM is very useful for re-recording

1. Inadequate picture quality--I'll take VHS on SP mode over this.

Overall, I'm disappointed by the playback quality. For bright pictures, the SP mode (2 hours) is fine--hard to tell from broadcast TV. However, for dark pictures, the dark areas become blocky, distorted, and annoying. Forget LP (4 hour) mode--it's just too irritating to watch for long, with lots of artifacts in the picture, particularly on the edges. This means you can't get high quality recordings of movies that last more than 2 hours. Other than this major complaint about recording quality, the unit is fine for my purposes (recording TV programs for later playback).

- Recording quality is very good - Burns well on every media I've tested it with including very cheap DVD-Rs - Programming recording times is very simple - Can specify text labels to chapters and disc - DVD-RAM (while not very popular) is a great technology

- Powering up takes FOREVER (scans the disc) - 20+ seconds - Cannot eject a disc without powering up (see last comment) - this drives me insane - Some discs make a lot of noise (sounds off balance in the tray) - While DVD is going through a lengthy operation (powering up, preparing to eject, etc.), it must complete before allowing you to do something else (eg., you cannot change your mind - you have to wait until the player/your command finishes which can take a long time) - Advertised 'Commercial Skip' is simply a not-well placed button on the remote that skips one minute of play each time it's pressed - Remote control is ho-hum

Good recorder. Lousy player. I'd rate this 4-5 stars as a recorder and 2-3 stars as a player. As a recorder- this thing is great. On SP mode (2 hours of recording/DVD), the picture quality is about as exact as the source and on LP (4 hours of recording/DVD), the picture is on par or better than SP mode on a VHS recorder. I haven't tried EP mode (6 hours) or XP mode (1 hour), although I doubt anyone would need XP mode (SP does great). I haven't needed it yet but this recorder can also change modes automatically to make a recording fit on a disk (nice feature). It has lots of features for timed recordings, labeling, etc. I haven't explored the advanced features of DVD-RAM yet but the features explained in the manual sound very nice (e.g., being able to playback a recording while recording another, time-chase where you watch the video a few minutes behind the recording, etc.). As a player, I'm much happier with many other players than this one (I have two other players that are much cheaper, that can eject disks with the power off, power-up quickly, etc.). The playback quality of DVDs (both home and factory recorded) is very good and it outputs sound digitally so I assume if your receiver is decent, you're fine (I'm happy with the sound, anyway). If you plan on using this only for recording and using another player for playback, I think you'll be very pleased. Otherwise (assuming you've used other DVD players before), you'll be frustrated with how slow this thing is.

Similar Products Used:

- Panasonic DVD-110 DVD player - Toshiba SD-6200 Progressive Scan DVD player (great DVD player although the second disk tray doesn't work)

the case is shiny

It will break and Panasonic support will not have a clue why. They can't even tell you what error messages on the display mean?

Tonight, as my second dmr-e30 sits nonfunctional on my shelf I believe this may be the biggest piece of junk I've ever purchased. I purchased a DMR-E30 on 4/15/03 and on 5/03/03 it broke. I inserted a DVD-R and pressed record and realized I was on the wrong channel, I hit stop within 30 seconds and it never worked again. The symptom is the unit displays "recover" in the display and after about a minute it displays the regular screen. I hit open/close to eject the DVD-R and the unit powers itself off. I tried Panasonic support and they are at best worthless, I feel that have actually sucked knowledge from me by their complete unfamularity of this product. All I wanted to know was what does "recover" mean and they could not answer that... I mean it's a message that someone programmed to display on this unit and nobody can tell me what that means? Anyway I returned the unit to Bestbuy on 5/04/03 and they were able to remove the disc by prying the door open, needless to say I got a new unit. Tonight, 5/31/03 I again started recording and hit stop within 30 seconds of starting and I'm back to the same problem, the unit powered off and I can't eject the disc. This time when I power the unit back on the display shows "recover" again and then shows the normal display. This time when I try to eject the media it sits for a moment then displays close and never goes any further. I only can hope that Bestbuy will at least give me a credit for this unit since it's beyond the 30 days since the original purchase but within 30 days of returning the original broken unit. I will never trust this unit again, it's junk.

Similar Products Used:

none

Exact recording, remote, visuals, DVD -RAM is amazing- shorten segments

Cant shorten segments or add chapter listing on DVD-R

excellent - found it cheap on JRMusicworld.com - circuit city beat it. Records exact, easy to use. Crop segments and edit nicely. A steal for the price.

Ease of use

No Fire wire or dv input no digital audio input, no component imput

I did do a little research on the net before I bought this product. I basically wanted a dvd recorder to replace my vcr. I have to say it does that well. It has the VCRplus which is a really nice feature. I recorded on xp mode and could not tell the difference between the original source and the copy. So far I am very pleased. Just skip right past the commercials. This player/recorder does a great job of replacing a vcr and does what I need it to do. I've seen it online for $498, I opted for 12 months no interest at best buy, incase I needed to return it. $699 is a little steep for me.