Panasonic DMR-E50 DVD Players
Panasonic DMR-E50 DVD Players
USER REVIEWS
[Jul 28, 2003]
Scott Dent
Audio Enthusiast
Strength:
Price, Easy to Use
Weakness:
No Optical Audio Input (No DVD recorders have these as far as I know), No Hard Drive (The DMR-E80 costs about $200 more) So far, I have had no problems with my DMR-E50K. The only thing I should mention is if you are an audio/videophile, you'll probably not want to use this unit as your primary player. My three year old Denon has superior sound differentiation and picture quality. Also, do yourself a favor, if you buy this player, spend another $100 bucks on an Apex CMGSA free player so that you can burn copyright protected DVD's. These cheap Apex units are readily available on ebay. Remember, this unit does NOT have an optical audio input. You can only record in two channel analog. I don't know of any DVD recorder that has an optical audio input, and yet nearly every CD burner does. It's a mystery to me. Still, if you have a receiver with Pro-Logic II, the surround effects will suffice. Finally, if you care about video quality, about two hours is all you can get on one DVD-R or DVD-RAM disk. If you try to squeeze much more than that on a disk, picture quality deteriorates fast, although the audio remains pretty clear. Finally, buy your DVD-R's in bulk. Don't pay more than a dollar a piece for them because in my opinion they're all pretty much the same. I buy mine off ebay. Every single one of the cheap generics I've bought has worked just fine, while two of the ten expensive Maxelles screwed up! Go figure. Overall, I really like this player. I kind of wish I had paid a little extra and gotten a player with a hard drive. That way I could record 4 hour long football games to the hard drive and then later edit out commercials and half time to shorten the program, making it possible to fit it onto a DVD-R, without losing so much picture quality. That's neither here nor there however. Similar Products Used: None |