I have a Toshiba RD-SX32 and when I first got it it was great. I've had it about a year now and more and more of the disks I burn turn in to costers.

I did a little research and was thinking about a Panasonic DMR-EH50S. Does anyone have one of theses? Would you recommend it? Or if anyone has any other recommendations I'll take them. I want something with a hard drive on it and want to be able to edit, create menus, etc.

Any help would be appreciated?

Thanks
Jennie

I have the DMR-E85H.
It's a very good machine, and I have had no major problems with it to date.
It has a hard drive and it allows you to edit and create chapters. You can also choose your own thumbnail for each title.
The only annoyance that I have found is that it is very picky with the discs it chooses to play as I have found a hard time playing Maxell and TDK discs.
As far as recording, sometimes it goes into self-check mode before allowing you to record on a blank disc..depending on the brand of disc but I think that happens on a lot of dvd recorders...the brand name suggests that you use their discs..but it's not easy to find blank Panasonic dvd-rs.
Otherwise it's a great machine.

Stay away from JVC dvd recorders..I've had a bad experience there.

I would not recommend it. Panasonic has blocky quality video past 2 hours, especially when you are using VHS as the source. It will be a downgrade from the Toshiba. If you would like to UPGRADE from the Toshiba, consider a JVC or a Pioneer.

- If you like hard drives, then the Pioneer is the logical choice, better functionality, more features that HDD lovers would appreciate.
- If you work with a lot of VHS source, JVC is the logical choice, better quality encodes, thanks to it's many embedded automatic filters.
- If you do both, decide which one you want more.

JVC DOES NOT make good dvd player/recorder/vhs products..they are all about features and looks..not quality.

Again, the Panasonic works great in my opinion and I record from vhs all of the time..and I trade all of the time..and never had one complaint. As far as using any other speed besides SP (2 hours) or XP (1 hour), I wouldn't recommend that on any device. Recording should always be done on SP or XP.

Also, you should see to it that whatever you choose has the FR mode function. This gives you the best possible quality for the time allotted.. in other words if you have an old Tonight Show that runs 1 hour and 30 minutes, you can record it in FR mode..which would be a little less in quality than XP, but better than SP mode.

This is probably the only thing I might disagree with His Lordship Smurf on!! Well , a little bit, I personally only use Panasonic after having a debacle with Philips. That being said, I have had good success with Pioneer and JVC products too. I have a JVC Hifi VCR that is pristine as far as quality goes.

BUT, currently I have 3 Panasonic DVD Recorders, they are:

1. E85 HS (Hard drive Model)
2. ES 75 (First VCR/DVD built in recorder)
3. ES 30 Brand new model VCR / DVD built in which has the upgraded LP mode with so many lines of resolution made to resemble SP mode. Now that being said, I ONLY use LP mode for 3hr wrestling/boxing events, never tv shows or movies. This model does BOTH PLus R and Minus R

My panasonics have never failed, play every brand disc I have thrown at them. No repairs thus far, so I am quite happy.

Again, it works for me, Lord Smurf does a lot more editing and high tech stuff than I do, so he has a different perspective.

Tom D.

JVC DOES NOT make good dvd player/recorder/vhs products..they are all about features and looks..not quality..
You're highly mistaken. If anything, JVC DVD recorders worry less about whiz-bang features, and have put a lot of effort into noise reduction to ensure clean video encodes, especially those coming from tapes.

With that kind of blind blanket statement I'm assuming you've never tried the JVC S-VHS pro line of equipment either. Some real gems in there. Anybody that works with old tapes should SERIOUSLY consider an upper-line JVC S-VHS unit with DNR/TBC and all the tape mode filters.

.....

Now this gets techie, and I doubt everybody here will understand...

"Recording only XP or SP" is such an analog mindset. Those letters mean diddly in the digital age. It's just what was done so digital newbies don't get too confused. Fun little letters to remember. This isn't a VHS tape.

Pretty much all traditional home sources (VHS, S-VHS, cable, antenna, satellite) fall at, under or near a digital equivalent to 352x480 resolution. Your "SP speed" DVD recorder is using 720x480 resolution with a medium 5.0-5.5 VBR bitrate. This is a "safe" setting on most machines, always looks decent. Bad encoders have a hard time doing normal resolution of 352x480, which is what you see on the Panasonic. Since your source is not any more than 352x480, there is no benefit to 720x480. All you end up doing is bloating your work to more discs and wasting shelf space for no apparent gains. Good machines (JVC, Pioneer, LiteOn, Sony, Toshiba) can handle all resolutions in solid quality. The 3-4 hour marks on almost all recorders use 352x480 with a higher per-pixel bitrate on 3-hour, or a direct equivalent of SP's at 4-hour. In layman's terms, with a good encoder chip in use, 3-hour mode should look superior to 2-hour mode.

Also, the new Philips 615 model is based off a new chipset. So the rules of "Philips is bad" does not necessarily ring true anymore. Just on old Philips encoder chips had issues, especially with grainy quality video and a lot of mechanical errors. There are some brands you can chastise as a whole, and some you cannot. Clones is an issue too (LG = Zenith = GoVideo, or ILO04 = LiteOn, or ILO05 = Cyberhome).

Units featuring the LSI chips (LiteOn, ILO "04", Philips 615, JVC, LG, Zenith, GoVideo, Ellion, Kreisen, and a few more) have special NR filters to clean up sources. This has no apparent benefit to off-air work, but it surely is obvious working from old tapes. JVC has gone one step beyond the LSI and added even more filters with it's own DigiPure tech, and is why that machine is a real winner.

ESS, Cirrus, Renesas, Philips, Panasonic, Zoran, LSI ... all chipset used in machines. There is also the CVBR, CBR and VBR factors to consider, as well as DVD-Video, DVD+VR and DVD-VR.

People can love their Panasonics all day long, but it's an inferior machine, based on old technology that has not changed in about 4 years now. The newest "improved" machine (ES10, ES30) made LP mode use 720x480 which was idiotic, the engineer must have been high on blow. The bitrate is severely lacking, a meager 2.0-2.5 Mb/s and just really suffers from noise and artifacts. What a lemon. More and more companies are switching to newer tech, even Philips appears to be abandoning it's inferior house chips. Panasonic is the lone stubborn mule in the marketplace right now. The ONLY time Panasonic looks good is when you have DIRECT recordings from a super super clean source (pretty much only satellite), but even then, it can have a "splotchy" effect, what some call a "posterize" effect.

The ironic part here is some of the best machines are not the most expensive. Take advantage of this.

My advice is to go to wal mart buy one of the panasonics try it if it doesnt fit your needs then take it back then try a JVC and see if you like that one, I myself have a go video and will never buy one again as I have had alot of problems with it, but I do have an emerson recorder as well and have had it for 4 months and never any trouble and I have burned un countless DVDs with it, I generally thought emersons were crap but this was a good one I guess.

Panasonic DVD recorders are infamous for the IRE bug (which has never been fixed, though Panasonic claims it has)....There is no fix for the Panasonic IRE bug. It still makes all the video recorded on a Panasonic look either muddy or washed out, and there's no hardware fix for it.

What they've done lately is lowered the overall luma to counteract the IRE issue. So you end up with a darker picture with a slight green or red shift in the coloring. That was their "fix" and it looks terrible. The newest ES10/ES30 is the worst, as it is the harshest tint shift to date. So washed out colors isn't around anymore, now it's having oversaturated and overly dark colors. Muddy is still there, lack of proper contrast.

Fellows,

I am pretty picky about quality and I have had good luck with the Panasonics.

Although I may try the pioneer hard drive on my next player purchase based on the comments.

I won't argue with the tech specs as that is out of my league, but I have had great reliability from my panasonics and the recordings have been real good for me and transferring vhs to dvd has gone well. NOW, I only use XP and SP except in the case of Wrestling, I put the 3hr ppvs in LP and they have come out pretty good. (granted I would only watch them once in a great while anyway)

Tom