cut out commercials, leading/trailing video...
Written: Nov 10 '02
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Pros: you can edit before transferring to archival medium; every flavor of input
Cons: poor interface; no way to tell cable/sat box to change channels; minimal multitasking
The Bottom Line: Such units will be better/cheaper in 5 years, but if you need it...you paid more in real terms for your first VCR, so buy it.
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| chuckles666's Full Review: Panasonic DMR-HS2 (40 GB) DVD Recorder |
...and you can also cut out those parts of your camcorder recordings where you forgot to turn it off and filmed the floor. You can't edit frame-by-frame (you may keep or lose an extra 1/2 sec maximum) but it's still a wonderful feature you can't get on DVD-only recorders or VCRs.
It's clearly a first-generation product (well, the DMR-HS1 was the first-generation in Japan, but never released in the US). Cons include:
1) user interface and manual created by people without a clue about good interface and documentation design (I am told the similar Toshiba unit is much worse)
2) most features unavailable while it's playing or recording
3)no way to switch channels on cable or sat box---you can only tune basic cable with this device, or you must leave it tuned to video or ch 3 input and tune cable/sat box manually
4) slight loss of quality when transferring from HD to DVD-R (which requires a digital-to-digital conversion)
5) picky about media, don't use cheapest DVD-R blanks
6) uses DVD-RAM, but these are to expand local storage only, not for use on most other machines
7) 40GB hard disk limit is hard-coded, you cannot expand hard disk yourself (unlike Tivo) (In Japan you can pay lots of yen to upgrade the firmware and add 80GB disk). But since HD is only for temp storage, and you can use DVD-RAM to expand such storage, 40GB is not too bad.
But if you have a pile of videotapes getting fuzzier by the minute, this is the unit to buy to transfer them to DVD.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 767
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Epinions.com ID:
chuckles666
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