Panasonic DMR-E85H (120 GB) DVD Recorder

Pros: Flexible Recording, high-speed transferring, large hard drive.
Cons: No firewire ports, buggy TV Guide program.

UPDATE: 8/23/04 at bottom of review I've wanted a DVD recorder for at least a year now and finally broke down and purchased one. I basically needed it for the following reasons: 1. Transfer VHS content to DVD. 2. Record TV programs onto ...

Pros: Large disk drive. Infrared blaster.
Cons: Very poor programming functions.

The DMR-E85H (“E85H") is a lemon. I say this as someone who dearly loves its predecessor, the DMR-E80H (“e80h"). On paper, the E85H looks to be an improvement over the e80h. Not only does the E85H have 50% more hard-disk capacity than the e80h, but ...

Pros: Lots of storage capacity, TV guide feature awesome. No phone line needed! Very quiet
Cons: Cost, lack of firewire port. No DVD-RW support

The Panasonic DMR-E85HS is a combination DVD recorder and video recorder (hard drive w/ 120 MB of storage). There are obviously competing models out there. The reason why I purchased this one compared to others was the larger hard drive and the ...

Pros: Start watching a program before it's finished recording. Easy to set favorites to always record.
Cons: Commercial skip 60 seconds instead of 30. Can't use custom channel captions using TVGuide OnScreen.

I didn't own a DVD player until I bought this just a few days ago. Nearly every movie rental place, including the movie library at my apartment community, has gone 90% DVD. So, I jumped into DVD world with both feet, skipping kindergarten, whatever you ...

Pros: Everything works as advertised. Easy to record multiple shows and list them.
Cons: Nothing worth mentioning.

This is an excellent product that will let you enjoy TV more. I use it to record multiple shows on a weekly or daily basis, and at any point I can bring up a random access list of recorded shows to watch at my convenience. I've also used it to ...

Pros: Large 120GB hard drive, FREE TV Guide, excellent recording quality!
Cons: Buggy firmware causes the machine to lock up!

I bought the Panasonic DMR-E85H from a local retailer after reading many good reviews through the Internet. However, nothing could have prepared me for the headaches the bugs in this unit would cause me! Before I overly bash the E85H, let's review ...

Pros: High-speed dubbing was faster on this than on my E80H TV Guide feature
Cons: Dubbing problems after 1 year.

I bought my DMR-E85H in September 2004 to mainly record movies off of Turner Classic Movies and then dub them onto single dvd-r's for my collection. I did just that without fail. I, however, had problems when I first bought this unit. When I would turn ...

Pros: hard drive recording, editing, time slip feature
Cons: none so far

For anyone looking to upgrade your home video recording from VHS, this is the unit to buy. I shopped DVD recorders with hard drives for almost a year, and narrowed it down to this unit and the Toshiba RDX-S32. Because of the hard drive size (120GB ...

Pros: Recording quality, editing capabilities (although can be tedious), general ease of use, high-speed dubbing.
Cons: Freeze up issues, TV Guide is a pain

I'll try to keep this short and sweet. Had the unit for almost a year and used it sparingly for the first few months. Then I really put it to work and did a lot of recording - generally to DVR and then to DVD. While it was working, this was really a ...

Pros: Plays DVD-Audio and records DVD-RAM discs
Cons: TV guide system is not compatible with all cable boxes. Tech support help nonexistent.

Out of the box I did not have problems in the beginning. This recorder will only display DVD's at the standard 480p resolution. It will not upscale video resolution. First of all you must set up the recorder to download channel information from your ...

Pros: Large hard drive - 120 gb and TV Guide with no monthly fee.
Cons: DVD-RAM and no firewire.

This product is almost exactly what I was looking for. It will replace my current dvd player, which is 5 years old, and also replace my vcr, which is 10 years old. I didn't like the fact that it doesn't have firewire but since my computer has firewire ...

Pros: What everybody else says -- it is really great
Cons: It has crashed on me twice.

This unit is great. We really enjoy it. I have been looking at these HDD/DVD Recorder devices for about 2.5 years and finally took the plunge. BUT, last week, two days in a row the unit crashed -- it got stuck on the HDD listings screen (but only in ...

Pros: TV Guide Service has potential as good alternative to Tivo.
Cons: Over difficult to use. Poor Quality.

I am so frustrated with this product I am motivated to write my first ever online product review to warn others. Defective: In one week of ownership the unit completely froze up 3 times including 2x the unit could not be powered on and 1x locked up ...

Pros: Features & price.
Cons: Unable to disable TV Guide function & Panasonic's lack of Support.

My less than 30-day adventure with this product started when I purchased it on December 17th as a Christmas present for the family. It really got underway the day after Christmas though, when I set it all up and let it search for 24 hours in an attempt ...

Pros: User friendly, great results, reliability, HD size
Cons: TV guide, speed of operations, modest menu creating options

This product is "a tool", and as such, we determine it's value based on how useful and practical is for OUR PARTICULAR NEEDS. We're all different and our reviews reflect that. That being said, when you read these reviews as yourself what do you plan to ...