Awesome features (if they worked), and serious flaws
Written: May 11 '06 (Updated Feb 07 '09)
Product Rating:
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Durability:
Pros: Powerful! Lots of functionality and great flexibility (if it actually worked).
Cons: UNRELIABLE, POOR QUALITY + Bugs and frustrations, some critical, and lousy tech support
The Bottom Line: It's expensive, but you get lots of bugs and frustrations, and little tech support for your money. It should do just about everything, if only it were reliable.
bkeeler's Full Review: Panasonic DMR-EH75VS (80 GB) DVD Recorder / VCR / ...
Save yourself some reading- DON'T BUY PANASONIC! If you want to know why- read on. Sad- Panasonic used to be a quality brand.
This unit can record or copy to/from Hard Disk (80GB), VHS, and DVD (most formats). It has high-speed copy capabilities, except to/from VHS. In addition to copying, the DMR-EH75VS can record directly to any of these three media. DVDs you create on this machine can be played on just about any other DVD player.
This unit allows you to select the recording quality, to determine how much time will fit on a particular media. The hard disk will hold 36 hours of programming in SP mode (the second highest quality mode, that is nearly indistinguishable from XP mode, which is the highest quality, highest bitrate mode).
The DMR-EH75VS can display photo albums on CD or Secure Digital cards (up to 2 GB). It can, of course, copy to SD from CD also.
Rather than having to pay for a TIVO subscription, this machine downloads the TV guide listings, and allows you to schedule recording from that list. This is not perfect though. For example, one of our local community affairs channels doesn't appear in those listings, and so isn't included in the schedule, and is not accessible using the channel up/down control. You guessed it, the channel lineup comes from the TV Guide listings and there's no way to manually add a channel. So if I want to watch it, I have to punch in the channel number.
After a week and a half of ownership (starting 4/28/2006), I had already had a firmware update. Be advised: Most of the techs at Panasonic are not aware of this unit, but will try to fake their way through helping you. It's usually a waste of time to call. It took me 9 attempts to update the firmware (that's 8 wasted CDs). The techs either didn't know about the concept of firmware updates, or didn't know how to go about it on this unit (I spoke to three of them). Also, on three occasions I have had a tech deliberately disconnect me during a call (I don't remember ever having that happen with any other company).
One thing I love about it is that you can play a recording while another one is being made. The DMR-EH75VS (if it works) can also play the recording that IS currently being made, so you can timeshift, for example.
When I am watching a program at, say 8:00 PM on Monday, the TV Guide listing won't let me backup to a previous time in order to schedule a recording of a regularly scheduled program that aired before that time that day. Very frustrating, like most things with the DMR-EH75VS!
The record quality selection seems to affect media other than the currently selected one. That is, if while the selected media is HDD, I change the selection from SP to LP- it changes also to LP on the DVD (and on the VHS?), these settings should be independent since the media have different capacities.
I have had numerous instances where a recording has "started" at the scheduled time, but remained paused for 3-5 minutes (record indicator flashing), until I intervene. When I hit stop in order to start a manual recording, I am given a prompt "Are you sure you want to stop the scheduled recording?" (Or something like that) This is a major problem since scheduled recording is one of the key reasons, if not THE main reason I bought this unit.
The DMR-EH75VS will only record the last scheduled program if there's an overlap. Suggestion: Change the logic so that a scheduled recording will start even if its end overlaps the beginning of the next one. When a conflict is found (and now there's a prompt when that happens), allow the user to select whether to truncate the first program, or delay recording the beginning of the next scheduled recording until the prior one is complete.
One more annoyance: The VCR advances and rewinds very fast in PLAY mode. And it's slow to return to play when either of those functions is activated. So there's no way to review the previous 5 or 10 seconds of program. The least amount of tape movement that I can manage with the remote is about 30 seconds. It doesn't take long to fully rewind a tape, though.
5-17-2006: A Senior Product Engineer has communicated to me that the "Paused Recording" problem has been reported to Panasonic multiple times. They are working with TV Guide who apparently provides their firmware to Panasonic and other manufacturers who use their listings, to resolve this issue. The other annoyances I reported above for the DMR-EH75VS, he told me, will not be fixed.
5-24-2006: I just copied a program from HDD to DVD for a friend. When I went into the copy menu I noticed that there were three pages of programs available to copy to the DVD. The thing is- I had deleted, or so I thought, everything but the last three programs. I called Panasonic, and the very friendly and eager to help tech (not surprisingly) didn't know why that was so. She contacted the marketing department, apologizing numerous times for putting me on hold, since they know more about this newer product at present. These programs are taking up space on the hard disk, and are available for copying in their entirety. That's kind of nice, if you delete something unintentionally. However, Panasonic couldn't tell me what's going to happen when the HDD becomes full. They said I might (and every owner might) have to format the HDD to really get rid of them. Another issue is that these items are presented in ascending order (oldest first). So you most of the time you will probably have to navigate through almost all the items that have ever recorded in order to get to the more recent one you want to copy to DVD.
6-14-2006: I have found that when there are more than 6 items in the schedule, it is likely that the 7th item will get spontaneously deleted. That happens even if it's a show scheduled to record "regularly". Every day, I have to go into the schedule to make sure that shows I care about recording are still there, and scheduled to record at the proper time. Almost every day, one of the two nightly newscasts that I record "regularly", that is each day they air at their normally scheduled times, have reverted to question marks. Therefore I have to edit each scheduled event to get it to record.
10-02-2006: The problems that I reported earlier continue. Just wanted to let readers know that I am still updating this review, but the unit's firmware is still garbage.
1-15-2007: Since the end of December, the unit will not display the TV Guide listings. It asks me to select my cable provider from a list of three possibilities in my area. When I do that, it is supposed to download the listings overnight. However, it doesn't. The next day, I am prompted to go through the same process, if I try to display the listings. Panasonic wants me to return the unit for repair. They will pay the shipping costs, except for insurance. Oddly Panasonic urges you to pay for the insurance, the rep stated that twice and the RMA fax they sent also urges it. Cost of ownership is higher than just about anything I own (if you value your time and frustration quotient). I formatted the hard drive and found that that is likely the problem. The drive has to be replaced, but formatting it cleared up the symptoms for a couple of days. They're back, and soon the recorder will be also (to Panasonic).
1-18-2007: The unit will not stay on for more than a minute now. It displays "F03" after making a bunch of electro-mechanical sounds. It sounds like it's trying to load a VHS tape (but none is inserted). Then it shuts off with the "F03" failure code on the display. So not only can I not record, or schedule a recording- I can't even play anything on any media. It should display "DMR-EH75VS" as the failure code (if ya' know what I mean).
2-12-2007: Now that the repair center has had it for about a week, I called Panasonic to find out what's going on. Now they tell me there's a two-week turn around time for repairs. That means I won't have it back for almost three more weeks! Before I sent it, I asked if I could just get the hard drive and replace it myself. I had to call three numbers to finally get an answer, then I had to fax a request, since the last number was just a recording (then it hung up after giving the fax number). They wanted me to pay $80.00 for the drive- and it's under warranty! I now consider myself a victim! So now I have to wait to get it back, hopefully in working order. So, please, you don't wait to find a better brand!!!
2-14-2007: I got the unit back yesterday without warning. That was a pleasant and unexpected surprise! The note that was enclosed said that they had replaced a hub that had been broken by a user tape, and our tape was enclosed in the box along with the unit. Funny, that tape had worked fine many times in two other machines, one of which was an el-cheepo VCR. They upgraded the firmware but didn't replace the hard drive (despite my explicit instructions, which were repeated on their form and a letter I had enclosed with the unit). So guess what- the TV Guide listings work, then don't. I have to enter the cable system, and so forth, because the information is not retained on the HDD. So my recording schedule also disappears and has to be re-confirmed. What a piece of junk!!!
2-15-2007: I got a phone call and an Email from the senior Engineer with whom I had communicated by Email. He expressed genuine concern about the situation, and reassured me that the hard drive is not defective. He even asked me to send him a scan of the report from the tech who repaired the machine. He told me that TV Guide is aware of the problem that I and others are having, and that they will release a patch within 10 days. He told me that if the patch doesn't work, they will replace the hard drive. He's convinced that it will work. He also told me that Panasonic no longer makes any machines with hard drives.
2-22-2007: It wasn't working for the first couple of days, and recorded just half of 20/20 the other night. Now it seems to be stable, it is recording on-schedule and 90% reliably (which isn't as good as the old VCR which was 100%). I'm going to hold tight until I know that the patch has (automatically) downloaded.
5-10-2007: I live in the Phoenix area and the Suns are in the playoffs (about the only time I care to watch basketball). I had to be gone, so I tried to record a game. I hit the record button until it said it was going to record for three hours. It was recording. I looked again a couple minutes later and recording had stopped. I hit the record button again, and the same thing happened. There's plenty of room on the disk, as we purge it regularly. We still have issues with only 6 items being retained in our recording schedule. So if we enter more than 6, the remainder gets purged. Panasonic doesn't believe me. And of course, the problem with items not recording, even though they manage to remain in our schedule, continues. Their logic is: "You wouldn't want to record the wrong program, would you?" Hmmm... The TV Guide schedule told me when the program was going to air when I created the scheduled item in the first place. I would love to take them to court! Wish I knew how to file a class-action suit.
4-23-2008: It seems to be working okay, but after our previous troubles, we just don't use it much, and never schedule recordings for it. We do use it on the rare occasions when we rent a movie and it plays DVDs fine (unless they are damaged or dirty). In fact, I like the features for playing DVDs, though they're mostly the same as those commonly found on all DVD players.
I can now say that I regret having bought this unit. I also question the wisdom of Panasonic allowing a third-party to have so much control of critical functionality of a Panasonic-branded product. They claim that they can't fix these things, that they're under the control of TV Guide. A couple of technicians have told me that I am fortunate that it works as well as it does. They said that they get lots of calls from people who can't get some of these functions to work at all! So beware!
I wonder if somebody would like to consider a class-action suit to recover damages.
I also have a Panasonic digital camera (also $500), and it's reliable, but the picture is very noisy (lots of speckles). Panasonic used to be a great brand, but now it seems to be expensive garbage. You evidently pay for the name, but receive little but empty promises in return. No more Panasonic for us!!!
I will continue to update this review as time goes on.
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