Panasonic DMR-EX87 - 250gb Hard Drive DVD Recorder - With 1080P Up-Conversion & Freeview - Black
Panasonic DMR-EX87 - 250gb Hard Drive DVD Recorder - With 1080P Up-Conversion & Freeview - Black
With 1080p technology. By combining intelligent i/p Conversion and 1080p Up-Conversion technologies, DIGA’s 1080p technology renders high-resolution 1080p images from DVD movies and TV broadcasts. Also they are equipped with a new digital tuner that achieves stable signal reception even under poor signal conditions, such as when signals are reflected by surrounding buildings.
Customer Review: Average Product / Check Out In Store First…
I guess I made the mistake of trusting in the review comments both on Amazon and other web sites without actually making the effort to check the product out more carefully in store against other brands.
Having had a high end Sony SACD/DVD player previously perhaps my expectations of the Panasonic were too high? The build quality feels flimsy, each time the DVD drawer opens it sounds and feels as though it will be the last, placing a CD in the drawer needs to be done with kid gloves to avoid feeling as though it will drop off!
The functionality of the player is acceptable, nothing startling nor innovative, in fact compared to a friends earlier Sony model, for some reason seems to lack a sense of progression in it’s intuitive nature.
The manual seems to over complicate the functionality of the unit and it seems difficult to pinpoint a specific instruction to complete certain basic functions, they’re obviously in the manual but it’s not straight forward (unless I’m ageing and losing my technical ability!!)
Perhaps if I had taken time to compare the unit with others I may feel more comfortable in my purchase, my father in law is looking for a new unit to replace his Sony, sadly I can’t say I’ve suggested he rushes out and buys one of these.
I guess it probably does what it says on the box but asside of that it doesn’t delight, merely serves a purpose (in my opinion…)
Consider your purchase carefully on YOUR own research and findings not solely as I did, purely on the advice of others…
Customer Review: Almost perfect…
A ‘What Video’ Best Buy, this is an excellent DVD/HDD recorder that’s very simple to use. It has an inbuilt Freeview tuner that works well, and the 1080p upscaling is effective.
I’ve experienced none of the problems associated with cheaper HDD players, like dodgy lip-sync or image lock. With its huge memory capacity, this player virtually eliminates the need to record on disc at all, though it’s capable of recording, and playing back, just about all formats.
My one quibble is it doesn’t come with multiregion capability, though it is available pre-chipped elsewhere if you shop around.
Overall, an excellent player, which makes a perfect partner for Panasonic’s LXD700 TV.
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Ellion DVR950S Slimline Dual Format Multi-region Capable DVD Recorder with 250GB HD, Multi-Region capable, 
Amazon Price: ?189.99
Customer Review: Can’t Get Past The Noise!!
I bought this to replace an LG DVD player (thought it was about time I bought myself a DVD recorder!) This Ellion recorder really does look stunning - it’s slim and super sleek. It seems to have a lot of good functionality for the price but it’s just too noisy - when you have a disc inside all you can hear is the noice of the player. If you don’t mind putting up with this then it’s worth buying (it does look pretty…), otherwise give it a miss!
Customer Review: DVR-950S(PAL) Dual
I’ve had the box for 6 months and the hard disk drive fails several times a week and this often stops the DVD from working; sometimes it also stops the physical buttons from working too & I have to unplug it from the wall to turn it off. Annoyingly it always boots from the DVD and I can’t find a way to stop this, so make sure you never leave any DVDs in the machine after use or you have to wait a minute or two for it to load up during this time I get white noise since you can’t change the source during the boot up sequence. Also you can’t specify the start-up source, so once the box has loaded I have to press the source button five times to skip through the options until I reach scart (you would have thought that scart would be near the top of the list for sources - but alas, no). The lip-sync is often out for periods of a recording, but it soon syncs up again and I only record on the lowest quality so this could be the issue. On a positive note, the pause live TV function is great and it stores hours and hours and hours of recordings on the HDD (but this is only if you get the chance to watch them before the HDD corrupts). The copying function from HDD to DVD is brilliant, though it would be good to copy multiple items into one chapter on the DVD. It is also an excellent price and looks really nice.
Bush dvr160hdd DVD Recorder with 160gb hdd 
Amazon Price: ?176.88
Sony RDR-HXD710 DVD Recorder with 160GB Hard Drive and FREEVIEW 
Used Price: ?207.99
Customer Review: Lasted just beyond the warranty
Worked great for 13 months but now freezes regularly and is very unreliable. Have lost a lot of recordings. Formatted the HD but no change. Very disappointed.
Customer Review: 18 months and kapput!
Absolutely fine for the first 18 months and then it wouldn’t finish a recording because it couldn’t write the finish to the hard disk. We’d come down in the morning and find that the red timer light was on and it was making a noise. Discovered it was trying to write to the disk to finish the recording, and must have been doing that for most of the night. Completely frozen. Only thing we could do was switch off at the mains and lose what we thought we’d recorded. Didn’t matter whether we tried recording from EPG or enterng the actual times. Only suggestion from Sony was to reformat the hard disk. Tried that, but it made no difference. They said if that didn’t work we would need to take it to a service engineer. Cost of that ?35 just to report what was wrong, then parts and labour for the actual repair after that. Decided it wasn’t worth it. We now have a very expensive Freeview box and DVD player, and a new Panasonic DVD recorder with HD and Freeview for just over half the cost of the Sony. Hope that’s better. Just in case we’ve taken out 3 year’s warranty, which we wouldn’t normally do, but after the experience with the Sony ….. Used to think Sony was the best, but not now.
