Price comparison:
Panasonic DMR-E85
Website: www.panasonic.co.uk
Size (WxHxD): 43x8x27cm
Weight: 3.3kg
80GB (17-142hrs) hard drive capacity
16hr DVD-RAM/8hr DVD-R capacity
Five recording quality modes
PAL progressive scan video output
Time slip simultaneous playback and record
32-event/VideoPlus timer
Connections
Front: Composite/S-video & stereo line in
Back: 2x Scarts (composite/S-video/RGB in/out)
Component video out
Composite & S-Video in/out
RF aerial in/out
Stereo line out
Optical digital audio out
Plus points:
Great picture quality, including progressive scan output, plus extended recording capacity and supreme ease of use
Minus points:
Limited to DVD-RAM and DVD-R recordable formats and there are no digital video or multimedia card ports plus no programme guide for timer setting
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DVD recorders with built-in hard disk drives are increasingly common and, now that people are realising what they can do compared to 'standalone' recorders, they are becoming more popular and affordable. Panasonic was the first to launch DVD/HDD combi recorders in the UK, so its latest generation is coming down in price but going up in specification.
Sharing many features of the £1,000 DMR-E100, the DMR-E85 has an 80GB hard drive for storing between 17-142 hours of TV (depending on the picture quality mode). The DVD drive will record to DVD-RAM or DVD-R discs. The former is a rewriteable format suitable for heavy re-editing, while the latter is a cheaper write-once type for archiving and sharing (DVD-RAMs are not compatible in the majority of other players). It is also easy to tidy up your hard drive recordings before choosing what to transfer to disc.
Panasonic has improved the playback quality in this generation. Not only is the DVD movie picture reproduction more refined than before, but there is now a PAL progressive scan option via component video output, making it suitable for higher-end displays such as plasmas and home cinema projectors.
Although digital camcorder and memory card ports have been excluded from this model, its inputs do enable you to connect a digital TV receiver using high-quality RGB video via Scart. The DMR-E85 is principally a TV-recording machine, as shown by the whopping 32 timer events that you can set in its memory.
Drawbacks
Unfortunately, programming the timer is still done the old-fashioned VCR way with VideoPlus codes or manual date-time entry. In the coming months recorders will catch up with Philips' lead and use on-screen listings, such as GuidePlus, to make it as simple to program as Sky+ for example, but for now this is the DMR-E85's only major weakness. Another drawback is the lack of multi-format disc recording. Several brands support a mixture of disc types, including DVD+RW or DVD-RW - these are reusable discs with higher compatibility than DVD-RAM in other players.
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This dual-deck machine is simple to operate though, and has some wonderful features. If you are stepping up from a VCR for the first time, then facilities such as TimeSlip will seem miraculous. This is where you can play back a TV show from the hard drive (or DVD-RAM) without affecting other scheduled recordings. You can even play from the start of a show that has yet to finish recording. This is infinitely more convenient than the old 'tape model' of recording, which even afflicts most DVD recorders in that you must wait for the programme to end before doing anything else.
The dual deck also means that you can record TV to the hard drive while using the disc drive to watch a DVD. The machine even lets you back up a DVD to the hard drive to make further edits or copies (providing it's not a commercial, copyrighted disc).
The DMR-E85 is a near-perfect fusion of user-friendly features, including almost endless editing and transferring abilities and a highly respectable DVD recording and playback quality. To date, most combis as good as this cost upwards of £800, so it's welcome to see something as good as this in a more affordable price bracket.
Digital recording capacity
It makes sense at this point to compare the pros and cons of the various digital recording formats currently available. Put simply, the running time that you can fit on a blank DVD is determined by the level of picture quality you want. Dual-layered DVD-Rs are in the works (as are DVD+Rs from Philips) but for now blanks are limited to one side and one layer of 4.7GB. DVD-RAM has the same single-layer capacity but can be double-sided.
Most recorders can fit up to six hours on 4.7GB though a few, like this Panasonic, can squeeze in eight hours. However, at these levels of compression the image quality is not too special, particularly for fast-moving material like sport or action movies.
For general use, you can expect to get two hours in high quality, or three to four hours at a quality resembling VHS (albeit more stable looking and in a more compact medium). The same principal applies to hard disk recording, but with its greater capacity you can store many more hours without compromising on image quality. Even in the maximum XP quality setting, the DMR-E85's hard disk will carry up to 17 hours. At the lowest quality setting it can take as much as 142 hours, or to put it another way, nearly six days of continuous recording!
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The DVD recorder price crash continues with this superb value, high-spec DVD/hard-drive deck that should take care of most of your TV recording and disc-archiving needs.
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