Home > Consumer Reviews > Panasonic DMRE85HEBSMR - Dvd Rec. With 80gb Harddrive

This is a truly stunning piece of kit and worth every penny.

You can pretty much throw out your DVD-RAMs. Unlike earlier models you can record and edit directly on the hard drive (great for getting rid of adverts), create your own chapters then copy onto DVD-R for storage.

The chasing play allows you to watch, edit and erase programmes in 'Timer' mode (but not when actually recording) - including adding new programmes. You can even watch a DVD whilst recording to the hard drive.

The quality at SP speed is excellent - as good as digital TV and allows you over 30 hours on the hard drive. Add to that one of the best designed interfaces I have ever used, high speed dubbing to and from DVD-R and DVD-RAM, 5.1 sound capability, flexible recording to always get the highest quality on a disk and all the rest, I doubt you could find a better DVD recorder anywhere.

The only downside is that you may never leave the house again.

While generally very good, the E85 has some points which potential buyers should be wary of.

Firstly, there are a few places (in the dubbing function, for example) where the recorder expects a slightly quirky method of input. This isn't a problem particularly, as it's quite easy to get used to if you frequently use the recorder.

Secondly, when recording, or when dubbing in normal speed mode any menues you open will be incorporated into the recording.

Thirdly, when copying from DVD to HDD, it seems that you can only use normal speed recording - not a problem if you only want to do this occasionally.

Lastly, you may only copy from DVD to HDD if you are copying from a finalised DVD. This isn't advertised anywhere, and from reading other manufacturer's manuals, isn't common.

The recorder does make up for it quite nicely by being very reliable and by making excellent recordings, even in its 8-hour per disc mode. It's just a pity about the small problems described above, and the fact that the manufacturer doesn't publish firmware updates at all.

This is an extremely good DVD/HDD recorder. It has been very highly rated by the specialist press and is an easy to use, feature packed machine.

It isn't multi-region from the box, but then nobody claimed that it was. DVD region encoding still exists and nobody should assume a product is multi-region unless it claims to be. For what it is worth, the machine can be modded for a small cost. However, as the days of better features on Region 1 releases are long gone it probably isn't worth it. Anyone who has a large Region 1 collection can still use those discs in their existing player.

The lack of a SCART lead is standard practice. No company ships SCART leads as standard. As this is a PAL progressive scan machine then to get the best from a SCART you will need an RGB capable lead. These are not the bog standard leads that you can pick up for a couple of quid. They will cost you around £30 minimum. With this in mid, it is easy to see why they are not included, as they would drive the cost up. Likewise, including a cheap "patch" cable would deliver poor sound and picture quality and therefore risk a negative response from customers. Why would Panasonic want to do this?

There is no cost-cutting in this product. It is an extremely well-designed and competitively priced machine.

Have just received this, and initial impression is good. It looks good, is fairly fully featured, the manual is better than most, but there are a couple of negatives.

It is NOT multi-region, which is very unusual these days. I really think the description should draw attention to this. Now personally I have only a couple of DVDs that are not region 2, and do not expect to collect more, so this is not a big problem, but I know plenty of people who have large collections from other regions and would find this a real problem. (If anyone knows of codes to set this machine to multi-region I'd be very grateful).

There are also a number of formats that it won't handle, particularly SVCD & Photo-CD seem curious omissions.

Some cables are included, but not a SCART cable, even though manual recommends this as prefered method of connection.

Likewise no discs. When I have bought other recorders in the past there has been at least one blank disc for those who are desperate to get going, and this also encourages you to buy that type of disc.

So, first impressions are a good effort, spoiled by a bit of restrictive specification and silly cost-cutting.

I've had one of these machines for nearly 3 years now. I had it doctored to play Multi-region, and it plays Regions 1 and 2 fine. It is a great machine for editing out ads, unwanted chit-chat, etc, and for inserting chapters like professional DVDs.
However, it has ONE big fault. The Remotes don't last (me) longer than 18 months, buttons on it start to need to be pressed harder, until they just fail to operate at all. This means you can only do basic things like Record and Play. You can't do the other functions like Edit, Dubbing, Playlist and Finalising without a fully functioning Remote Control.
And at around £30 a time, they're not cheap to replace! I guess the other Reviewers don't use their machines as often as I do, or they would have experienced the same problem.