Home > Consumer Reviews > Panasonic DMR-EZ45V DVD/VHS Combi with Freeview Tuner, HDMI with 720p/1080i upscaling, SD Card slot for Jpeg playback

First one of these was duff, with U80/U81 errors(not from Amazon!), but speedily replaced and 2nd one is great!. Don't even THINK of using ordinary blank DVDs - get Panasonic DVD RAM disks (approx. £10 for 5 no. -and recordable up to 100,000 times!), as these behave like a hard drive, enabling features like "Chasing play" (watching beginning of prog while still recording the end), ability to record one prog while watching one already recorded, etc etc. Picture quality in LP (4 hrs) is good and it is easy to skip through adverts quickly. SD card reader is handy if that is your camera format and the whole unit is easy to use - tho' the manual is somewhat daunting, at first... Good that it has Freeview built-in - makes setting recordings very easy - and Videoplus also included. Recommended - but remember that RAM disks are not playble in most other DVD players/recorders!

This is a fine machine, the freeview tuned in ok, and it records to DVD and copies VHS to DVD too. But when I tried to record on the dual layer discs which were partnered with the machine on this website, after recording, and requesting finalising, it gets to 99% and then says cannot complete, please check disc. Panasonic suggested we only use Panasonic dual layer discs of JVC or TCR or Maxi ones, so perhaps that will solve it.

We have had this product for 15 months and the digital tuner has packed in already-very disappointing considering our other Panasonic equipment has lasted for many years. It is also tempermental, sometimes switching to error mode for no reason and the dvd doesn't always record so we have been using the video for recording.A waste of money.

The finalized DVD does not play back with audio on my 2 year old Dell Laptop. It may well be something to do with compression codecs which I have read about, however the Panasonic website is of no use in this respect. Trying to find what codec is used by right clicking file in Library whilst running Windows Media Player 11 for XP does not give the codec used during creation. If this issue cannot be resolved and your PC is the preferred playback hardware, be cautious about purchasing.