Home > Consumer Reviews > Panasonic DMR-EX77EB-K - 160GB Hard Drive DVD Recorder - With 1080P Up-Conversion & Freeview - Black

One look at the enormous instruction book had me worried. It is very complex and not a plug and play item. Would rather have gone for a Humax.

Excellent product.
Editting good.
Programming easy.
Storage is sufficient to record 72 hours of program at default quality.

The only thing that I would consider getting on my next machine would be a second tuner so that you could record two programs that are on the same time and also the facility to recognise a series and record every episode. Some channels vary the start times of some programs each week. Very frustrating.

I have had this for over a year now and would definitely purchase another. I was after a dvd recorder that had freeview. The bonus was this having a hard drive. If you have never had one with a hard drive you will wonder how you got on without it.
The freeview guide is easy to use and recording is easy to set up to both the hard drive or the dvd recorder. I find it a bit confusing to format/set up the dvd and once ended up deleting all the contents of the hard drive. This was very frustrating so take care here! This is the only niggle and I am very delighted with it.
If you have a newish Panasonic tv you can link it up somehow and use it to an even better potential. I don't have this and don't know much about it but I suspect it could be useful.
Picture quality and colours are good. A useful facility is you can watch recordings at 130% of the original speed (ie faster) and still hear the sound. This is such a good feature when you want to watch something and don't really have the time to. The slow and step playing also are good. The picture quality is also superb at these speeds.
When and if I am in a position to purchase another or recommend to a friend, I will have no hesitation in recommending this product (or future versions of it).
Go on... grab yourself an excellent bit of kit. You won't regret it!

Having tries several other machines, sony's and other panys, i am happy to tell you that my search is over. This one is superb in almost every way. The set up is so easy that a puppy with thumbs could manage it, in contrast the sony equivalent would tax the brain of a nasa scientis. I eventually had to e-mail sone for instructions as the hand book is so awfull. Anyway, this one virtually sets itself up. Hard drive is definately the way to go. I set it easily to tape all episodes of the Simpsons and my 5 year old can get up at 6am and watch all morning till his little heart is content. I can go away for the weekend safe in the knowledge that it will record all of the US masters, even if the programme overrunns due to a play off. The adverts on the Guide don't particularly bother me, i just don't look at them and i think the sony's have them too. It is a disgrace that they are there at all but it's not a big deal. Transferring from HDD to dvd also a doddle and once you have the HDD yo uwill find that to tend not to use discs anywhere near as often. The instruction book is reasonable easy to use, though i have to say i havn't really needed to as it's pretty easy to work out. Only fault is lack of mute button on the remote control. 9.5 out of 10.

Had this a couple of days and although have not tried everything.I am very pleased so far.Only have it connected to my portable TV but the Freeview picure quality is very good.Recording to the the hard drive or disc I found
smooth and fast.So far very pleased.