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

having owned this machine for several weeks i can honestly say it is one of my best electronic purchases, having excellent quality picture & sound. i have a samsung 32" lcd tv & the dvb tuner in the dvd recorder is of a superior quality to that of the tv. it is great to be able to record to the hard drive, & then be able to copy to a dvd at leisure. i am also impressed with the machine's ability to copy using a variable bit rate, which means that, the machine copies to dvd at the best bit-rate possible given the film length. this machine has been a real boon, as i have been able to copy straight from my hd video camera to the hard drive/dvd with exceptional results. only minor glitch is that it is quite easy to press the wrong buttons when editing footage on the remote control, but i have got used to this now. well done panasonic, a great machine!

After alot of research I bought this machine. It is very easy to use and does all the things you could want. The picture quality is great. It has all the features to keep up with the digital change over. Also if you have a seperate freeview box it is possible to connect them up so you can watch one channel and tape another. This machine does not have a duel tuner. It comes with a HDMI lead. For the price I think this is a fantastic machine.
It is also possible to get multi region versions of this product.

A brilliant piece of kit! I had held off getting one but my VHS was getting long in the tooth and wouldn't record any digital channels. The instructions can be difficult to follow but even an idiot like me can get to grips with it after a while. One major plus is that it will convert VHS to DIGITAL. The tech descriptions I had read said that it doesn't but on page 22 of the instruction book it tells you how to connect up a video recorder using only a scart lead, after a bit of fiddling with connections and settings sure enough it writes VHS Video to the HDD and then on to DVD. Set the quality to LP and a whole 240 VHS tape, 4 hrs, fits onto a single 4.7GB DVD. An unexpected bonus. The upscaling when playing DVD's using the HMDI connection is brilliant, the picture quality is remarkable. I opted for the 160GB, 140 hrs on the HDD, what do you need 250GB for? a new version with 420GB is on the way. I would certainly recommend this one.

I bought this along with the 37" plasma from Panasonic that is getting all the rave reviews (TH37PX70CAB).

Having owned an LG HDD recorder previously, this machine was a major step up. One reviewer complained about the interruption to the TV signal when turning on the HDD recorder to record. This can be minimised by turning off the power save feature. So, save the planet, or save start up time. You can't have it both ways.

One excellent feature is the independence of the built in digital tuner. Unlike the LG recorder I owned, you can use the DVD drive to watch discs while the tuner is recording other programs. Cool! And it remembers where you were in a recorded show if you watch it in sections.

The upscaling feature is also very good as it also upscales the signal from the HDD recorder's digital tuner too. I don't require some of the features other reviewers complain are missing from this machine, so I don't miss them at all. The SD slot is a nice bonus as it is the format used by my digital camera.

With the lower price available via Amazon, this is truly an excellent value purchase. And it looks great too.

This is a really good DVD recorder. The freeview signal is much better than the one i have in my 42" LCD screen and it locks on far better too. I find the 160 GB hard drive more than adequate for my recording needs and it is simple to copy to disc what i really want to keep. The editing function is excellent too,so you can get rid of adverts and other extraneous things. Set up is a doddle and with just a bit of manual reading or acquaintence the functions become easy to use and manipulate. It is also possible to upload from DVD to the hard drive if you have DVDr's done on previous recorders that you may want to edit. I had a panny es20 before this which lacked a hard drive. You could edit RAM discs but you need a hard drive to edit programmes from normal dvdr's. This one takes RAM as well but you don't really need RAM discs because you can edit on the hard drive then burn to cheaper DVDr's. Upscaling to 1080p does it far better than my LCD screen, make sure you get a decent HDMI lead for best results. Recording quality is very good, much better than video with the option to get more on the hard drive with lower quality recording options if you wish. 7 day epg is very well set out and recording is a doddle from this. I have a multi region model and the only thing i don't like about this player is that if you have programmes stored in the timer menu it won't let you play any dvd's other than region 2, it flashes up incompatible tv mode. If you cancel timer programmes it then lets you play any region DVD. This is a small problem and is the only drawback. But this DVDR does so much so well its forgivable.