Panasonic DMR-EX88EB-K - 400GB HDD - DVD Recorder with Freeview
See it at Amazon.co.uk for £293.55Average Customer Rating
(4.0 out of 5)
Amazon Customer Reviews
Most Helpful First | Newest First (4 out of 5)Excellent but an opportunity missed Mr Panasonic.
It will help you to know that I also have a very similar DMR-E95H (the old flagship) which I have used a lot for the last 4 years. The E95H is now starting to give problems (it appears that the hard disk is very hesitant to start) but it has been extremely useful and I did not hesitate to get another Panasonic machine - even though they share the same drawbacks!
The E95H picture is good but the DMR EX88 picture is better in virtually every respect. One very minor quibble is that when viewing my TV (Viera TX32LXD1) via the DMR-EX88's tuner, the picture looks perfect until you do an A to B comparison with the TV's own tuner. If you do that you can see that there is an artificial smoothness introduced by the EX88. You lose a small element of fine 'texture' so that skin looks smoother than it is on the TV's own tuner. It is as if the EX88 has a filter of some sort which has 'decided' that the skin texture is 'noise' - so it has cut it out.
Don't misunderstand me, the picture via the EX88's tuner looks incredibly sharp, it just loses a little something in the extra processing but you would never normally look that carefully. Without doing that A to B comparison I would probably consider it 'perfect'. It actually looks sharper than the Viera's own tuner but that may be an illusion brought about by the 'noise' reduction in much the same way that a cartoon image always looks sharp on LCD screens. Presumably because there is no subtlety in the image. It is the subtlety that can reveal an LCD screen's dot-crawl shortcomings. On the other hand, maybe the 'diagonal recognition software' in the EX88 is actually making it sharper - difficult to tell. If you have ever done your own photographic developing you may be aware of the 'edge enhancement' of some Black and White developers. The sharpness I am seeing on screen seems similar to that.
The HDD recorded images are again excellent and noticeably better than the E95H. With a decent screen it is well worth using the highest quality recording mode (XP) all the time, everything else is a compromise and with a 400GB hard-drive I see little point in compromising. Despite what you may read elsewhere the image is not quite as good as live TV but it is certainly very close and vastly better than the best VHS. If you have not made the change from VHS yet, you are in for a treat!
The DMR EX88 produces truly stunning images from DVD. As good as any high end DVD player that I have seen. You need to look very closely to realise that it is not an HD image, the up-scaling is presumably responsible for this. I put in a Lord of the Rings DVD to test it and had difficulty tearing myself away from the fabulous New Zealand scenery - as well as the story. I will probably watch the whole trilogy again!
I have no idea if I will use the music and picture storing facilities much but I have copied quite of lot of both from memory sticks which is extremely quick and easy. It could quite feasibly be used as a high quality juke box but why on earth have they restricted it to copying MP3 tracks only? I seem particularly sensitive to the failings of MP3 and I would far rather a lossless format was available - WMA lossless for example or FLAC which I use in other machines or even WAV as there is plenty of space on the hard drive. Bad mark for that one. Good marks though for the audio output which seems flawless. I was only listening through a Panasonic SAXR50 AV amp and Denon surround speakers, which is not the best set up I have ever heard, but I detected nothing to warn that it would not be a good music source worthy of playing through a decent Hi Fi set up. If I get around to trying that I will try to update this review.
I was disappointed with the quality of the photograph images that I copied on to the hard drive. I have not worked out why they did not look good yet but they certainly did not look as good as when viewing them on a computer screen. It is potentially useful to be able to put it into a slideshow mode to show your pictures on the TV but I will probably still use my laptop if I want to show anyone my pictures.
A major failing is that Panasonic still only give you one tuner. If you are recording something and want to set it up to record something else, tough! Believe me, that is a really common situation and it would be so easy for Panasonic to get around it. You can't even look at the programme guide whilst it is recording and that borders on pathetic! Come on Panasonic, you know it is not good enough and we would all be happy enough to pay you the extra £0.50 that it would cost to install that second tuner! I bet the Japanese consumers get 2 tuners!
When you can manage to look at the programme guide 25% of the screen width is taken up by adverts. This makes the actual area of screen where you can see the forthcoming programmes rather small and therefore fiddly and slow to use. This is a very bad idea! Other manufacturers manage to provide the guide screen without adverts so why can't Panasonic? Very poor and annoying!
Hopefully it is just a minor failing but the HDD picture does not seem to be as reliable as it is in my ageing E95H. With the EX88 there is an occasional picture break down into coarse pixilation. It only happens for half a second now and again so it is not particularly annoying - but it does happen! That never happened in the E95H. I hope it is not the start of a significant fault but it does not seem to be getting any worse.
Bearing in mind that we are talking about a high end product, it is annoying that you can not get information out of the machine except by burning a DVD. Why on earth not? It has a USB connector - in only, a fire wire connector - in only, an SD card slot - in only. Why? I would like to be able to copy the video files on to a USB stick and play them on my laptop elsewhere. I would like to be able to store my home movies on the HDD and later copy them on to my computer for proper editing without having to burn a DVD to do so. I want to transfer the stored music to a portable player. I want to record a play from Freeview Radio 4 and output an audio file to my portable player - even in MP3 format if I must. I'd even welcome the VOB file that it uses to save video but no, Panasonic have decided we can't have any useful facilities like those. Why for goodness sake? Presumably it is some nonsensical copy protection policy. If so, they should leave the legalities to us consumers and busy themselves with making a useful machine.
A potentially useful new feature (new to me that is) is that it can play DivX files so you do at least have a way of watching other formats if you can get them on to a memory stick. It is very easy and the quality is pretty good but you can't save them to the hard drive, you can only watch them from the 'stick'. Again - why? It really can't be that difficult for Panasonic to come up with the software to play both VOB and DivX or any other format for that matter. I'm sure many a geek can tell them how to do it.
One feature I was really looking forward to is the 1 second start up time advertised by Panasonic. I never timed the E95H but it is probably around 40 seconds to start up, by which time you have missed the bit you wanted to record. So, I can now start the machine recording in 1 second, can I? Errrr NO! What Panasonic don't tell you is that to have the facility to record within 1 second you have to put the machine into a snooze mode. If you do this it will indeed start up, as advertised, within 1 second BUT, BUT, BUT that means you have to leave it in snooze mode all the time consuming 15 watts instead of the more reasonable standby consumption of 2 watts. I'm not an eco-warrior but there are limits and I'm certainly not going to waste that much power just for the rare convenience of a 1 second start up. To save you working it out, the consumption is about 131 kWh per year!
Maybe I sound a bit harsh with my criticisms. If I do, it is only because I have lived with the old machine and the new machine long enough to know what fantastic bits of kit they both are but how frustrating it is to have such a superb piece of equipment sitting in front of me but have it stupidly restricted in it's capabilities. It could easily be made to do just what I want it to do, and I'm sure future machines will. In the mean time I will just have to live with it being a superb recorder producing magnificent pictures with the minimum of effort. Would I recommend it? Of course I would. It is probably the best machine of it's type on the market. I may be frustrated but I am not disappointed.
(5 out of 5)DMR-EX88 - Outstanding Excellence
Well I have to say after two weeks of use I'm absolutely knocked out by it's performance. The picture quality is superb and the copy quality from the Hard Drive is the best I've seen. Having had two previous Panasonic recorder/hdd combo's this really is their best yet.
As a previous reviewer noted the instruction details could do with a user friendly tweak, but that aside I have yet to see a better machine.
If you use and record from a HD source you will require calming measures as the end product should carry a Government health warning.
So should you be in the market for a dvd/hdd recorder look no further.
Highly recommended.
(5 out of 5)5 star performer
HAVE HAD DMR-EX88EB A COUPLE OF WEEKS NOW AND I FIND ITS RECORDING QUALITY EXCELLENT EVEN ON FREEVIEW ,ITS 400GB HARDDRIVE IS GIGANTIC AND EASY TO USE.ONE LITTLE SUGGESTION TO PANASONIC THOUGH,THE INSTRUCTON MANUAL WHILE LARGE AND CONTAINING MANY HELPFUL TIPS IS HARD READING AT BEST,THE BACK PAGE INDEX REALLY NEEDS TO BE BETTER LAYED OUT FOR THE ODD TIME USER(YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE).A REALLY GOOD RECORDER.
(5 out of 5)Absolutely excellent DVD recorder with hard drive
I own a Panasonic Viera TV so I am really into Panasonic now. My old DVD recorder with hard drive (JVC) purchased 4 years ago blew up so I needed a new one. This one ticked all the boxes and since it arrived I have been so pleased with it. It is so easy to use and the upgrading is excellent. When I play Sky through it - even that looks more colourful. The navigation is simple and recording - I would definitely recommend this.
(3 out of 5)THE NEW GENERATION OF HDD/DVD RECORDERS.
This new machine has one of the largest HDD I have ever seen to store TV and even Music. It comes in a sleek black but isn't the best looking of unit's and tends to look retro. Performance isn't bad and it offers a clear picture from the HDD in EP mode and from a Dvd. The Remote is well designed and easy to use as are the on-screen displays. It get's quite noisy and hot after some time in operation which can be distracting. Also the DVD loading door is a plastic flap which reverse hinges. This can be opened easily and I can imagine a child flipping this open and breaking it off. Or even worse pushing a sweet etc into the gap which could make the DVD draw fail to operate. The biggest flaw is the single tuner ! Why Why ?? , it limits what this can do and what you can watch. And long term I doubt it's longevity as I had the previous model to this one and the Tv Tuner died after just two years. I had it insured so I got this new model for free via an insurance claim so I am very happy. The Gracenote media is a good idea but in practical terms and 'DRM' it could prove a problem to, get your music to your iPod via a Memory stick or SD card. All in all a good but expensive buy , But I would look to Sony before buying this unit.