Black Boxes:
Panasonic DMR-E100HP-S DVD Recorder with Hard Drive
DVD recorders have been selling like hotcakes, promising to replace the VCR as the ubiquitous device for playing movies and recording programs. Like DVD players, all current recorder models can play DVD movies, but they also record video, either off the air, cable, and satellite or from another source such as a VCR or camcorder. The FireWire input jack makes this attractive to digital camcorder owners.
VCR Replacement
The Panasonic DMR-E100HP-S costs more than the low-priced (~$300) recorders we've seen, but it also does more. The main reason for this is the 120 GB hard disk drive (HDD). The hard drive allows the unit to record many, many hours of programs, much more than a DVD can hold. After recording a program to the HDD, it is a simple matter to save it for posterity to a blank DVD. You can pause, rewind and fast forward programs even while they record to the hard drive or DVD.
This model has slots for SD, Compact Flash, Memory Stick cards and more, allowing it to play still picture and audio files in several formats. You can also copy these images from the cards to the hard drive or DVD-RAM discs.
DVR Replacement
You might imagine this programmable, hard-drive-based TV-recording machine would be a bit like a digital video recorder (DVR) such as TiVo. Unfortunately, it is missing a DVR-style Electronic Program Guide (EPG). There are no search-and-click grid of channels, programs or keyword searches for titles or names, and certainly none of the more advanced functions.
So how do you program the DMR-E100HP-S? Remember VCR+? To program a VCR+ enabled VCR to record, you look up the typically five-digit number for the show you want and then enter that in to your VCR. Otherwise, you'll have to do it the old-fashioned way: just enter the time and channel information. The difficulty of programming, even with VCR+, is precisely the reason most people rarely use their VCRs to record programs. And that's what is so great about the EPG that comes with TiVo and other DVRs: point to a future program in your on-screen guide and click to record.
Blaster
This DVD recorder shares one shortcoming of most DVRs: It can't control cable boxes or satellite receivers. This means that it records what is on its internal tuner or whatever is coming in from an outside source, but it can't change the channel on that external source. So if you want to record a program from satellite, you have to program both the receiver and the DVD recorder. Or you could use an IR blaster, which is a device that repeats remote control signals so one device can control another. Otherwise, this device acts much like your old VCR: hit record to record what's on the screen.
Our Tests
We found the DMR-E100HP-S easy to hook up, feeding it an antenna input for terrestrial broadcast channels and an S-video input from a satellite receiver. During setup, the unit should have automatically set its clock, using the local PBS signal as its source, but it didn't. Clock auto-set might work better at your location than it did in our small-market locale. Still, the rest of the setup was easy.
After setup, we pressed the Functions button on the remote and started navigating the on-screen menus. The Timer Recording button reveals a screen where you can program the unit either manually or by entering VCR+ codes. This is also where you tell the unit whether to record a specific program to the hard drive or directly to a DVD. You can also enter a name for your recording by using the arrow buttons on the remote to scroll through an on-screen alphabet to select letters one at a time. It's about as fun and fast as it sounds. Most of us will be left with a Timer Recording list showing channels and start/end times of programs, but not their titles. Remember: no electronic program guide.
Recording was easy, however: just choose the record mode, then press the red Record button. We could easily rewind a program while recording and play it from the beginning, all without interrupting the recording (chase play). We also used the Time Slip function (e.g. pause live TV) to jump around within a program being recorded. We found we could place the live image in a picture-in-picture window while continuing to watch the earlier parts of the same program in the main part of the screen. Cool.
Slide Shows
The Dubbing button brought us to a screen where we could set recording parameters, choosing, for example, between MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 recording formats.
The JPEG button brought us the screen controlling the playing of stills and slideshows from memory cards or the hard drive. A series of stills played from an SD card was a somewhat painful process, drawing the screen for each image from top to bottom. Each screen took around 8 seconds to complete, which could be a result of a slow card, a slow transfer rate or just a slow player. Copying the photo files to the hard drive and playing them from there gave a slight improvement to around 3.5 seconds per picture, but that is still pretty slow.
The SD Video (MPEG4) button took us to a screen where we could record and play back video clips from SD cards. These showed at a jerky frame rate in a small frame in the center of the screen. We had good success playing media in various formats we fed the DMR-E100HP-S and in burning both DVD-R and DVD-RAM media. We had no trouble playing DVD-Rs recorded on this recorder in other DVD players.
The Wish List
This is a pretty expensive device, considering its limitations. We would have really liked to have seen an Electronic Program Guide, search functions and some way to control a satellite receiver or cable box, just like the latest DVRs. On the other hand, we wish the latest DVRs had a DVD recorder. Panasonic's DMR-E100HP-S DVD recorder is a reliable performer, is fairly easy to use and does everything advertised. However, in view of standard DVRs, it would need more of their functions, especially an EPG, to be a real contender.
SMART SPECS
Recordable Disc: DVD-RAM, DVD-R
Hard Disk Drive: 120GB
Recording Time: 160 hours (in EP mode)
Recording Modes: XP/SP/LP/EP/FR
Still Picture File Formats: JPEG & TIFF
Video Formats: MPEG4 & MPEG2
Playback Formats: DVD-Video, DVD-Audio (2-channel), DVD-RAM, DVD-R, Video CD, CD, CD-R, CD-RW
Video Inputs: Composite (x3), S-video (x3), RF, FireWire
Audio Inputs: RCA (x3 pair)
Video Outputs: composite (x2), S-video (x2), component
Audio Outputs: RCA (x2 pair), Digital Optical
PC Card Slots: SD Memory, CompactFlash, MultiMediaCard, Smart Media and Memory Stick
Other Features: Input TBC, Remote, DV Input Terminal, Dolby Digital (Dolby AC-3) 2ch Audio Recording, Bilingual Recording (DVD-RAM only), Commercial Skip, Position Memory
Company: Panasonic
Contact: (800) 211-PANA
Web Site: www.panasonic.com
Price: $1,200
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