Panasonic: DMREH50EB

Rojcrad, Ammanford, on May 7th, 2007
I have had my Panasonic DMR-EX75EB for about six months now and have to say I am more than pleased with it. The picture quality of the built in Freeview is excellent – better even than that built into my Sagem television. Picture quality for programs recorded directly from Freeview are indistinguishable from those that are off-air. Sound transfer via an optical cable is crisp and clear and far preferable to SCART. The Hard-Drive holds a load of programs even in XP mode (highest quality), plus the software allows you to cut out annoying commercials easily. Most of my recordings are direct from a Sky HD box, and I have to say the resulting picture quality is superb. Obviously its not high-definition but when played via an HDMI cable and upscaled it really is very, very good. After using this machine I would never go back to a DVD recorder without a hard drive. Recordings on to DVDs are equally good. I’ve tried the unit with DVD-RAM, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+RW and dual layer discs and, apart from a couple of failed finalisations on the latter all have been impressive. Dual-Layer disc cannot be recorded onto directly and need free space on the hard drive in order for the transfer of programs to go ahead. Movies recorded from a Sky HD source are almost indistinguishable from ‘normal’ DVDs, with the picture often being perhaps a little sharper.