Panasonic: DMREH80V

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Roger, Suffolk on November 9th, 2007
DO NOT BUY THIS AT ANY PRICE. I have this unit & it's so bad i am appalled. The pathetic limitations are unbelievable in a machine of this supposed sophistication. 'archive all your tapes' the ad says.........forget it..not with this pile of crap you won't. You can't leave it to transfer a whole tape as the autotrack is appalling & at the next program on the tape the tracking goes off & you have an unviewable transfer -- so you have to watch over it to track in each new program!!! Think you can transfer a tape overnight? Forget it! The last straw was today when it stopped tape to HD transfer AGAIN because it failed to autotrack a vhs tape & interpreted the bad tracking as COPYRIGHT!!! what's going on here then? can't it distinguish between a copyright tape & a home recorded 20 year old tape from the BBC???????????? Why won't this piece of junk track it in when my other vcr will? I'm amazed & disgusted that PANASONIC produce such poorly thought out units. This also won't let you record onto dvd & hdd at once. Why? you say - the ad says it's got 2 tuners? Yes, but one is assigned to the VCR!!!!!!!! In 2007??????? Oh, i forgot, i could record to vhs tape...........you must be joking.....in 2007????? i bought this thing to get rid of my tapes - not make more. The VCR is so poor, it takes ages to stop in FF mode so you end up miles past where you want to be & today it's started to chew perfect Scotch tapes which play in my other VCR! Oh, the VCR display (which you're not likely to need for much) is glaring, undimmable & always visible but the other one which is vital & gives you all the info on DVD, HDD recoding, editing etc, etc, is dull orange & even in brightest setting is unreadable on any bright day. If you are dubbing a DVD you can record to HDD but not the other way round!! You can't add or edit a timer setting if it's in timer record mode. The one touch record function is pathetic.......30, 60, 90, 120, 180 & 240 minutes or nothing. What's wrong with 10 or 30 mins every press??? The remote is a mess, one set of buttons need switching to VCR, HDD, or DVD so you can't control more than the one section at a time which means you can't transfer anything manually......no thought gone into this then?! I could rant for ages but I need to watch the tracking............ & today - 1 year old it is chewing tapes & won't read ANY. Heads are screwed I guess or need cleaning after approx 35 tapes, use! Nice one Panasonic!!!!!!!!!! Now today the dvd drawer whirrs but won't open!!! PANASONIC must employ morons for designers. BE WARNED, DON'T THINK ABOUT BUYING THIS UNIT AT ANY PRICE!