Union No-Goal

[Will]

Marty, has your wife also given you a lifetime license to have you buy *me* whatever *I* want? :-D

[billhoward]

I have the Panasonic DVD RAM recorder without the hard disk. Spend the extra bucks and get the one with the hard disk. It's vastly more versatile.

[marty]

The Wall Street Journal of 3/10 has an article comparing the Panasonic DMR-E80H (the one with a hard drive) to a $300 Gateway DVD recorder and a GoVideo unit that includes VHS playback (for transferring old tapes to DVD).

The reviewer did not like the Panasonic in comparison with a TIVO.  The article didn't change my opinion.  I am waiting for the next generation of recorders or for these to be sold at more reasonable prices.  They don't seem to be worth as much as the asking prices with the possible exception of the Gateway.

[adamw]

As someone without Tivo and awaiting to buy the Panasonic ... the DMR-E80H looks great, but does not, for some reason, include Firewire input (to go digital to digital from a mini-DV camcorder). ... The next step up, the 100 something or other, has a 120GB hard drive and includes Firewire input.  Price on Amazon, $850 (retails for $1119) ... The E80H is on Amazon for $520.

[billhoward]

There is no perfect Personal Video Recorder yet. Tivo is best but the new Replay 5500 series is not much different. You have to pay a monthly service fee of $10 or a lifetime fee of $300 and it's lifetime of that unit, not your lifetime. If the unit goes belly up after the warranty, you're hosed. You can upgrade to a bigger hard disk and keep the guide license intact. (see weakness.com for upgrade info)

Panasonic has very nice units but until recently the best unit didn't have Firewire, DVD-RAM, and big hard disk. You could get 2 of 3. Panasonic uses VCR+, which is inferior to the programming guides of Tivo / Replay for setting up season taping of favorite shows. But, it's free. You can video edit on Panasonic and burn discs (DVD-R) but the edit features are, ah, not optimal. Keep an eye on Samsung, too. Samsung is the next Sony.

If you want to record off satellite, get a combo satellite receiver / PVR so you don't have to do the MPEG2 decode / re-encode. But satellite PVR is typically closed and will not record off cable TV or take a camcorder 1394 (Firewire) input.

HD PVRs are coming this year. You can also get PVR - set top boxes from your friendly cable company.

Windows Media Center Edition PCs are great for music and photos but, except for Sony, the TV quality is not yet that good. Give it another year. Also the fan noise may be a killer in your living room. MS uses the Tribune TV guide and for now it's free. When the TV tuner part gets good, that's going to put a lot of pricing pressure on TiVo / Replay.

If you're upgrading a PC to do TV in and PVR, check out the ATI Radeon 9800. That's the hot ticket now. - BH