Panasonic DMR-EX95 - 250gb Hard Drive DVD Recorder & VCR Combination - With 1080P Up-Conversion & Freeview - Silver

After many hours of frustration I finally managed to get my Loewe Planus TV, Panasonic satellite receiver and this Panasonic DMR-EX95 DVD/VHS/HD recorder to work together. The wiring-up diagram in the manual didn't work and was different from that suggested by the Panasonic satellite receiver's manual! I also have the Panasonic DMR75V DVD/VHS recorder so am familiar with many of the functions, but I still found the plethora of features daunting. I'm sure I'll never use many of them.Good points: having an all-in-one box to play and record video tapes, DVDs and lots of hours on the Hard Drive. Also helpful is the automatic starting of commercial DVDs and videos so you don't have to fiddle around to find the correct drive. The handset has bigger and easier to read numerals on the buttons and there's more use of coloured buttons.Bad points: the awe-inspiring complexity of the features; the difficulty in seeing the status lights on the front of the machine, for example, the display on the device to tell one which drive is operating is very small and unreadable at a few feet of distance. The only way is to recognize that the tiny blue image means the Hard Drive; orange the VHS; red the DVD and yellow the SD function. I can barely tell the difference, at a distance, between the DVD and VHS display. On the DMR75 there is a button for DVD and a button for VHS. It would be much better to have four buttons on the handset for this DMR-EX95 rather than having to decipher at a distance which colour is displayed. I wonder about people who are colour blind.I'm sure that in a few weeks I'll be happier with the machine, but it's an up-hill battle.Here are a few tips I've discovered subsequent to the review above: If you're wanting to use the Sky Planner facility with External Link, you can only watch something recorded on the same drive as the proposed recording and you can't watch a video if you want to record on a DVD or the HD. The way round this is to select the programmes in the Sky Planner, in order to switch on the corrects channels, and then using the timer programme facility on the recorder type in the satellite channel (eg SAT06) as the channel to be recorded for each programme and type in the date, start and stop times and the choice of drive for each programme separately. (A good thing about the recorder is you don't then have to remember to press a timer button.) With this, albeit rather cumbersome method, you can record on one drive and view on another and also record a sequence of different satellite channels with the Sky Planner doing the switching as the recorder can't do this.

I bought this because I needed to get all of the functionality in one box. So far it looks fine.There is one feature which I expected it to have - namely the "series timer" function on eg Sony HD recorders where, from the programme guide, you can get it to record all instances of a particular programme. It doesn't have this - although you can get it to record eg same time every Monday, or Monday-Friday or various other options. This isn't a show-stopper for me, but if it could be for you then you need to know about it.A feature it offers which Sonys don't is that it will record something at the same time regularly and (if you like) over-write the previous version, so you can have it keeping the latest version of eg a news programme without filling up the whole disk.

There was a problem with the remote control but this was replaced within two days.Very good communications from seller.

Still delighted with this.Yes it's a shame it doesn't have two tuners, and USB would be better than SD (which I don't use), I can't get it to read MP3 from a DVD-RW, and I agree it would be nice to be able to record two things at once (I can't help pushing things). But considering how flexible it is, it is fairly easy to drive, the quality is good and excellent value. It's playing my CDs (including the MP3s), archiving my old VHS tapes to DVD (trimmed & tidied), and regularly used in 'chasing playback' mode to skip commercials and pause the TV.

I am very unhappy with this purchase as it is not fit for purpose and I am in correspondence with the suppliers. It is complcated to set up and I can neither play video cassettes or DVDs. I can also not copy from VC to DVD which is why I purchased the machine in the first place.The suppliers are very slow to reply to e-mails, taking at least a week to repy. They have offered to inspect the machine under a one year guarantee but so far have not supplied a return address.I await developments but I cannot recommend this machine on the basis of my recent experiences.

Excellent general purpose recording device with Freeview tuner. Useful for copying tapes to disc and large HDD enables easy editing before copying to disc. Easy to use and has an increased speed play back facility useful for watching documentaries a bit quicker sound ok at this speed.

Found it easy to use the delivery of this item came on time and the details of the video was spot on

This item is in constant daily use, and I hope it lasts forever. Highly recommended.