 Panasonic DMR-E100HS
Progressive-Scan DVD Recorder/PVR with 120GB Hard Drive
When DVD first came out, I was initially dubious, but 15
minutes into my first disc, I became a convert. Great picture, great sound, simple
connection -- What a great format, I thought.
My non-techie friends, however, just didn't get it. "I
already have a VCR. I don't need a DVD player," my brother George
pronounced.
"DVDs have Dolby Digital surround sound," I
explained, "and a much better picture, especially if you have a big TV screen."
"I listen through my 35" TV and the picture looks
okay to me. I'll just wait until they make a player with a record button."
"Hah! You technological half-wit -- that'll never
happen!"
Well, mmmph mmmph mmmph mmmph mmmph -- sorry, it's
hard to enunciate around that foot. What I meant to say was, "Get out your checkbook,
George. Your DVD recorder is ready."
This I tell you brother/You can't have one without the
other
Recordable DVDs have been available for about a year now,
but many consumers either don't know about them or are confused by the sheer quantity of
recording formats. Confusion was, perhaps, inevitable, since there are already three
widely used formats with differing levels of compatibility. Worse yet, they are named
almost identically -- even "experts" like me confuse them without a crib sheet.
The formats are DVD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW, and DVD-RAM. DVD-R/RW
and DVD+R/RW produce discs that can be played on most currently available DVD-Video
players. DVD-R/RW also offers something called VR mode, which is not so widely compatible,
but in exchange, it offers some editing flexibility, which is nice to have. DVD-RAM was
developed (by Panasonic) to serve as a data-storage medium for computers -- one that also
records video data. DVD-RAM recordings are generally not compatible with DVD-Video players
(other than recent Panasonic models, of course).
DVD-RAM's biggest consumer benefit is that the blanks are
incredibly robust. Panasonic says a DVD-RAM disc can be rewritten more than 100,000 times
(about 100 times more than DVD-R/RW and DVD+R/RW). DVD-RAM recorders offer faster data
transfer than the other formats, up to 22Mbps (writing speed), twice the rate of DVD-R/RW
and DVD+R/RW, which max out at 11Mbps.
What that means is that you can simultaneously record one
show while playing one that's already been recorded, or use what Panasonic calls Chase
Play, which simply lets you watch a program from the beginning after you've already
started recording it. Of course, these are capabilities that PVRs like TiVo already offer,
but that doesn't make them any less useful on the DMR-E100HS.
Perhaps the best feature that Panasonic's DVD-RAM players
offer is something the company calls Time Slip, which lets you specify time points within
a program and watch from that point, or jump ahead a specified amount of time and start
there (all while recording!). You can even arrange the real-time and recorded images as
PIPs, if you want. (BTW, if you don't think this is a useful feature, you've never tried
to catch up on a tightly contested sporting event after, ahem, seeing a man about a
dog.)
All recordable DVDs allow you to label discs and
even individual programs within a disc -- or even up to 999 points within a disc or
program for ease of navigation. For DVD-R/RW and DVD+R/RW, that's pretty much your entire
post-production list of options.
DVD-RAM gives you a few more choices. You can shorten a
program you've recorded, specifying a starting and ending point of the portion you wish to
remove (meaning you could wipe out all the commercials, if you wished to go through all
the hassle). You can also divide programs into several discrete programs or scenes. And
you can protect recordings from accidental erasure or editing. (Rule of thumb: Material you
eliminate is "editing"; material someone else eliminates is
"butchery.")
Thy brother came with subtlety
Believe it or not, just one year into the recordable-DVD
era, the DMR-E100HS represents Panasonic's fourth generation of DVD-RAM recorder.
That means it's cheaper and more flexible than its predecessors. Yeah, I know that $1199
USD isn't cheap exactly, but it’s a 120GB unit -- if you're willing to cut
that storage capacity to 50GB, you can buy a Panasonic DMR-E50 for a lot less than that.
As to the more flexible part, generation-four recorders also record onto DVD-R
blanks, so you can take it with you (at least on a DVD).
Despite the amount of flexibility and user options the
DMR-E100HS offers, it's probably easiest to simply think of it as a VCR with better sound
and video.
It certainly looks and operates very much like one -- the
100HS is built upon a slimline silver chassis and sports an uncluttered faceplate. The
display presents an alphanumeric readout, as well as several status indicators (Record
Mode, Display Mode, Disc Type, Timer, and Pause/Operating).
On the display's right, there's a line of six buttons:
Play, Stop, Skip/Slow, Search Forward, Search Backward, and Time Slip (covered above).
Just above them are the skinny buttons that control Channel Up/Down, Record, Record Mode
Selector, and Erase. At the left-hand bottom corner of the faceplate, there's a flip-down
panel that conceals some very VCR-like convenience inputs (S-video, composite, and a pair
of stereo analog audio RCA jacks).
The rear panel has two input groupings (S-video, composite,
and L/R RCA), as well as one for outputting the same complement. In addition, there are
outputs for progressive/interlaced component video, optical digital-audio output, and
(hard as it is to believe) RF in/out.
There's also an IEEE 1394 digital video input that can take
the signal from a compatible digital camcorder so you could transfer your home movies to
the hard disk or a recordable blank.
 The remote is
logical and intuitive, and is preprogrammed with the codes for most TVs.
Oh yeah, one more thing. Read the manual! Panasonic could
have hired a better technical writer (I have a suggestion or two on that score), but
it's packed with stuff I would have never figured out on my own. And yes, that has
become so unusual that it is worthy of comment.
That said, if you can figure out how to operate a VCR, you
shouldn't have much trouble using the E100HS.
In addition to recording blank DVDs, the unit has a 120GB
hard disk drive (HDD) and a solid-state memory-card slot, which accommodates SD,
CompactFlash, MultiMediaCard, and Smart Media cards, as well as Memory Stick. The 120GB
HDD will store up to 150 hours of content. The E100HS uses variable-bit-rate MPEG-2 to
encode video signals -- that means it uses a lower bit-rate for static scenes than for
scenes with lots of motion. Like most VCRs, the E100HS offers several record modes and the
mode you select dictates how much material will fit on the HDD. The same is also true of
recording to a blank DVD: XP (1 hour), SP (2 hours), LP (4 hours), EP (6 hours). You can
do the math for double-sided discs. Of course, the best image quality is the one that
gives you the least capacity -- but Panasonic also offers a very convenient mode called FR
(flexible recording) mode, which will fit the recording onto the disc using the highest
quality the duration of the program allows.
The EE100HS records audio signals as Dolby Digital 2.0.
Big brother is watching you
You may wonder why I have compared the E100HS to a VCR
rather than a PVR, which has many of the same features. The biggest difference between a
device like my Philips DSR6000 and the DVD recorder is the TiVo
unit's Electronic Program Guide (EPG), which is a feature you have to pay for with a
monthly service fee. The Panasonic, on the other hand, offers VCR Plus+ and a 16-event
timer that can even access shows by title. The difference in ease-of-use is insignificant,
so if the idea of paying TiVo for its EPG bothers you -- or if you're appalled by the fact
that the firm collects user data and markets it to advertisers -- the E100HS is a great
alternative.
While the Panasonic does allow you to output a progressive
signal through its component outs, it is not an HDTV DVD recorder/player (there
aren't any yet). But the E100HS does allow you to adjust its image quality based on the
source material with three settings: Auto1 (this setting has 3:2 pulldown correction for
films), Auto2 (switches playback mode between film or video material, based on
"flags" embedded in the signal), and Video (video only -- duh). I
primarily used Auto2, except when I ran across the rare improperly flagged recording and
had to manually switch to video or film modes.
The E100HS has a variety of settings that provide picture
enhancement. I'll list them, rather than expound upon them, since they seem to have been
included to increase the recorder's compatibility with the widest range of connections,
display devices, and sources -- a good thing to be sure: Normal, Soft, Fine, and Cinema.
These are pretty self-explanatory, with the exception of Cinema, which is said to enhance
detail in dark scenes. I seem to be a Normal kind of a guy -- Soft and Fine (more detail)
do about what you'd expect to the picture, while Cinema seems to make the picture dimmer
overall.
There's an interesting setting called Black Level Control,
which lets you adjust the brightness of each output type (S-video/composite and
component). Again, different equipment combinations will probably do best with different
settings -- I was happiest with Lighter on the S-video/composite output and Darker on
component.
If this all seems confusing, just remember you'll probably
only have to set up the E100HS once, so just grit your teeth, persevere, and reward
yourself after you've muddled through the process. (I told you the manual was full
of stuff you'll need to know.)
My likeness -- my brother
This is generally the part of the review where I compare
the device under review to other similar models. Since the E100HS is the only DVD recorder
I have auditioned and I don't have any others to compare it with, I couldn't do that. It's
certainly an extremely good DVD player, one I could happily live with as my only video
source.
Using the progressive-scan output, my current reference DVD
player (Arcam DV-88 Plus) did offer a sharper image with fewer motion artifacts,
but the difference was not profound.
But the E100HS's normal DVD playback capabilities are
almost beside the point -- if you buy one, it will be because of it can record. And that
it does surprisingly well. Most of the time, I recorded in SP mode, since I didn't feel XP
offered enough of an improvement to justify its scant one-hour capacity. I couldn't really
tolerate EP, although it might be fine for transferring old home movies on VHS; LP is the
better choice, giving you four hours and video quality that's certainly good enough for
videocassette.
When it came to recording broadcast TV, I found the quality
of the recordings had a lot more to do with the quality of the feed than that of the
Panasonic's ability to record them -- and that changes from channel to channel and
provider to provider. DirecTV is all over the map on this one, but if you have a different
provider you may get different results.
As I've said, I got good results with SP, but the signal on
some channels already had so little detail that I simply couldn't tell the difference
between SP and EP. In fairness, however, it was still better than VHS, especially when it
came to flesh tones and color saturation. EP was more prone to motion artifacts -- I
recorded an early-morning F1 race and saw "trails" coming off the cars'
telemetry masts. I get this to an even greater extent on my Philips DSR6000, so this
didn't strike me as much of a drawback. It's possible I was seduced by the
"Wow!" factor of recording my own DVDs, but I was extremely satisfied with the
E100HS' recording quality.
This satisfaction was further reinforced by my experiences
with the Panasonic's editing flexibility, which is the icing on the cake. No, wait, the
icing on the cake was being able to edit a disc so it just had the "good stuff,"
finalize it, slip it in my pocket, and carry it downstairs or down the street to show it
to a friend.
That's cool.
Life is very sweet, brother
And that, ultimately, is my assessment of the Panasonic
DMR-E100HS. It's a good DVD-V player, it's a ton of fun, and it is about as easy to use as
a sophisticated piece of high-tech gear could be.
It's expensive, but you can buy a similar unit with less
HDD capacity for a lot less -- or you can forego the HDD function completely and just buy
a recorder, which still offers all the VCR-like functions and records, at even
greater savings.
I guess my brother George is going to be in the market for
a DVD player at long last.
I know I am.
...Wes Phillips
wes@onhometheater.com
Panasonic DMR-E100HS Progressive-Scan DVD
Recorder/PVR with 120GB Hard Drive
Price: $1199 USD.
Warranty: One year parts and labor.
Panasonic Consumer Electronics
One Panasonic Way
Secaucus, NJ 07094
Phone: (800) 211-7262
Website: www.panasonic.com
|
