While you might want to start with a budget model if you're looking for your first DVD recorder, there are good reasons to explore the higher end of the price range. Up there, you'll find models that make it easier to do time-shift recording and that provide storage and editing options not found on starter units. For example, Panasonic's DMR-E95H is a deluxe DVD recorder if there ever was one. It has a built-in hard-disk recorder offering a huge storage capacity — 160 gigabytes (GB), or up to 284 hours in the lowest-quality mode — as well as an easy-to-use onscreen programming guide.
PDF: Playback Compatibilty
You can dub recordings from the hard drive to both erasable DVD-RAM and write-once DVD-R discs. You can also record directly to DVDs, but going that route means you aren't taking full advantage of the intimate hard-disk/DVD-recorder connection. In any case, you'll appreciate the Panasonic's TiVo-like features — available with both hard-drive and DVD-RAM recordings — like being able to pause a program you're recording, or backtrack and watch it from an earlier point, while the recording continues uninterrupted.
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Since the hard disk's spaciousness encourages time-shifting, you'll also appreciate the TV Guide OnScreen point-and-click programming system, which is as easy to use as TiVo's. But unlike TiVo, it doesn't require a phone connection or an hours-long setup period before you can use the recorder. The TV Guide system piggybacks its program information on broadcast or cable signals and only needs to be told what Zip code you're in and when you switch cable providers or change from cable to antenna signals, or vice versa. As a fallback, the recorder also has VCR Plus+, and you can always program recordings the old-fashioned way — by manually entering the date, channel, and start/stop times.
The DMR-E95H provides standard editing functions for removing commercials or rearranging segments from your hard-disk or DVD-RAM recordings. These include playlist editing, which can also be used to assemble rudimentary video productions from, say, DV camcorder footage recorded through its hidden front-panel i.Link (a.k.a. FireWire) input. To save your edited work, you can copy from hard disk to DVD at either high speed (from 3 x to 32 x depending on the original recording mode and the type of DVD) or normal (1 x ) speed — the latter gives you the option of dubbing at a lower bit rate than the original (trading off image quality for a longer DVD recording time). In high-speed dubbing, the deck copies the hard-disk data directly, without decoding and re-encoding the video or audio signals, preserving the recording's original quality.
The DMR-E95H has more going for it than just its hard-disk drive. You can use it to look at JPEG still pictures on CD-Rs, SD memory cards, or virtually any other type of memory card as long as you have an appropriate PC Card adapter, which goes into an opening next to the front-panel SD slot. The deck offers extensive control over slide-show presentations and lets you store stills from cards on the hard disk, but there's no way to transfer your stills to DVD for titles or credits.
The remote control is well laid out, with no annoying contrivances like buttons hidden behind doors. But it's also very plain-Jane, with no backlighting or glow-in-the-dark buttons, and the only other component it can control is a TV. Panasonic does provide an IR (infrared) emitter so the deck can control your cable box (G-Link on the panel).
I evaluated the DMR-E95H during the opening days of the 2004 Summer Olympics. Timer recording and IR control of an external cable box worked perfectly, which enabled me to juggle recordings of the several different NBC Olympic feeds on WNBC, MSNBC, CNBC , USA , Bravo, and Telemundo.
NBC's 1080i-format high-definition broadcasts from Athens gave the Panasonic's video circuitry a stiff workout. While the DVD recorder is only standard-definition, the visual quality and encoding difficulty of the 1080i programs were high enough to stress even its best recording mode — the high-bit-rate XP, which nominally provides 1 hour per DVD.
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| Panasonic's DMR-E95H displayed championship performance in recording NBC's HDTV Olympics coverage (shown, gold-medal gymnast Carly Patterson), though only in standard-definition. |
RECORDING PERFORMANCE NBC HD showed swimming and gymnastics during our evaluation period, and both sports provided nearly ideal material for pushing a DVD recorder's video encoding to its limits. In the longer-playing LP and EP modes, all the usual encoding degradations resulting from low-bit-rate recording were evident, and the loss in video quality was even more apparent compared with the original high-def signal.
The 6- or 8-hour EP mode gave a fuzzy picture — which isn't surprising since that mode cuts both vertical and horizontal resolution in half — as well as subtly jerky, stroboscopic renditions of the gymnasts' fluid motions. During swimming and diving events, parts of the image that moved at medium to high speeds — like the swimmers' arms — often showed distracting amounts of mosquito noise (disturbances around the edges of objects) and blocking (the breakup of the picture into mosaic-like squares), which often showed up on the splashing water. Moving up to the 4-hour LP mode restored smooth motion and full vertical resolution (horizontal resolution remained halved), and there were fewer visual glitches beyond some blocking.
Image quality in the 2-hour SP mode was outstanding. Encoding side effects disappeared, and the full DVD-quality horizontal resolution allowed the glitter in the female gymnasts' hair to scintillate clearly, though with something less than the single-pixel-per-sparkle sharpness of the HDTV original. I could recognize features in the distant faces of spectators, but these, too, lacked the original's I-saw-you-on-TV clarity.
The 1-hour XP mode didn't look appreciably better than SP on either gymnastics or swimming. The picture quality in these modes was inferior only to the original HDTV broadcast — or its bit-for-bit copy on the LG tuner's own hard-disk drive. Most of the visible degradation was owing to the basic resolution limits of the DVD format, which just isn't as sharp as HDTV. And the use of an interlaced S-video connection can be blamed for some jagged diagonals and limited color resolution, which caused the edges of highly saturated colors in team uniforms, national flags, and the swimming-pool lane dividers to look slightly fuzzy.
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If you can afford it, a DVD recorder with a hard-disk drive is always the way to go because you can use the drive's best modes to record everything and decide later what you want to immortalize on DVD. Before dubbing, you can use the Panasonic's editing features to eliminate commercials and otherwise tighten up the program for your “saver” discs. And when dubbing to DVD, you can trade off picture quality for playing time and use less expensive, easily found DVD-R discs.
BOTTOM LINE The DMR-E95H has all the functions you'd expect from a DVD recorder, including time-shift recording and the ability to make DVDs of priceless camcorder footage. Its TV Guide OnScreen programming system is about as easy to use as a TiVo recorder and far simpler (and less error prone) than manual or even VCR Plus+ programming. But no TiVo/DVD-recorder combination I've seen offers the Panasonic deck's extensive editing capabilities, which are essential for making DVDs suitable for repeat viewing. All in all, the Panasonic DMR-E95H justifies its premium price with a wide variety of useful features and medal-worthy video performance.
IN THE LAB
DVD-VIDEO PERFORMANCE
Maximum-white level error................... –2 IRE
Setup level................. +7.5/0 IRE (switchable)
Onscreen horizontal resolution........... 540 lines
Horizontal luminance response (re level at 1 MHz)
3/4/5 MHz....................... –1.8/–0.45/–0.45 dB
6/6.75 MHz.............................. –0.82/–1.1 dB
In-player letterboxing............................. good
The DMR-E95H performed well as a DVD player, with no significant faults even in progressive-scan playback. For best results when watching material originating as interlaced video, set the progressive-scan mode to Video. As a recorder, it provided the same excellent performance using either the hard disk or DVD-RAMs and DVD-Rs. As usual, the determining factor in image quality was the recording mode selected (see text). — D.R.