The Panasonic DVD recorder is easy to set up. It took about 5 minutes to get it up and running which is great for those people who have problems setting up electronic equipment. I brought this model of DVD recorder was because it allowed you to record from freeview, and watch another freeview channel, as I always had to watch the same channel that I was recording but now this is a thing of a past. I find basic operation is simple to use. But I would say that the menus could do with being more simplified. So if you are scared of computers this may not be the one for you.
I brought this DVD recorder to replace an old panasonic VCR. I found the transistion from panasonic DVD recorder from VCR very easy as all the programing is done the same. I do like the guide button. You press this button and you get a 5 day guide of all of what in on the 40 plus channels on freeview. You then can highlight the program you would like to record and press enter and this has set the recorders timer.
It also does have time slip so you can record and come in later and watch the TV program that you are recording and even pause live TV. Doing this does degrade the picture quality and have notice that sometimes the sound is a bit garbled.
I was upset at the picture quality, I was thinking that as I was now using DVD to record on that the quality of the picture would be great. But there are times when the picture goes out of focus. I did think that maybe this was due to poor signal on the channel but I have noticed that even when recording from cable the picture still doesn't stay in focus at times. I then tried to adjust the amount of space that is taken on the DVD to see if this improved but to my disapointment it wasn't really any better.
Finalising the DVD is a slow process and takes some time to work it. The manual is well writen but some of the features aren't really covered that well. Finalising is so that you can play DVD recorder from you panasonic recorder in another machine.
This uses all the formats of DVD types even RAM technology. The down side is that it doesn't support DiVx.
I feel that it is worth the money but would say that I would wait if you are in no rush to buy a DVD recorder as there are better and smaller ones coming on the market with hard drives that record several freeview channels at once.
Having said that I wouldn't go back to the old VCR.
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