Panasonic's latest DVD/HDD recorder is the £400 DMR-EH50, which has an 80GB HDD capable of storing up to 142hr of your favourite TV programmes (in its 8-hour EP recording mode).
The DMR-EH50 packs in some interesting new tricks. It will record or dub onto DVD-RW and (single-layer) DVD R media,as well as the DVD-Rs and DVD-RAMs of previous-generation Panasonics.You can also dub material from finalised discs (and,Philips users will be pleased to learn,DVD RWs) back to the hard disk for further editing and dubbing.Alas, there's no Pioneer-style full 'backup' - and the process is conducted in 'real-time'.
Most impressively of all,though, the long-play mode,which offers 4hr of recording per removable disc, now works at DVD's full resolution (in this case,704 x 576 pixels).
Old favourites like two-channel DVD-A playback and an SD-format memory-card reader are also present and correct. So too is the analogue tuner,although Panasonic will soon be introducing a version with a terrestrial-digital tuner and twice the HDD capacity.
Fashionably-slimline it may be,but the DMR-EH50's rather nondescript appearance hardly hints at its true potential.Front-panel controls are minimal and so the remote is essential for all but the most basic of operations.This handset,with its plastic-capped keys,is a new design. It has a smart-wheel for skipping through the various slowmotion/ search speeds and selecting precise frames during editing.
In the middle of the deck's front panel is the SD slot (still images, rather than MPEG4 video) and beneath that,a flap that hides composite/S-video and stereo audio inputs for camcorder dubbing,but no i-Link input for digital camcorders.
On the rear panel,you'll find a decent complement of connections. RGB Scart inputs and outputs compete for space with,among other things, a prog-scan capable component feed and an optical digital connection that will pump stereo and multi-channel (ie commercial movie) DVD soundtracks to your audio system.
Panasonic's DVD-recorder user interface has an enviable record so it's just as well that there are no obvious changes.The only criticism we can make is that the EH50 can be rather unresponsive on occasions.
Panasonic's auto set-up system is flawless and it's easy to access parameters like the AV settings (note,however,that component and RGB Scart outputs cannot be active simultaneously).
