Panasonic DMREH50 review

Features
Considering the price of the EH50, you might be disappointed with what's missing from the recorder. Where's the Freeview receiver? Where's the i.Link input? Isn't that 80GB hard drive rather small by today's standards?

While the lack of Freeview and i.Link can be worked around -- Freeview boxes are as cheap as £30 and most camcorders have standard composite/S-video outputs -- the 80GB hard drive translates into quite a restriction. At the highest recording quality level, it means you can store about 20-25 hours of programmes, with 40 hours at medium quality, and up to 142 hours at the lowest quality.

While we would strongly discourage you from using anything other than the top two quality settings (on the hard drive at least -- you can always downgrade when recording to DVD), Panasonic has implemented a new system for the LP mode, which now records at a 500-line resolution. This means the loss of quality is less noticeable, whereas previously DVD LP was just as big a step down as its VHS equivalent. There's also a Flexible Recording setting, which will work out the length of your recording and the available disc space and then choose a recording quality level to meet both demands.

The EH50 can't be faulted on recording compatibility, because it supports every single format except DVD+RW. Panasonic has made a success of its DVD-RAM format, which is much more robust than either DVD-R or +R. RAM discs come in a caddy that protects them from scratches, and if you look at the discs inside, they have lots of little grooves on the writeable side. The format is rewritable, and Panasonic's player can record to a disc while simultaneously reading, otherwise known as 'timeshifting'. If you get home early and that episode of EastEnders is still being recorded, you can go back to the beginning and start watching immediately. You can also use this to fast-forward through the adverts if you start watching 15 minutes into an hour-long programme. A nice extra, but we hope (or rather, expect) you'll be using the hard drive in the first place.

Panasonic's expertise has also afforded the EH50 some extra features. The machine fires up in super-quick time and can be recording in just over a second. Panasonic's internal memory is constantly buffering the current programme, so you don't miss a thing while the disc is spinning into action. The machine will also play DVD-Audio discs, although the more eagle-eyed of you out there will notice that the back panel doesn't have multi-channel audio outputs, so you'll have to stick to the stereo outputs if you want this high-resolution audio playback.

Performance
The EH50 is a solid DVD player in its own right if you choose component or RGB Scart output. The picture is vibrant, with vivid colours and no motion judder. As a DVD player, it offers a mid-range level of performance, but as more and more budget players offer HDMI or DVI outputs, it's more difficult to judge on these terms. Paired with a Panasonic TX26LXD50 LCD TV, the progressive-scan video outputs provided a faultless picture, and the stereo sound was solid too.

If you stick to the top two recording tiers, recording quality is also very good. At the XP level, recordings are completely indistinguishable from the original broadcast, but at this level you can only fit 1 hour per disc. Certainly, LP mode results in much less of an image quality loss than usual, and at 4 hours per disc, it's a very economical way of backing up television series to a few discs.

Edited by Mary Lojkine
Additional editing by Nick Hide