Panasonic DMREH59GAK 250GB HDD Multi Region DVD Recorder (Black)

My apologies for the length and technicality of this review, but I had many questions before I purchased the unit and wanted to answer them for anyone who had similar questions. For background, I purchased the unit for use in the U.S. I bought it from an Amazon marketplace vendor, not from Amazon directly. It works just fine for my purposes, with standard U.S. 110v/60z power, a 60-inch (American-signal NTSC) HDTV for display, and a DirecTV satellite box as one of the main source inputs.-------------------------------------------To cut to the chase, you should NOT purchase this unit:(a) ... if you want to use the unit to play blu-ray DVDs. The unit plays ONLY standard DVDs.(b) ... if you plan to record over-the-air broadcast signals using an antenna in most of North and South America. The tuner tunes in to PAL signals only. North and South American broadcasters use NTSC.(c) ... if you plan to record unencoded TV programs from an analog cable source. These are very few and far between nowadays, as most cable providers have switched to digital signals that older "cable ready" televisions cannot interpret anyway. If your cable connects from the wall directly into the coax input of your TV, this unit will not record programs for you. However, if you have a cable or satellite tuner or converter box that that is between the source and your TV, this unit will record from your cable/satellite box just fine (using the box's composite outputs). That will let you archive favorite shows to DVD in standard definition.(d) ... if you want to record HDTV (720 or 1080), from any source, or if you want to burn blu-ray disks. The unit will only record in standard definition (480 resolution), and it will only burn to standard DVDs. However, it does "upconvert" when playing through the component or HDMI outputs to an HD TV. If, for instance, you have a hi-def camcorder for shooting home movies and want to put them on a blu-ray in high resolution, you'll need to edit and burn using a computer.(e) ... if you want to burn audio material to a CD. The unit will play audio CDs, but will not make them. You can burn audio material to a DVD, but not to a CD.--------------------------------------------You SHOULD consider this unit if:(a) ... you wish to add a hard drive recorder to your A/V system that will also play standard definition Region 1 (U.S. and Canada) commercial DVDs, with an "upconvert" to pseudo-HD if you use the HDMI output jack. Though the manual does not specify that it will play Region 1, my unit plays DVDs from my library just fine.(b) ... you are in the military or have an international job that requires you to switch back-and-forth between living in the U.S./Canada and Europe or Asia. The unit is compatible both both 110v/60hz power for the Americas and with 220v/50hz power used elsewhere. The unit comes with a European-style "round prong" plug, but the Amazon marketplace dealer included an adapter so it can be plugged into an American-style outlet using a "blade-style" plug.(c) ... you want to burn to standard definition DVDs with VERY flexible non-destructive editing options. The DVDs the unit produces are "region-free" and should play successfully on a wide variety of players.(d) ... you want to be able to play mini-DVDs recorded in your camcorder. The unit plays standard definition mini-DVDs recorded in 16:9 format by my Sony DCR-DVD305 camcorder. It plays them finalized or unfinalized, and will copy them directly from the DVD drive to the hard disk. It's very handy to be able to get home movies into the unit for editing without hooking up the camcorder to cables.(e) ... you want or need very flexible setup and play options -- 16:9, 4:3 pan/scan, and 4:3 letterbox display options, PAL or NTSC signal ouput, and a variety of output jacks (HDMI, component, and SCART jacks for HD output plus composite outputs for standard definition). However, due to American legalities, the unit does NOT have HD inputs. It has only component and DV inputs.----------------------------------------------------I purchased the unit for reasons C, D, and E. I got into editing and DVD recording several years ago. I had many "home movies" on VHS going back decades that I digitized to DVD using a 2004 Pioneer DVR that finally bit the dust but is no longer made. I needed a replacement, and the choice came down between this one and a Magnavox as the only two DVR/DVD recorders I could find. Though the Magnavox comes in three capacities (250 GB, 500 GB, and 1 TB), has an NTSC tuner, and is a little less expensive, I chose this one. I downloaded and studied the owner's manuals, and found that this one has the non-destructive editing I wanted while the Magnavox does not.To clarify, let's say you recorded the final episode of your favorite TV show, and wanted to put it on DVD without the commercials. With the Magnavox, you can delete the commercials and burn the program to the DVD without them. However, once deleted, the deleted sections are gone forever - hence "destructive editing." You can do the same thing with this unit if you wish - you can edit directly on the hard drive before copying the program to DVD, and the commercials are gone forever from the hard drive.However, with this Panasonic unit, you can also do "non-destructive" editing. You can set up a "play list," edit out the commercials, and copy the edited playlist to your DVD. However, the original program remains intact on the hard drive. Editing the playlist doesn't erase the commercials; it simply tells the unit not to play them when it comes to them. The resulting DVD looks the same. You can also rearrange the order of scenes on the playlist - if your home movie had scenes 1, 2, 3, and 4 that you shot in chronological order, but you want to put the scene of your children riding the merry-go-round before the scene of your children in the motel swimming pool, you can reorder the scenes 2, 3, 1, 4 very easily before burning the DVD.Consider the following scenario - you're the designated family videographer (as I often am) at a major family reunion, and you shoot 3 hours of video with your camcorder. Many family members want some of the video, but no one wants it all.You must transfer material from your source (in this case, your video camera) to the Panasonic's hard drive in real time, so it takes 3 hours to get it onto the hard drive and ready for editing. Then, you set up a playlist, and for your brother edit out all of the "non-brother" scenes and burn him a DVD with the 20 minutes of his family. You do the same thing for your aunt, and for your sisters, and for your cousins, and for your parents, and so on. Each one gets a newly edited playlist from the original source.However, it's not so easy with destructive editing. With the Magnavox, you'd spend three hours playing the material from the source into the DVR. Then you'd edit out all of the "non-brother" material and burn him a DVD. The deleted material is gone forever. For the next family member, you'd have to re-record the 3 hours of the reunion, then edit out all of the "non-sister" scenes and burn a DVD for her. Then, re-record the original reunion footage and do the same for every family member who wanted a portion of the reunion. You might spend 30 hours over the course of a week simply re-recording the reunion over and over again to edit a DVD for each of 10 family members. I've been there and done that, and non-destructive editing is much easier! For instance, suppose you like the Super Bowl and your spouse likes the commercials - so by recording the Super Bowl just once you can do one edit getting rid of the commercials and keeping the game, then just start a new playlist that edits out the game and keeps only the commercials. Much more flexibility. And - if you set the machine up the right way, you can do a high-speed copy from hard drive to a DVD. Burning and finalizing a DVD with two hours of material takes less than 15 minutes once the editing is done.(One picky note about editing and copy speeds: copying edited material from directly from the hard drive or from an edited playlist is "frame-precise" in both normal-speed copying -- your edits begin and end on the exact frame you choose, but you lose the chapter marks. However, when copying DVD in high-speed mode, the chapter marks are preserved but the edit points may move by a few frames. This is normally not a problem, since most source material has a short "black space" between program and commercials, and you can easily provide the same black space between scenes with your home movies. However, if you put edit points in source material that changes scenes abruptly, you may find a stray frame or two on either side of the edit point on your finished DVD if you copy in high-speed mode. Copying in normal speed keeps the precision, but you need to remember that you lost the chapter divisions.)Once your editing is done, you simply put a descriptive name with each segment ("title"), and choose a top menu style. All top menus have the same layout with 8 titles and thumbnail scenes (two columns of four); the only difference is in background color. Then burn and finalize the DVD. If you use +R DVDs, it will play on most recent machines; -R DVDs should play on almost all if finalized. I use -Rs, and they have played successfully on every DVD and blu-ray player I've tried them on.So, apologies again for the length of the review. I'm hopeful it may help you decide whether or not this is the machine for you. It does exactly what I wanted it to do, and does it very well. Some of the functions (such as adding names to titles) are a little tedious, but very easy. The limitations are no bother, since I didn't buy the machine to do any of those functions.The biggest issue I have is with the manual - it's very cryptic and somewhat disorganized, and every set of instructions refers you to several other pages. The info is there, but even when I knew what I wanted to do and knew the unit would do it, it took some hunting to found out how. The index and contents leave out some key terms and processes. For instance, "one-touch specified time recording" is there, but VERY hard to find (I finally found that you have to do it from the main panel on the unit, not from the remote. Took a lot of searching, since the concept is in neither the table of contents nor the index).Please let me know of questions - I would be happy to respond.

It worked great for 3 weeks then the machine decided that it would not accept any DVD disc. I tried 4 or 5 different brands and it would not accept any of them. The Hard Drive continues to work well and you can load video. But you cannot burn a DVD to save your life.Big Disappointment.Pender

Our old DVD recorder died and my wife wanted to get another one to replace it. I thought we should go for one of the HDD units as long as we were going to spend the money.Some things about the interface could be better -- hence 4 stars. It's annoying that it always starts up with its menu screen. The procedure for deleting portions of a video is quite clunky. On our old Pioneer unit adding chapters splits and deleting chapters could be done all from the same interface. On this one, to delete portions of the video you have to go to "delete partial", and that requires you to specify both a start and end time, which is annoying since one of the most common things to do is trim the beginning of the video off. When you go to the "delete partial" screen it starts playing immediately (why would you want it to play if you're trying to delete things?) So if you want to delete the first bit you have to press pause, skip back, then press "ok" to select that as the start. They could have just automatically selected the beginning of the video as the default start. But no. Typical idiot design decision that you seem to get out of every electronics manufacturer besides Apple. It's like they hire interns to design the on-screen interface.But the box works. And I'm very happy we paid the extra money to get the HDD. I never really used our old box to do recording, because it's quite a mental drain to make sure you have the right DVD-RW inserted at the right time so that your recording works. But with the HDD, I've already added a few weekly recordings, and they just work -- no hassles!We use this with DVDs from Japan and the US. I also tried a PAL DVD of Mary Poppins I have that's from France. It played fine too. All that is using the HDMI output. That's the only output I've used.Having just a single composite input on the back is also a bit disappointing, but not the end of the world. There is a composite input on the front to plug something extra into.Oh, and I was so delighted to find that it works with our Toshiba flat-screen TV through some HDMI AV.link thing (see [...]). So that when we turn on the Panasonic and do something like pressing the main menu button, it automatically switches our TV to the right input.

This is probably a good piece of equipment; but, unfortunately, I couldn't use it. I bought it under the impression it was one of the units that had been altered with a switchable power supply to make them usable in the US. It was not - and I saw nothing in Amazon's product discription to indicate that. Amazon did designate the unit as PAL capable - possibly to indicate it WAS for foreign use only. Since I have a TV that accepts PAL, and another player that plays it, I saw no reason not to purchase the unit. A "Not for use in USA" banner would have saved me some aggravation. Amazon did handle the return with no problems or questions.