Panasonic DMR-E95HS Progressive-Scan DVD Recorder with 160 GB Hard Drive
By: Panasonic Average Rating: 2.5 Total Reviews: 29
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 On: 2007-12-29
I purchased one of the first panasonic dvr with the lifetime membership. When the HD went out and replaced, it was a expensive repair. The second one quit. My son replaced the HD and opening the unit found the HD encased with foam. Overheating????? yes! Programing soon became a problem. Panasonic support is terrible. I would never buy a panasonic product again.
Had a comcast dvr, not a good product. Called Comcast regarding using TiVo with the cards that need to be installed and they said I had to upgrade my services. Called TIVO, you do not need to upgrade and they will do a 3way call with comcast when you set up your unit for the cards. MJS
On: 2007-04-26
This thing sucks. there is little else to say other than there is a class action lawsuit somewhere here. PANASONIC this is FRAUD!!!!! Or outright robbery. No support. Does NOT work. I say anyone who has had success with this unit is probably lying or a plant from panasonic. Errors all the time and never loads the TV Guide BS. Just a giant waste of money!!! If there were an option for no stars I would have used that. Amazon should not even be selling this. It is not fair to loyal customers.
On: 2007-03-12
If the description here is correct, this set is completely crippled compared to other Panazonic models. It is said it will only read DVD -R written on other Panasonic recorders (!!!) and that it can only write to and read DVD -R. Panasonic used to make recorders limited to writing DVD -R, but since then has produced sets that can write to DVD -R DVD + R and DVD -RW. Why the jump backwards? Ive never heard of any model that can only read DVD -R produced by recorders only of the same brand. This is absurd!
The price listed is also about double wha it should be.
Add all this to the other complaints and its avoid at all costs.
I incidentally own a Panasonic with a 80 GB hard disk and have recorded many hundreds of hours to the HD and made hundreds of DVDs without a problem.
Anyway, I wouldnt buy ANY DVD recorder now unless it has an ATSC tuner included. Otherwise it becomes obsolete in two years when analogue TV is supposed to disappear.
Manufacturers, including Panasonic, are making sets with the digital tuners for the European market. Why not in the USA?
On: 2006-11-24
I love the concept of this product but the Panasonic implemetation is WEAK! I originally purchased a DMR-E80 and it worked very well long enough to get past the one year warrenty then failed. I was told that the logic card needed to be replaced for $300 parts plus labor. A little shopping around on the net abnd I found the DME-E95H (twice the disk space) could be had for $360 from Beach Camera.
The E95 didnt make it out of warrenty before failing. The unit was mailed to a service center and it was repaired. I have had the unit for about two months since the repair and it has started to exhibit the same symptoms as before.
Symptom: at power-up the unit displays "Please Wait" for about 15 seconds and then displays "self Check" for about 30 seconds. The unit then appears to function normally for about 60 seconds and then fails to respond to commands from the remote. Shortly afterwards the unit shuts itself off (displayes "bye"). The disk or cable output from the unit continues for a short period (even though the unit appears to be shutdown) and then stops.
Fortunately, Panasonic offered me an extended warrenty (what were they thinking?) that I took advantage of. I will continue to return this unit to the panasonic service center as my way of extracting revenge.
I strongly recommend that you avoid Panasonic DVR products. My experience with two models has been extremely disappointing.
 On: 2006-08-18
I have owned this model since March 2005. Almost all of the time the TV Guide hasnt worked (I have heard this might be a ploy by my cable company to push people to their DVDRs). At any rate I gave up on this feature.
For the first year the unit had a tendency to go to "SELF TEST" whenever I changed disks, either DVD-R or DVD-RAM. After "SELF TEST" it almost always burned a good disk. This would have been OK excepte for wasting 15-30 minutes every time this happened. I stuck to major brand disks. Panasonic will tell you to use their disks but they are not easy to find in stores and dont come in large muffins so they tend to be expensive.
Surprisingly, at the 1-year point the unit started working perfectly. I went from March 2006 to August without a "SELF TEST". Today it refused to recognise the same disks it had been burning for weeks. So I will have to take it in on the extended warranty.
Panasonic customer service is terrible. Dont waste your time phoning. You will be on hold forever. About a year ago I wrote Panasonic and received a call eventually (still in the warranty period). They wont acknowledge that there is a systematic problem with this unit. They try to blame it on the disks. They also would not make any adjustment other than offer to sell me another unit at a discount.
I like most things about the user interface. It allows very precise editing. When it works it produces great disks. The hard disk holds a lot.
Forget about the lousy TV Guide feature!
 On: 2006-04-03
It is terrifying reading the reviews on here, but there are no problems with mine (other than the TV guide silliness).
Record shows to the HD, then you can edit out commercials etc and burn to DVD-R, which you can finalize to play on other DVD players. We have had ours for 9 months. We have filled the hard drive a few times (left it recording by mistake), divided and shortened scores of recordings, burned about 10 DVD-Rs, taken power hits, no problems.
The U99 bugs seems to be fixed and there are websites out there to help fix you box if you need to.
 On: 2006-01-30
Recordings on DVD seemed like a smart step forward from my trusty but tired JVC Editing deck, which still works fine after some 5 years of daily use. Panasonic E95H looked great with plenty space on the hard disc and loads of features. I studied user reviews(mostly horror stories users were experiencing)but I took a chance when venders were selling for less than half price. (Paid $399. delivered, from J&R.) WOW! WHAT A MACHINE! All that I try works great. I have copied about 50 tapes to DVD-R, even copied a few high rated rental movies, put three TV movie broadway shows on a single DVD-R disc (over 6 hours!), about 100 TV great movies, even FM Stereo broadcasts. No problems ever. I pray that I stay lucky. Hours of back and forth with the manual, but I had the same problem when I first got my editing VCR. I have not tried all the features available on this machine, but everyting I tried so far works fine (with the help of the not so great manual which infernally bounces one from page to page, inasmuch as this piece has tremendous brains and capability.) A close lightening hit "crashed" it once but it just rebooted and continued what it was doing without losing anything in memory or the hard disc. In over half a century of buying high end gear, this has been the best deal & the most fun and satisfying. Great pictures & decent digital sound. WOW! WHAT A MACHINE!
On: 2005-12-02
Well I have had this unit now for almost a year and I love it! I did have some problems with the TV guide for a while but it has been working great lately. The HDD stores many hours of programs and burns them onto DVD -R and DVD- RAM discs that turn out great. I burn a lot of material for my classes to show in school. Yes you do have to study the manual for a while to learn all the features but once you get it its pretty easy. Lets face it, any new device these days take a while to figure out. So far I have not had any of the problems faced by other reviewers, so Ill keep my fingers crossed and keep enjoying this unit.
On: 2005-11-30
Ive had my DMR-E95H since March and it continues to have problems. I have spent hours on the phone with Panasonics tech support (what a waste of time that is), and even had to send the unit in for repair. I was getting the dreaded U99 error. Well, I got the unit back about two weeks ago and now I get absolutely no TV guide listings and every hour or so while I am watching something, the unit just shuts itself off. Panasonic really needs to rethink its engineering of this product and should apologize to all the folks that already wasted good money on this piece of crap. Dont buy this one, look at the other manufacturers.
On: 2005-11-29
The panasonic dmr-e95h is useless.So is the tech support from Panasonic.
I will NEVER buy ANY panasonic product again.
Tech cannot supply answers.
To any questions.
At all.
They are at best barely fuctioning dopes without the slightest interest in helping.
This is after waiting 45 minutes.
The firmware updates do not work.
The item does not work as described.
It has more bugs than a swamp in Floridia.
It is more sensitive than a movie stars ego.
There should be a website devoted to how useless all of these panasonic dvd recorders.
What a waste of money WATCH OUT!!!!!
On: 2005-11-24
I have used this machine for about half year. It works great except a couple of time I have to reset the machine because the electricity was out. I just hook it up with Comcast cable (not cable box). If you decide to buy this machine, please make sure to read the instruction several times before you start to set it up with you TV. I agree that the manual is not well written, however once you set it up correctly, it works very well.
On: 2005-10-23
I bought this based on the glowing review in "Sound and Vision."
The machine is supposed to work with your cable converter box. I have never been able to get it to work with my Scientific Atlanta converter box. Technical support has given me contradictory explanations, with some telling me that it does not work with my box, and another telling me that it is supposed to.
The machine is supposed to set its clock by a PBS station. Because I cannot set it up to work with the converter box, this does not work. Unfortunately the clock runs slow, and loses a minute a week. You must re-set the clock manually.
If you attempt to record anything on the hard drive onto a defective DVD, the entire unit shuts down, and you have to go through set up again. According to their technical support, there are a lot of bad disks out there. They say not to purchase those on spindles. They have no explanation for why a bad disk causes the machine to shut down and require going through the set up procedure.
I have made numerous calls to technical support. Everytime I have called I get a recording that they are experiencing unusually heavy call volume, and a recommendation to call back at a later time. Wait times of about an hour are typical.
In frustration, I sent them an email, asking them to call me at work and explain why I should not post my poor experiences with the product on Amazon. They sent me a reply telling me that I had to call them.
Given the large number of people on this site with similar experiences, I understand why they were not worried.
On: 2005-10-13
Ive had my unit since february, and have recorded a lot of tv with it. In the last month I have been getting the U99 errors very frequently. This happens when the unit is downloading tvguide information, and the error is very stupid - it prevents the unit from doing anything (recording a scheduled program), so when this error occurs, e95 becomes a $750 paper weight.
This occurs with ALL panasonic units with TVGUIDE. AVOID PANASONIC DVRS!!!!!!!
On: 2005-10-03
Yes, this is a big problem with these units. (...) I hope that somewhere they are able to fix this, otherwise, this machine really is junk. I get U99 twice a day approximately when TV Guide downloads the programming. I bought this from Buy.Com about 60 days ago. It worked great until the last couple of weeks.
On: 2005-09-03
I bought this DVR with the full knowledge of all the problems people have had with it. Just do a google search on Panasonic U99 (there are websites dedicated to the E85 and E95 problems). But I thought enough time had passed and Panasonic had fixed all those problems, so it couldnt still be an issue. WRONG.
Ive had the box 6 weeks. In 6 weeks Ive only had one successful programmed recording. Ive had to reformat the hard drive about every week (not on purpose). Ive upgraded the firmware (they do have good instructions on how to do this on Panasonics website), done hard resets (hold down the Channel Up and Down keys simultaneouly till it shuts down), unplugged it, etc. BTW, the production date is 05/26/2004, so they may have fixed the problem with newer models. One of the many websites I mentioned will tell you how to view your production date and firmware version.
Of course, the 3rd party seller (through Amazon) has a 30-day return policy, and its too late to return it. I called Panasonic, and they do have a 1 year warranty. They have referred me to one of their service providers to fix it. But well see how long it takes me to get a new or different model.
I want to love this DVR. The TV Guide feature works perfectly (although it is a little bit of a pain to change the channel sorting). The recording and playback functions are easy to use, and overall I would be extremely happy with the product. Except for the morning after, when Im ready to watch my recorded shows, and it says "An error has occurred". Then when you hit enter, it shuts down and when you turn it back on it wants to Format your drive.
UPDATE: The service center performed a firmware upgrade too, so I was skeptical when I brought it home again. But its been working almost flawlessly. Just this week (after about 6 weeks of no problems) I got a U99 - actually my first. And it still had all my recordings on the hard drive. After just powering it off and on, it seems to be working ok. I record regular shows every week, and burn off to DVD once in awhile, and I cant really complain anymore.
On: 2005-07-18
Ive only had mine for a month now. I wanted to wait 2-3 more months before I submitted my review but I felt earlier reviewer, particularly Kathym, werent fair. First she says if you manually record something and want to change the time or record speed you cant do it. She is right about not being able to change the time, you would actually have to start over (which is about a 10 second process). But you can set it to start up to 99 minute early and stop 99 minutes late (a must for sports incase of overtime). And you can definately change the record speed. You just have to go the the schedule tab of the TV guide menu and select which scheduled recording you want to edit, which I dont think Kathym knew. She also complained about how she has to hit the down arrow each time she wants to go down the list as opposed to just scrolling through the list. Im sure she didnt realize that the channel up/down pages through the lists. I timed myself and got to the end of the "ms" in about 7 seconds. I know there has been a problem with back to back recording, but I believe there has been a firmware fix for that. I havent had any trouble with that, maybe my unit already had the update (purchased open boxed from Frys). One thing that Kathym mentioned that drives me nuts is when going through shows currently showing you cant get the thumbnail screenshot to stay on one channel. Thats the one thing I would change on the unit if I could. Stability on this unit seems to be hit or miss. Either people have major trouble or have no trouble at all. Ive havent had any trouble with that aspect on my machine. One last thing Id like to mention is when I hook it up with component cables colors are a lot more vibrant the if I just plugged the cable into the TV directly. I highly recommend this machine to everyone, unless I start getting U99 errors. If I do Ill update this review.
On: 2005-07-16
This is the first review of a product I have ever written but felt I needed to warn others. DONT BUY THESE THINGS....THEY ARE JUNK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
My unit has to be unplugged at least once a week for a reset due to a lockup. It wont even eject the disk at times because it is locked up (especially since the automatic firmware upgrade was made). I have spoken to Panasonic about the issue and as others have stated, they know nothing about these problems. They suggested I hold down the channel up and down buttons simultaneously to perform resets. That doesnt work and why should I have to perform "resets" in the first place. I literally have to unplug this piece of junk and let it reset. If anyone out there is a lawyer who deals with class actions, I would be willing to sign up. Anyone else??????????
If you want to buy a quality DVD recorder look to Pionner and not Panasonic.
On: 2005-07-06
I bought this recorder from Buy.com and it worked for about 60 days. Then the U99 code started and the unit became worthless. I wanted it replaced not repaired. Now it is in the repair shop for a couple of months. I will never buy Panasonic again. What a piece of junk!
On: 2005-06-05
Before you even think one second about buying a Panasonic DVD Recorder, just type "Panasonic U99 error" into your favorite search engine and you will find hundreds of complaints about software errors with Panasonic DVD Recorders. They tried to send a firmware "upgrade" through the cable signal and it ended up locking up machines and making them inoperable. When you call Panasonic and sit on hold for two hours, the person who finally answers acts as if theyve never heard of the problem and they give you totally useless information. I can only hope my credit card company will honor an extended warranty, otherwise I have a $500 paperweight. AWFUL!!!!!
 On: 2005-06-04
I could NOT get this device to record either to HDD or DVD-RAM after two calls to Panasonic. I had to send it back for a refund as Buy.com was out of stock. I am looking for another one though, and want to give it another chance. I did get the SD card slot to work, and was able to view digital pics from my camera. The TV guide function did work well. I like the bigger hard drive and the card input slots that this model has over the E85 model.
On: 2005-05-09
I purchased my DMR-E95HS online and received a defective unit (apparently a very common hard drive problem). My first mistake was not returning the unit and, as requested by Panasonic, delivering it to one of their authorized service retailers. Its been several weeks and the service center is still showing the parts as on backorder. Panasonics customer support center has not been helpful in the slightest. If you have an issue make sure you call customer support early in their workday, because I had two instances where they had stopped answering their phones before their listed closing hours. Now Im stuck waiting for a unit that will take who-knows-how-long to get the parts, and, given the experiences of others I am unlikely to get a unit that works properly.
I highly recommend avoiding this unit and the Panasonic brand.
On: 2005-04-30
As I am writing this, my DMR-E95H is in continual reboot mode after I tried to burn a DVD and it apparently does not like the media. Panasonics customer support is non-existent. They ignore emails and the toll free support number is always busy. After reading several different forums I find that I am not the only one extremely disappointed with Panasonic. Several others have unpacked their brand new unit only to find it DOA. Those who have tried to take their unit to a service center have horror stories of waiting weeks for a fix only to get it home and find that it still has problems.
When the unit is working it is slow, the menus are badly organized, the functions are awful. Sometimes one must press return to leave a function, other times stop is required. The program menu is a complete disaster and makes the user develop blisters to press enough keys to page through selections. This unit is simply the most horrendous piece of consumer electronics I have ever purchased.
Actually, considering all the problems and lack of support, I am considering reporting Panasonic to the Texas Attorney General and Better Business Bereau. Maybe TechTV. Heck, anyone! This is the most ripped-off I have felt in years. I paid enough for a top of the line product and am stuck with a total lemon.
On: 2005-04-27
I have an older version, DMR-E80H, 80gig, with the old navigator (pre-TV guide), which I love.
I bought the DMR-E95H, 160 gig, tvguide navigator, mainly because I wanted more disk space. I was going to sell my older one. Unfortunately, this is so unreliable that I have kept my old one to use, and Im stuck with this very expensive lemon. I wouldnt feel right trying to sell this to someone else.
There is a lot of good ideas and potential here, but most of it doesnt work reliably, and what does is poorly done. Many nice features in the original navigator are gone.
What do I miss about the original navigator? I works like a VCR with some cool features. You program in a show (date, time, speed, repeat, etc), you can also add a title so you always know what you recorded. You can also set it for `renew which means it records over the old space each day, good for things like the news, it wont fill up the disk and you dont have delete things to make space. You can go in and edit any of this, say a show is on a different time one week, just go change the time, and then change it back. And if one show overlapped another, you could select the one with priority, but the other would record the rest of the alotted time.
On the new navigator, you can manually set it to record instead of using the tv guide functionality, but you cant edit after the fact. If you make a mistake, you have to start over, if the time changes, you have to delete it, set a new record program with all the info, and then do it again to put it back to the normal time after. If you just want to change the record speed, you have to redo everything. If you want it start late, because the ABC shows are all running late these days, you cant edit it, you have to start over.There is no longer a renew feature. And if the first show overlapps with the second, you only get the first and nothing of the second.
Why do I use the timer record instead of tvguide, because its a good idea but a useless unreliable piece of junk. The booklet tells you that you cant start a show the same time another show is ending, ie if a show ends at 9Pm and another starts at 9PM, the second wont record. On occasion it does, usually it doesnt, no rhyme or reason. So I set everything to end one minute early, requiring the timer setting.
Now, if you forget to turn the recorder off at night, or youre up late watching it, it doesnt pull down the programing and when you record something you get no title. But you cant just set the title you want when you set up the recording like on the old navigator. But the tvguide system doesnt even have all the main channels... its missing some of the HBOs, SHOtimes, Starz, etc.
The tvguide interface is crap. I have hundreds of channels, and if I were to use that to see what was on it would take all day. You cant page through the channels, you cant hold the down button and just cruise through the channels. No! You have to repeatedly hit the down or up button to go through the guide. Talk about carpal tunnel syndrome. And to make matters worse, each time you go to a new channel it changes the station being viewed and freezes up while doing so, making the whole process take longer and making it impossible to view one show while looking to see what else is on. Sometimes if you hit the buttons real fast you can go over 4-5 channels before it happens, but it still happens. They should talk to Comcast about how to do an online shedule viewer. Even their worst versions where better than this. There is no search function. You can go to the alphabetical sort screen, but if you want something at the end of the Ms, you have to go through it one item at a time, over and over and over.
All that would be bearable if the system was reliable, it is not. My old system has only crashed a couple of times in 2 years, and went into "self check" as soon as it came on. This new system (less than a year old) crashes at least once a week, and I have to force it into "self check" to repair itself, usually twice, and then turn it off and on again, in order to get it to work right for awhile. It freezes for no apparent reason, not recording but on. You cant change the channel, cause it thinks its recording, but its not, and its on the wrong channel anyways. They only way out is to go through the process of holding the on (on the recorder) down for at least 20 seconds so it shuts off. Then turn it on so it starts system check fixing what ever is wrong, again. I went away for a week, and came back to find it had frozen on the second show it was to record and had done nothing after that.
I bought this for more disk space, and Ive discovered it acts the most unrealiable if I use more than 100gig, which is a little more than half the disk. It also acts up more if I record and watch and delete a lot of shows, the reason youd have it to begin with. It also tends to crash/freeze more often if I leave a disk in the dvd tray. For a couple of months I could reliably make it crash by putting a ram disk in the system, and then it did it only every other time, but it looks like its moving into every time again.
I wrote to Panasonic, who said to take it to an authorized repair dealer, but there are none around here. I bought it through Amazon, but through one of their third parties who doesnt take returns. So it looks like Im stuck with this crap.
I regret having recommended Panasonics to so many people I know, but that was the old style of course. To say Im dissapointed in the system is to say the least. To say Im disgusted that panasonic wont replace it or refund, is really disgusting.
On: 2005-04-04
I had the unit for one month. All of a sudden, it would not play or record any disks. I had to take it to the only repair shop Panasonic authorized "in my area" 35 miles away. They had it for 3 1/2 months. I spent numerous hours calling Panasonic also, most of which was spent on "HOLD" (your current wait time is 90 minutes....). They will tell you it can only play Panasonic brand disks. Now that I have had it just over a year (and just past warranty) it will not play most of my home-recorded disks, even the panasonic brand ones, and it will not record from a disk to the hard drive. The programming function is tedious and time consuming. Instructions on how to set up with extensive other media are non-existent. In this day and age, everyone has VCR, DVD, TV, cable/satellite box, etc. and no one wants to tell you how to hook them all together! On the phone I was told "you just cant do that". I am very disappointed in the product, their phone "help" line, and their repair service. I will never buy another Panasonic product.
On: 2005-04-01
Based on other reviews here, we decided to hook up the machine directly to cable and skip the cable box, sacrificing our digital channel lineup for now since we hardly watch any of those channels.
On our first attempt to download listings by hooking up the machine and leaving it off overnight, we received 7 sets of listings from our zip code, when in fact there are 9 sets if one consults www.tvguide.com. Naturally, our lineup is one of the missing two. Panasonics tech support says they would put in a "template request" for our lineup with TV Guide and get back to us within 2 business days. Still waiting, 4 days later. Called today and got a very rude support person who said "keep waiting."
Even worse, when I performed the laborious process of setting up all the channels myself, the next time we left the machine off to download new information, it WIPED OUT all the work I had done and put it back to the "select one of these 7 lineups or no match page." The first tech support person I talked to said, "Yes, weve heard reports that this happens sometimes." Theres no solution for the bug and no firmware fix. This may be a problem ONLY WHEN you cannot select a channel lineup and have to pick "No match." I dont know.
I also found online a suggestion to reset the TV Guide settings and try again "from scratch" by holding down the up and down channel keys on the front of the machine (not the remote) to wipe out the TV Guide information. DONT DO THIS!!! Now, when I turn the machine on each morning, instead of giving me even the 7 channel lineups I saw before, it says something like, "Attempt to download listings failed. Please make sure you have the cables connected properly." This, despite the fact that nothing has changed about how the machine is hooked up. Todays tech support person said, "Maybe this is a TV Guide problem too" and would not offer any further assistance. I think there is something wrong with the machine in this regard.
One other solution offered was to "try another zip code" -- wont work for us because we live way out in the country and our cable provider is local; no other provider in a neighboring community is going to have this same lineup. And the last solution, which we will try this weekend, is to hook up the machine WITH the cable box. The tech said that sometimes the machine can find the listings on the cable box itself instead of downloading them directly from TV Guide. This sounds iffy to me because of all the people who have said the machine tries to download even with a cable box in the mix, but well give it a shot.
Recording works great, quality is great, and transferring taped content onto the hard drive and editing same is very easy. My overall review: If you HAVE to have a working TV Guide, buy a Tivo or a Replay. If you can use the DVR without the TV Guide as a glorified VCR, then this machine is okay.
I havent decided whether or not to keep mine. If the IR blaster works to control the cable box, and we can at least use the cable boxs version of TV Guide, I might keep it. Manually specifying what we want to record is no different than what we were doing with the VCR, and we get the advantages of the hard drive storage and the ability to transfer and edit from our videotapes.
Overall Im disapointed though. Panasonic ought not to be selling something that doesnt really work, and without the TV Guide feature this thing really isnt worth what I paid for it.
UPDATE:
We tried hooking up the machine with the cable box. It worked, and the IR blaster of the DVR does control the cable box -- this is essential, otherwise we would not be able to program the DVR to record a certain channel on a certain date and time. However, the DVRs TV guide still does not work, so theres no such thing as "one touch recording" with this machine (at least for us). It still presents the same 7 listings every morning and still wipes out any channel customization that we had done the previous day. Panasonics tech support has never called back. I suspect that if we COULD pick a lineup from the list, the TV Guide would work well. We succeeded in burning and finalizing a DVD that played fine in a Playstation DVD player, so that part of the functionality works as advertised.
On: 2005-03-31
Based on other reviews here, we decided to hook up the machine directly to cable and skip the cable box, sacrificing our digital channel lineup for now since we hardly watch any of those channels.
On our first attempt to download listings by hooking up the machine and leaving it off overnight, we received 7 sets of listings from our zip code, when in fact there are 9 sets if one consults www.tvguide.com. Naturally, our lineup is one of the missing two. Panasonics tech support says they would put in a "template request" for our lineup with TV Guide and get back to us within 2 business days. Still waiting, 4 days later. Called today and got a very rude support person who said "keep waiting."
Even worse, when I performed the laborious process of setting up all the channels myself, the next time we left the machine off to download new information, it WIPED OUT all the work I had done and put it back to the "select one of these 7 lineups or no match page." The first tech support person I talked to said, "Yes, weve heard reports that this happens sometimes." Theres no solution for the bug and no firmware fix. This may be a problem ONLY WHEN you cannot select a channel lineup and have to pick "No match." I dont know.
I also found online a suggestion to reset the TV Guide settings and try again "from scratch" by holding down the up and down channel keys on the front of the machine (not the remote) to wipe out the TV Guide information. DONT DO THIS!!! Now, when I turn the machine on each morning, instead of giving me even the 7 channel lineups I saw before, it says something like, "Attempt to download listings failed. Please make sure you have the cables connected properly." This, despite the fact that nothing has changed about how the machine is hooked up. Todays tech support person said, "Maybe this is a TV Guide problem too" and would not offer any further assistance. I think there is something wrong with the machine in this regard.
One other solution offered was to "try another zip code" -- wont work for us because we live way out in the country and our cable provider is local; no other provider in a neighboring community is going to have this same lineup. And the last solution, which we will try this weekend, is to hook up the machine WITH the cable box. The tech said that sometimes the machine can find the listings on the cable box itself instead of downloading them directly from TV Guide. This sounds iffy to me because of all the people who have said the machine tries to download even with a cable box in the mix, but well give it a shot.
Recording works great, quality is great, and transferring taped content onto the hard drive and editing same is very easy. My overall review: If you HAVE to have a working TV Guide, buy a Tivo or a Replay. If you can use the DVR without the TV Guide as a glorified VCR, then this machine is okay.
I havent decided whether or not to keep mine. If the IR blaster works to control the cable box, and we can at least use the cable boxs version of TV Guide, I might keep it. Manually specifying what we want to record is no different than what we were doing with the VCR, and we get the advantages of the hard drive storage and the ability to transfer and edit from our videotapes.
Overall Im disapointed though. Panasonic ought not to be selling something that doesnt really work, and without the TV Guide feature this thing really isnt worth what I paid for it.
UPDATE:
We tried hooking up the machine with the cable box. It worked, and the IR blaster of the DVR does control the cable box -- this is essential, otherwise we would not be able to program the DVR to record a certain channel on a certain date and time. However, the DVRs TV guide still does not work, so theres no such thing as "one touch recording" with this machine (at least for us). It still presents the same 7 listings every morning and still wipes out any channel customization that we had done the previous day. Panasonics tech support has never called back. I suspect that if we COULD pick a lineup from the list, the TV Guide would work well. We succeeded in burning and finalizing a DVD that played fine in a Playstation DVD player, so that part of the functionality works as advertised.
On: 2005-03-06
If you are looking for a set top dvd recorder, look no further than the E95-HS. Feature packed, this recorder has nearly everything you could ask for, as well as being user friendly.
Although there isnt as many editing features as youll find on a PC authoring program, this product has everything youll need to transfer old Beta, VHS, MiniDV, etc. to DVD. This is a must to preserve memories that are deteriorating day by day.
The 160 gig HD is a must. I couldnt imagine not having a hard drive of this size. It will store over 36 hours of material on XP, which is my primary recording mode.
You can schedule tv programs using the tv guide feature, or by manually selecting the start and stop times. Contrary to popular belief, it is compatible with digital cable boxes.
This model features one touch recording and play list editing, which allows you to move chapters in different orders to customize your dvd.
I would recommend getting a signal booster for your cable though before recording television, as well as using high quality cables to get the best picture possible.
On: 2005-03-05
If you are looking for a set top dvd recorder, look no further than the E95-HS. Feature packed, this recorder has nearly everything you could ask for, as well as being user friendly.
Although there isnt as many editing features as youll find on a PC authoring program, this product has everything youll need to transfer old Beta, VHS, MiniDV, etc. to DVD. This is a must to preserve memories that are deteriorating day by day.
The 160 gig HD is a must. I couldnt imagine not having a hard drive of this size. It will store over 36 hours of material on XP, which is my primary recording mode.
You can schedule tv programs using the tv guide feature, or by manually selecting the start and stop times. Contrary to popular belief, it is compatible with digital cable boxes.
This model features one touch recording and play list editing, which allows you to move chapters in different orders to customize your dvd.
I would recommend getting a signal booster for your cable though before recording television, as well as using high quality cables to get the best picture possible.
On: 2005-02-26
I bought this DVD Recorder and it it Great, EXCEPT that I cannot view any JPEG images. What a hassle I went through buying dirrerent memory cards and PC card adapters only to find out that it will not display standard jpeg images and only specific images straight out of certain cameras. I have an older Minolta Digital Camera and these images do not conform, hog-wash. If you want to change the images in ANY way before showing them, red-eye, color balance, contrast, etc., it will not display them either.
I have found the same issue is true for their Plasma TVs as well; no jpegs except from specific cameras. Also the DVD-RAM disc was not included in the box.
On: 2005-02-20
I researched these recorders on line for a few weeks before settling on this unit. Im not unhappy with my decision. I will say that this is NOT a device for a novice. Ive had some problems with programing, and downloading the TV GUIDE listings to the point I needed to call Cust. Service. After 75 mins on hold, I was helped, and my problems have been solved, but the manuals are not the easiest, so the 75 min hold time was worth the wait. Worth the wait are the total operations of this unit, its smooth, fast, versatile and if you buy it correctly, one of the best buys on the market. I gave it 5 stars, EVEN with my start up problems because this IS a great machine!
On: 2005-01-18
I got this beast of a DVD Recorder for Christmas and I am completely satisfied. I previously owned a Toshiba DVD Recorder without a Hard Drive but it took very little time to figure out how to use the advance features the DMRE95H has. All you need to do is look in the manual for what you are trying to do and follow the instructions. After doing this 1 or 2 times you will know exactly how to use it.
The 160 GB Hard Drive is awesome. You can simply hit the Record button and it will record the show you are watching or you can use the TV Guide feature.
Dont hesitate to buy this recorder!
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