Panasonic DMR-EH69 320GB HDD Multi Region DVD Recorder PAL/NTSC 110-240 Volts

I have been looking for a machine like this for years. In January 2007, I bought a Panasonic DMR-ES15S DVD-RAM Recorder for $169.99. It has many very good features. Then in November 2007 I bought a Panasonic DMR-EZ27K DVD RAM Recorder for $275.59 so that I could copy DVDs. Both record on DVD-RAM of course, so that commercials can be removed from my recorded from TV programs. The second machine, EZ27K did not have most of the really useful editing options of the cheaper model. Then the cheaper model quit passing the audio in from the input to the disc, so I couldn't record with sound on it. It plays and edits just fine, so I have been recording on the EZ27K and editing on the ES15S. A real pain.My wife even purchased a very expensive used ES15S for me as a Christmas present which of course did not work at all. It would not even record on a brand new DVD-RAM or read a DVD-RAM created on my Panasonic EZ27K. She bought it a couple months before Christmas, so the seller's warrantee and the Amazon warrantee were no longer in effect by the time I opened and tested it right after Christmas. She got it from TransBiz who would not even talk to us about the problems it had. They are a very bad seller.Now for this machine - a Panasonic DMR-EH69 DVD Recorder purchased on Amazon and sold by Bombay Electronics. I couldn't be more pleased (unless a couple very minor things were different...see below). Not sure how their customer service is because delivery was swift and everything on the machine works just fine, so I never had to contact them. It came with all the cables, connectors and instructions to make it work in the US. And these were very minimal. It took only about 5 minutes at the most. It converts to NTSC by itself...nothing to worry about there. So, if you're buying it from Bombay Electronics, don't worry that it is not made for the US market. It works just fine here in Iowa.ES15 Features brought back with the EH69 that are not on my EZ27:* You do not have to remember to turn the unit off in order to use the timer recording.* Partial Delete (Shorten Segment) - Without having to cut it up into segments and then go back through the whole thing and delete the segments you don't want (which is very easy to delete a segment you want to keep). This is huge for me.* Saved Name List* Moving the cursor backwards through the title does not delete the characters, allowing the insertion, deletion or changing of a character without re-typing the whole title* Fast Forward and Fast Reverse show the counter numbers instead of just an "I1" or "I2".New Features;* Plus it has the hard drive that allows you to pause live TV, and then rewind to the point you started the pause and fast forward up to the live point in the broadcast. All started with just the pause button. You don't have to start recording and then play the recording - - - Just push the Pause button.* Can record at high quality at fast speed on the hard drive and then copy at any speed to the DVD with very little lost in quality compared to recording directly on the DVD at that same speed.* By the way, in EP mode, the hard drive will hold about 24 days of recorded material.* You can record in the hard drive in high quality and then edit the content - cutting lead time off the front, extra time off the end and removing commercials or other non wanted content from the middle of the recording, divide it up into several programs, and then copy it to a DVD-R or DVD-RW for playback on any DVD player.Complaints:* Times are listed in 24 hour military time.* Dates are in the format of Day.Month.Year* Will not record a full 8 hours in EP mode. This may be due to the need for higher quality disks and the machine may be finding and skipping more "bad" spots on the 8 hour discs.* This machine will not read all titles (just the name of the recording on the direct navigator) created on some other Panasonic recorders (my wife's ES45V for example) and some other Panasonic recorders (the ES45V) will not read the titles entered on this machine. The disks play fine. It's just the title names in the direct navigator show as blanks.Picture Quality:Picture quality is fantastic. The upconverting works very well. It makes old DVDs look close to High Def. I like the picture coming out of the EH69 better than the picture coming out of the cable box when I watch the HDMI output of the EH69 being fed by the cable box.Summary:Overall this is a beautiful machine. The good features outweigh the complaints by so much that they become irrelevant. It is well worth the $428.34 I paid for it. I am considering buying another one as a spare for when this one dies in 10 or 20 years. I have given it a lot of use over the last three months and it works flawlessly.Update one year later: It is still working fine - no issues. In fact, I just bought 2 more. One is here and works just fine and the other hasn't been delivered yet (it's only been a day and a half). I couldn't find this information anywhere else so I thought I'd share it here. I have been using Panasonic 4.7G 2-3X DVD-RAM discs, but they have been discontinued by Panasonic. I tried the Verbatum 4.7G 5x discs and they work just fine.

I must say that this is a very nice recorder. I had in the past a Panasonic EH-55 which lasted about a year. I took the EH-55 in for repair and the shop stated it needed a HDD cable which would not be available for 6 months and the unit was discontinued. Panasonic refunded my money so I was satisfied with the result. I was disappointed because I knew of a couple of other people that had the EH-55 and to this day those are still functioning. Now back to the EH-69. I have looked far and wide for another DVD recorder with hard drive. The Pioneer, Sanyo and Magnavox are some of the makers that have manufactured this type of unit in the past although currently they do not. Panasonic for some reason manufactured a 80gig, 160 and 200 gig versions for release in the USA but that was some time ago. They were all discontinued and to my surprise a bunch of them appeared to be refurbished and sold online at a premium price. This recorder is a PAL multizone version for use in PAL/NTSC areas. Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Europe. It has automatic switchable power adapting to both 110v USA and 220 volt Europe. The power cables are the European two prong or a 3 prong. You can probably get a standard cable to use as a power cord and it appears to be a standard figure 8 slot in the back of the EH69. I would like that better than using the European power adapter that was provided in the box. The unit is default set to PAL video signal and must be switched to NTSC by pressing the stop button and the open/close button for more than 5 seconds. I think it is around 7 to 10 seconds before my unit switched over and initially I thought it was not going to work. To my pleasure it did and began looping an NTSC signal through the S-video port. The HDMI initially showed no signal and switched to standby on my plasma until it switched to NTSC. The signal seems to be clean although the blacks are not as deep, possibly due to a different firmware dedicated mainly to PAL. NTSC standard definition signal parameters are set and I would think that if it is intended for use with NTSC/110v that should not create any color burst or setup/black level problems. Although the tuner is not compatible with NTSC or USA signal processing the unit functions well with DVD playback or record (providing that the signal is not copyright encoded.). The hard drive is very nice to use which is why I bought the unit in the first place. Lots of Hard drive space for Standard Definition recording. I never intended on using the tuner function in the first place and I think Panasonic could have eliminated the tuner mode for more simplicity. Longevity? Well hopefully this unit will give me years of use but I am happy as of right now. Since this is a Grey market unit not imported by Panasonic USA it has no warranty. I am wondering if a technician would work on it or be able to get parts? I will give an update in 6 months to a year on this unit.

It worked exactly as expected. It was already set to NTSC and works almost out of the box.It didn't include a euro > us power plug adapter but that was a cheap separate purchase.