I have a DMR-EZ475V that we bought new about 2 years ago. It has been working fine since then. I only record things once in a while, but last night when I tried to make a DVD recording it would start. Everything else on the unit worked fine, but if I pushed the REC button nothing happened. In trying to troubleshoot the problem I came across a statement in the User’s Manual that I had not seen before. In the "Cannot Record" section of Recording Issues there is a statement that says "If you repeatedly insert discs or turn the unit on and off about 50 times or more, the recording of DVD-R, DVD-R DL, DVD-RW, +R, +R DL, and +RW discs may be disabled". What is up with that?!?! I know you could interpret that statement a couple different ways, but after two years I have certainly turned my recorder on and off at least 50 times. Does that mean it was supposed to stop recording when I hit that milestone?

By the way, I fixed my problem by updating the firmware (which I had never done before) with the latest one from the Panasonic website; but, has anyone run into this 50 time limit before? It would be nice to know what the limits are, so I can plan for the future.

Each time you insert a blank disc, the machine does a series of Performance tests on the disc. It tests in an area near the hub and stores test data there. That area can fill up and prevent further recording.

This is described in the 1st post here. (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=930236)

It's also my guess that a RW disc can be used indefinitely(or until you start having problems with it) if your reformat it. You cannot reformat R discs, once the PCA area is full the disc cannot be recorded to anymore.
If your EZ-47v is still working, count your blessings. Like the EZ-48v they aren't the most reliable.

Thanks for the responses. The discs I was using last night all were brand new, never formatted, so I don't think the PCA on the disk was full. Plus, the first thing I did when it would not record was change discs. I got the same result with three discs.

The part that really bothered me about the statement in the manual is the turning the unit off 50 times. Why would that cause the DVD's not to record, unless you continue to turn the unit off with the same disc in the tray?

Thanks again for the comments.

If your discs are slipping from grease/dust accumulation on the spindle disc gripper, the PCA tests will fail and the disc will be "rejected."

Do you habdle your discs via the center hole?

There's some DIY spindle cleaning instructions by DigaDo here in this forum.

I've never had a RW or RAM disc become "rejected" because of spindle slippage, if they were damaged due to slippage a reformat has always fixed things. I have had R discs permanently damaged by slippage during the PCA tests, generally what happens in that case is you cannot record to or finalize the discs. Generally anything titles on the disc recorded before the slippage are OK but because you can't finalize the disc you can only play the disc in a Panasonic DVDR, or a machine that would play unfinalized Panasonic DVDs.

Panasonic DVD Drive lens, hub/spindle cleaning advice is found in this and the following posts:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=14479898#post14479898