I'm sure you'll want one longer than 4 inches.

I'm sure you'll want one longer than 4 inches.

Oops...Yep...I meant to say 4 feet....my bad

Hey fellows,

Got my ES20 at BB. Did someone say that there was a Panasonic coupon out now on that DVR, or was it another coupon offer?

I haven't been able to tell how my DVR works yet becuase I haven't purchased a Component Video Cable. Does any have recomendations for a reasonably priced 4" cable?

There was a BB $50 rebate about a month ago.
Mike

Hey fellows,

Got my ES20 at BB. Did someone say that there was a Panasonic coupon out now on that DVR, or was it another coupon offer?

I haven't been able to tell how my DVR works yet becuase I haven't purchased a Component Video Cable. Does any have recomendations for a reasonably priced 4" cable?


Hornet,

I bought my ES20 at BB on Monday and it had a $20 rebate. They just printed it right there for me. You can go to the BB website and search for the ES20 and it will have a link for the rebate.

mdld

Right how I have one s-video cable and one component cable. Here is my questions. What is the best set up? I have cable box, ES20 and TV. Right now I have the s-video going from TV to ES20 and don't have the component cables in use yet, just regular (red, white, yellow) going from ES20 to cable box. I'm not real sure about using the component cable instead of the other.

Right now my S-Vid is going into the TV and I watch the DVR on Video 1, guess that will have to change if I go with component from TV to ES20 right?

thanks

You stated you are using In 1 on the recorder. Is this input signal coming from a cable box? If so, you could use a splitter before the box and feed one output to the TV. Or if you want to record analog cable you can feed the ES20 an RF input and this will pass thru and come out the RF out which in turn can feed the TV.

I don't know why your picture & sound would be poor. Could be something wired incorrectly. Is the ES20 connected directly to the TV? Where is your sound coming from, the TV or an audio receiver?

Mike

Mike- the ES20 is connected directly to the TV via s-video and audio cables (red and white) this comes from the out on the ES20 to the Video 1 on the TV. When I am watching just the TV the sound is great. When I change to Video 1 the sound becomes much softer. Any ideas??

Can someone that owns a ES20 comment on the note on page 31 of the manual, in the box on the left that reads "after finalizing", that there is a delay of several seconds between chapters and titles on finalized disks? Does this really occur? I posted this question in another thread but thought I'd ask here as well since there appears to be a lot of owners of this recorder here. One of my main reasons for buying a recorder is to transfer Hi-8 tapes to DVD, but if it's going to pause for several seconds every 5 minutes when it comes to a new chapter, then I'll probably consider a different unit. I'm considering picking one up tomorrow, but not until I can find out if it really does this. I looked in a manual for the EH50 and it stated this was to be expected as well, but I haven't been able to find any posts that mention this.

Thanks

Can someone that owns a ES20 comment on the note on page 31 of the manual, in the box on the left that reads "after finalizing", that there is a delay of several seconds between chapters and titles on finalized disks? Does this really occur? I posted this question in another thread but thought I'd ask here as well since there appears to be a lot of owners of this recorder here. One of my main reasons for buying a recorder is to transfer Hi-8 tapes to DVD, but if it's going to pause for several seconds every 5 minutes when it comes to a new chapter, then I'll probably consider a different unit. I'm considering picking one up tomorrow, but not until I can find out if it really does this. I looked in a manual for the EH50 and it stated this was to be expected as well, but I haven't been able to find any posts that mention this.

Thanks

It could be that the manual is in incorrect, although my bet is that their lawyers made them put it there. Perhaps there is some obscure combination that causes the problem but they were not willing to admit it :)

I have recorded/watched lots of DVDs (from cable, RF and VCR) with different brands of media on the ES20 (finalized -R/+R/-RW) and never noticed the chapter change. I rarely put chapters on DVD-RAM as I mainly use them for temporary content, so I cannot comment on chapters on DVD-RAMs.

I have not recorded anything from the DV input or from camcorders.

Even the title change can be seemless if you are not paying attention to the TV.

One feature missing from the ES20 that is not discussed in the manual is that you cannot pause the FR recording mode. I don't know if it is an issue for you though.

It could be that the manual is in incorrect, although my bet is that their lawyers made them put it there. Perhaps there is some obscure combination that causes the problem but they were not willing to admit it :)

I have recorded/watched lots of DVDs (from cable, RF and VCR) with different brands of media on the ES20 (finalized -R/+R/-RW) and never noticed the chapter change. I rarely put chapters on DVD-RAM as I mainly use them for temporary content, so I cannot comment on chapters on DVD-RAMs.

I have not recorded anything from the DV input or from camcorders.

Even the title change can be seemless if you are not paying attention to the TV.

One feature missing from the ES20 that is not discussed in the manual is that you cannot pause the FR recording mode. I don't know if it is an issue for you though.

Thanks for the reply, that's what I was hoping to hear. It seems if it actually did occur that there would have been lot's of discussion on it since it would be very annoying.

Hornet,

I bought my ES20 at BB on Monday and it had a $20 rebate. They just printed it right there for me. You can go to the BB website and search for the ES20 and it will have a link for the rebate.

mdld

Ok Mdld, That is the one I received. I mistakenly thought there was another coupon/rebate... Thanks!

I have a confusing situation at home with my ES20. I am hooking it up to a TV that has No S-Video (pretty old RCA set) and I have a Panasonic VCR/DVD combo player (model #PVD-4753S) So hooking it up properly is taking a bit of thinking, to say the least. I haven't been able to test it yet to see how it, and if it records anything yet.

I may have more questions to come if I can't get it hooked up right, but it is sure a pleasure to have you "experts" out there for my to ask questions too...Thanks fellows!

Thanks for the reply, that's what I was hoping to hear. It seems if it actually did occur that there would have been lot's of discussion on it since it would be very annoying.
Never noticed a pause between chapters on any of the DVDs recorded on the ES20.

Today was the first time after more than 15 dubs that a disc would not finalize. I do recall it dropping out of my hand and going against the spindle when removed (it was also the bottom disc of the pile) so this might have caused the damage. Anyone interested, it was a Maxell DVD-R and I noticed it was slower to begin recording than others.

I then tested a Maxell DVD-RW which did finalize (and also reformatted) so fortunately it's not the machine.

Was a waste of four hours dubbing from my DVR, however.

I wonder if the pause only occurs when playing non-consecutive chapters from a playlist, since the laser would have to have time to move to a new section of the disk? Seems that Panasonic should clarify their statement better, since nobody seems to have a problem it.

Never noticed a pause between chapters on any of the DVDs recorded on the ES20.

Today was the first time after more than 15 dubs that a disc would not finalize. I do recall it dropping out of my hand and going against the spindle when removed (it was also the bottom disc of the pile) so this might have caused the damage. Anyone interested, it was a Maxell DVD-R and I noticed it was slower to begin recording than others.

I then tested a Maxell DVD-RW which did finalize (and also reformatted) so fortunately it's not the machine.

Was a waste of four hours dubbing from my DVR, however.

That is the advantage of a hard disk drive recorder, record first to the hard drive and then if you want to keep it dub to DVD disk and if the DVD disk would fail you can redub to another working DVD disk. Given the flaky nature of DVD disks this is perhaps the biggest advantage to hard disk drive models next to ease of editing.

I know, I know, not everyone wants or can afford a hard disk drive based recorder, but I thought I would mention this for anyone considering DVD recorders because this does happen with DVD disks and can be upsetting.

Can someone that owns a ES20 comment on the note on page 31 of the manual, in the box on the left that reads "after finalizing", that there is a delay of several seconds between chapters and titles on finalized disks? Does this really occur? I posted this question in another thread but thought I'd ask here as well since there appears to be a lot of owners of this recorder here. One of my main reasons for buying a recorder is to transfer Hi-8 tapes to DVD, but if it's going to pause for several seconds every 5 minutes when it comes to a new chapter, then I'll probably consider a different unit. I'm considering picking one up tomorrow, but not until I can find out if it really does this. I looked in a manual for the EH50 and it stated this was to be expected as well, but I haven't been able to find any posts that mention this.

Thanks

It's probably just a poor translation of what is really meant. Sort of like the manual implying that the RF OUT does not function at all, when in reality it does pass an RF signal thru it from the RF IN.

The delay probably refers to what others have said - a slight delay when skipping chapters.

Mike

That is the advantage of a hard disk drive recorder, record first to the hard drive and then if you want to keep it dub to DVD disk and if the DVD disk would fail you can redub to another working DVD disk. Given the flaky nature of DVD disks this is perhaps the biggest advantage to hard disk drive models next to ease of editing.

I know, I know, not everyone wants or can afford a hard disk drive based recorder, but I thought I would mention this for anyone considering DVD recorders because this does happen with DVD disks and can be upsetting.
Hi Falco,

You're so right, having a DVR is great and helps protect one from losing material - I'm doing a second dub right now.

We rent our HD DVR from our cable provider for $9.95 a month and since it's quite affordable we recommend others consider this for themselves. It provides all the conveneinces of TIVO but also allow us to record two different stations at the same time while not having to bother with timer settings on our Panny ES20. In fact, my brother has the Panny DVD recorder with hard drive and also subscribes to the DVR service for these added features. It also saves wear and tear on his Panny Hard Drive by not having to record programs to be watched only once or after watching, deciding not to keep.

Well I got my first missed recording of a TV show. I recorded "lost" but "Invasion" showed a fail due to copy protection. The signal is digital off a Samsung ATSC tuner.
Was it just a fluke or are they copy protecting OTA broadcast TV?

Mike- the ES20 is connected directly to the TV via s-video and audio cables (red and white) this comes from the out on the ES20 to the Video 1 on the TV. When I am watching just the TV the sound is great. When I change to Video 1 the sound becomes much softer. Any ideas??

Do you have an audio system that you could connect to the red and white cables coming from the ES20? Just to see if the sound level is normal.

Anything is possible so the ES20 may have a problem. I thought about a bad cable, but that would affect only one channel. Unless both cables are defective. Off hand I don't recall what audio settings there are on the ES20, but you may want to check if setup properly.

Mike

Hi, Great Post.
I just bought this model but it is still in the box.
I am trying to get it into the mix of my Already hooked up Surround with a Sony DVD Player and VCR.

I want to back up all my old stuff to dvd (dvds,vhs).
Do I hook this new unit up to my old dvd player and copy then to the vcr and copy?
Or do I try to hook it all up through my surround and copy that way?

I am new to dvd recording as you can tell. All the other posts on this question were too confusing to understand.


I hope you can help me out!!
Thanks in advance!
Bill

Recording from cable channels is just a matter of tuning to the channel instead of IN2.

I have done recording from my camcorder. It is was so easy and simple. I have not yet tried from cable channels. Would I be able to set up time recording if I need to record a program in my absent?

I have a question about DVD-RAM. One unit of DVD-RAM came with my Recorder and bought four more DVD-RAM (Panasonic brand) from Sears today. However, it is silly for me. I don't know how to use them? Are they similar to DVD+RW/-RW? Would I be able to play them in any DVD Player? Are they like +RW or -RW then why people buy them?

From what I have gathered in reading the threads here and my ES-10 manual,
DVD-RAMs seem more reliable/durable than RW's,

they allow recording of broadcast that only allow one copy(CPRM)

unlike DVD RW, available space always increases if you delete a title. RW will only get space back if it is the last title erased.

RAM will allow recording of both Main and SAP of an MTS broadcast while RW will only do one.

RAM will record a 16:9 picture while RW can't.

You can "Chase" playback on RAM but not RW.

All the above as moxie has mentioned.

While DVD-RAM is not as universally accepted by most DVD players/recorders, I do like the chase play feature.

Mike

From what I have gathered in reading the threads here and my ES-10 manual,
DVD-RAMs seem more reliable/durable than RW's,

they allow recording of broadcast that only allow one copy(CPRM)

unlike DVD RW, available space always increases if you delete a title. RW will only get space back if it is the last title erased.

RAM will allow recording of both Main and SAP of an MTS broadcast while RAM will only do one.

RAM will record a 16:9 picture while RW can't.

You can "Chase" playback on RAM but not RW.
Hi Moxie,

You mention that RAMs can record 16x9 aspect ratios. Does this mean it fills the screen on a widescreen 16x9 TV without having to use "zoom" modes? Would this also be recorded anmaphoricly, providing better picture than DVD-r? Currently, I've been recording everything onto a DVD-r whether it's letterbox or 16x9 on the HD stations.

Hi Moxie,

You mention that RAMs can record 16x9 aspect ratios. Does this mean it fills the screen on a widescreen 16x9 TV without having to use "zoom" modes? Would this also be recorded anmaphoricly, providing better picture than DVD-r? Currently, I've been recording everything onto a DVD-r whether it's letterbox or 16x9 on the HD stations.

I never verified that. :o . I have been recording HD programs for time shifting and currently my disc is empty. It appears that the live and recorded broadcast were the same. ie 16x9 full screen HD was full screen on the DVD and letterboxed was letterboxed. I never checked what different aspect ratios on the TV would look like. I am using component out at 480p. Next time I record I'll play with the aspect ratios and see what happens.

I never verified that. :o . I have been recording HD programs for time shifting and currently my disc is empty. It appears that the live and recorded broadcast were the same. ie 16x9 full screen HD was full screen on the DVD and letterboxed was letterboxed. I never checked what different aspect ratios on the TV would look like. I am using component out at 480p. Next time I record I'll play with the aspect ratios and see what happens.
Thanx for getting back to me. I saw in the manual that everything is recorded in 4x3. My first recorder, a Toshiba, had a setting to record with a 16x9 aspect ratio but these discs still came out as 4x3 and I had to zoom in with my set for them to fill the screen propertly. I wonder if recording in widescreen can only be accomplished via the DV connection from a camcorder.

I'm not sure what previous mode my machine was on. I typically have been using LP & therefore should have been in that mode. But when I viewed the Status of the problem disc it displayed time left as 1:25 SP. Which kind of makes me think the unit was in SP prior to the recording. But again, this is a maybe.

I too will experiment with some DVD-RAM recordings to see what happens.

I also wonder if the firmware upgrade, which I have not done, fixes this bug.

Mike

I have done some tests with these: everytime I left the recorder in a higher quality mode than the intended FR. Surpringly so far all the FR Timer recordings have filled up the disc without any surprises.

Some of the things that worked okay:
* 3hour FR on a blank disc, I left it in SP
* 4h20min-4h40min FR (on a blank disc) I left it in LP or SP
*1-hour at LP+: squeezing 4 episodes from the RF tuner on a DVD, using 1hour02mins LP for the first three and 1:02FR for the last one. I use 1h:02min instead of 1hour to make sure I record the start/end. I left it in LP or SP.

I haven't done any long (2hours+) recording when the DVD is half-empty.

I also haven't tried to prove the problem (eg 3hr FR leaving it at LP/EP or 2hr FR on a half-empty DVD leaving it at EP). I haven't done these yet mainly because I wanted to save the recordings I was doing. I will do some of these on -RAM and -RW.

I have done some tests with these: everytime I left the recorder in a higher quality mode than the intended FR. Surpringly so far all the FR Timer recordings have filled up the disc without any surprises.

Some of the things that worked okay:
* 3hour FR on a blank disc, I left it in SP
* 4h20min-4h40min FR (on a blank disc) I left it in LP or SP
*1-hour at LP+: squeezing 4 episodes from the RF tuner on a DVD, using 1hour02mins LP for the first three and 1:02FR for the last one. I use 1h:02min instead of 1hour to make sure I record the start/end. I left it in LP or SP.

I haven't done any long (2hours+) recording when the DVD is half-empty.

I also haven't tried to prove the problem (eg 3hr FR leaving it at LP/EP or 2hr FR on a half-empty DVD leaving it at EP). I haven't done these yet mainly because I wanted to save the recordings I was doing. I will do some of these on -RAM and -RW.

I've done 2 more FR timer recordings at 2hr 30min, one on DVD-RAM and one on DVD-R and both filled the disc. I did leave in the LP mode prior to recording. So far I have no idea why I previously got the partially filled disc.

But I found another bug - see the following post.

Mike

I recorded a 2hr 31min FR timer program last night & finalized the disc.

I did a 200X Search just to spot check things, then Pause, then Play. Well the status display shows play, but the machine stays locked in pause. I have to hit the Search or Skip buttons to get things going again.

I tried this several times and also on another disc that was recorded the same way. Always stayed locked in pause. If I do 200X search and then hit Play, it plays OK.

But stopping with Pause keeps it in Pause. Has anyone else noticed or tried this?

Mike

Recording from cable channels is just a matter of tuning to the channel instead of IN2.

I have no problems now. I am able to record from my Camcorder and direct from cable channels.

I have question on NTFS format. The initial recording on Cam was NTFS format, transfer on VHS tape was also in NTFS format and now recording from Recorder to DVD+R media is also in NTFS. If the recording on DVD+R is in NTFS format then it is not playable in UK dvd player. Am I right? What do I do before sending this DVD+R recorded media to UK. How do I transfer NTFS to UK format?

bobkart - Many thanks for your help.

I think you mean NTSC (National Television Standards Committee), the television standard in North America (and other areas).

Converting between NTSC and PAL is an often-asked question. There are converters out there. And DVD Players that can do the conversion upon playback. You can even load the video into a PC and convert it that way I believe. Off the top of my head I can't point you straight to an answer, maybe a search both here and on the Internet in general will reveal something to solve your problem.

Thanx for getting back to me. I saw in the manual that everything is recorded in 4x3. My first recorder, a Toshiba, had a setting to record with a 16x9 aspect ratio but these discs still came out as 4x3 and I had to zoom in with my set for them to fill the screen propertly. I wonder if recording in widescreen can only be accomplished via the DV connection from a camcorder.
I recorded some of Sundays basketball game on ABC that was in HD. During playback, my set only allows three aspect rations with the 480P input from the recorder-4:3, zoom and full(widescreen). With the aspect ration at 4:3 everyone looked stretched vertically, at full, all appeared normal. So it does appear to preserve the widescreen format.

Also, I am using the ES-10 which has no DV connection for a camcorder.

Hi. I think i'm about to return my machine, but had one last question.

Again, recorded a two-hour program, this time in LP mode, and it 'froze'
an hour and a half into the show. I was able to play the disc again, and it froze
in the same place again. I fast-forwarded through and it froze at the same place again. I then tried to finalize and it said 'Warning 28 Finalization failed'. Now it's 'Incompatible disk' and won't play at all.

This was a brand new TDK-R disk. I bought them because I had a couple of them already and they seemed to work when I first got the recorder last week. So my question is..is it possible that the TDK disks are not right for the machine. I realize sometimes these messages mean nothing, but does anyone use TDK out there?

And does anyone have a list of Warnings? I even went to the Panasonic site, but their troubleshooting is useless.

Is is possible that my electrical current isn't 'steady' enough for this sensitive machine? I don't have a problem that I know of, but I did read that if you lose current, there's a problem. I'm just grasping at straws here. I've been reading that some of you say that you've only lost one or two or three recordings somehow, so it sounds like you can't always depend on the machine.

I have one more week to return it. I really like the DVD-RAM feature and the reviews of this machine are decent, but I need a machine I can depend on.

Thanks again

Thanx for getting back to me. I saw in the manual that everything is recorded in 4x3. My first recorder, a Toshiba, had a setting to record with a 16x9 aspect ratio but these discs still came out as 4x3 and I had to zoom in with my set for them to fill the screen propertly. I wonder if recording in widescreen can only be accomplished via the DV connection from a camcorder.

I just bought my ES20 on Sat and did some tests. There is another thread that covers 16:9 recording pretty thoroughly, but to summarize as best as I understand it (someone can correct me if I'm mistaken):

The 4:3 recording mode doesn't cut off any of the picture or add any letterboxing, it just "squishes" it from the sides to make it fit a 4:3 aspect ratio. If you look closely at the picture in the manual, you can see this is the case. Most, if not all, 16:9 format televisions will then take the squished 4:3 format picture from the DVD player and "unsquish" (to use a highly technical term) it to properly fit the screen. This is the "standard" mode on my tv. So while it is recorded in squished 4:3 aspect, it gets "unsquished" by the tv and displayed in the correct 16:9 ratio . I verified that this worked correctly by recording a 16:9 format HD broadcast (wasn't recorded in HD, of course) onto a DVD-RW and playing it back on both the ES-20 and my Samsung HD up-convert DVD player. In both cases the picture was in the correct 16:9 format. The problem occurs when you try to play the video back on a 4:3 tv, it will looked squished in this case.

The ES20 will record 16:9 onto the DVD-RAM, my guess is that the difference is that the picture will be formatted such that it will appear letterboxed and not squished when played back on a 4:3 tv, but not really sure. Haven't tried this yet. My understanding from the other thread is that in order to actually record in 16:9 format, there needs to be a flag sent from the set top box to tell the DVD player to record in this format (this was for a Sony, I assume it applies to others as well), but only one or two models of the set top boxes do this, this may explain the reason you couldn't record in 16:9 on your Toshiba, it may not have been getting the proper signal. I don't understand why your tv didn't properly expand the 4:3 image though, unless the Toshiba added some additional formatting since it was told to record in 16:9, but didn't work correctly because it didn't get the required flag from the source? Just a guess, I'm new to this and still trying to understand it all myself.

I have been successful at wiring my ES20 recorder and have been able to record programs from my VCR and from my Comcast HD DVR (Moto 6412). I have not been able to record sound from my DVR. I have all of my audio run through my receiver.

I though that all I had to do was run the Audio OUT from the DVR to Audio IN on the recorder. Am I missing something?

Any help will be appreciated.

If your audio runs through the receiver, it will have to be on to record the audio.

If your audio runs through the receiver, it will have to be on to record the audio.

Will I still need the Audio OUT from the Cable Box connected to the Audio IN on the recorder?

Someone with experience with recording from DVRs will have to answer that.

Hi. I think i'm about to return my machine, but had one last question.

Again, recorded a two-hour program, this time in LP mode, and it 'froze'
an hour and a half into the show. I was able to play the disc again, and it froze
in the same place again. I fast-forwarded through and it froze at the same place again. I then tried to finalize and it said 'Warning 28 Finalization failed'. Now it's 'Incompatible disk' and won't play at all.

This was a brand new TDK-R disk. I bought them because I had a couple of them already and they seemed to work when I first got the recorder last week. So my question is..is it possible that the TDK disks are not right for the machine. I realize sometimes these messages mean nothing, but does anyone use TDK out there?

And does anyone have a list of Warnings? I even went to the Panasonic site, but their troubleshooting is useless.

Is is possible that my electrical current isn't 'steady' enough for this sensitive machine? I don't have a problem that I know of, but I did read that if you lose current, there's a problem. I'm just grasping at straws here. I've been reading that some of you say that you've only lost one or two or three recordings somehow, so it sounds like you can't always depend on the machine.

I have one more week to return it. I really like the DVD-RAM feature and the reviews of this machine are decent, but I need a machine I can depend on.

Thanks again

As far as I know the only list of warnings is in the back of the user manual. I haven't seen them anywhere else.

I haven't seen the two warnings that you mentioned above.

I do not know/remember enough about electricity to speculate on electric current.

I never had a problem with TDK +/-Rs. From the ones I have used, the only ones I now do not recommend are the Philips +R.

Of the 300+ discs I recorded so far, I only had a problem with just a handful of DVDs - if you take out my mistakes and Timer/FR recording quality level miscalculations. If you take out the Philips +R, there's only 3 that a recording or part of it was lost. The percentage is even lower per recording (as opposed to per DVD), since I put multiple titles per DVD. It is not 100% reliable like a VCR, but 98%-99% is good enough for my usage (I am mostly using a DVR and offload them to the ES20).

This situation is another example of when having a HDD is a good idea. If you're having media problems, and no HDD, you take your chances recording something straight to DVD when the material may not appear again, compared to the procedure of recording everything to HDD, then worrying about getting that onto DVD later. If the dub to DVD fails because of bad media, you have the chance to try again (and again and again!). I've never had a recording to HDD fail, but I've had a few recordings to DVD fail, before I worked out some media reliability issues. At the very least I will play back every recorded DVD at a fast-forward speed to make sure it doesn't hang anywhere. Loading it to PC is another fair test that the data is actually there.

I recorded a 2hr 31min FR timer program last night & finalized the disc.

I did a 200X Search just to spot check things, then Pause, then Play. Well the status display shows play, but the machine stays locked in pause. I have to hit the Search or Skip buttons to get things going again.

I tried this several times and also on another disc that was recorded the same way. Always stayed locked in pause. If I do 200X search and then hit Play, it plays OK.

But stopping with Pause keeps it in Pause. Has anyone else noticed or tried this?

Mike

Great bug find! I was able to reproduce it as you described above using a finalized Sony 8x DVD-R at either 30X, 70X or 200X forward (I did not test other speeds or backwards yet). I also forgot to test before finalizing. (I'll try it on the next DVD before I finalize it). The DVD had two recordings on it: The first was around 2hrs LP and the second was 2h:04m FR. I tried it on the 2nd recording.

I always pressed PLAY after FF before you mentioned it here. I guess my VCR-habit carried over to DVDs :)

UPDATE: It happened with another finalized disc (same kind), and it also happened at 10X and also when going backwards. On a 3rd disc it didnt happen the first two times, but it happened the 3rd time and beyond.

This situation is another example of when having a HDD is a good idea. If you're having media problems, and no HDD, you take your chances recording something straight to DVD when the material may not appear again, compared to the procedure of recording everything to HDD, then worrying about getting that onto DVD later. If the dub to DVD fails because of bad media, you have the chance to try again (and again and again!). I've never had a recording to HDD fail, but I've had a few recordings to DVD fail, before I worked out some media reliability issues. At the very least I will play back every recorded DVD at a fast-forward speed to make sure it doesn't hang anywhere. Loading it to PC is another fair test that the data is actually there.

Yes, great reply! HDD is very very helpful, flexible, efficient, and such. I am using a poor man's HDD-approach by renting a DVR from the cable company, but now I got hooked to the dual all-channel tuner feature :-(

I noticed some occasional "moody" behaviors of the ES20:

1) I have a VCR connected to IN2. If I tune the ES20 to IN2, and turn OFF the VCR while tuned-in, and then VCR back on, the ES20 does not pick up the sound from the VCR. Maybe it thinks there is no sound coming from the VCR? If i turn the ES20 OFF/ON, the problem is solved.

2) One day I wake up earlier than usual and discovered this: The previous night I had left the ES20 doing an overnight copy of a VHS tape with a manual FR. The next morning the copy was done but the ES20 was in some sort of a playback mode. It showed PLAY in STATUS but it was not playing. The front panel showed a timer moving forward but faster than 1x (eg more than 1 second was ticking for every real second). Judging from the time, this must have started shortly after the recording finished. This was with a DVD-R. The recording itself was fine and it finalized/played without problems.

3) On rare occasions, some DVD-Rs (Sony, Verbatim) when doing a Timer/FR recording, it reports thousands of hours instead of the actual FR duration. This I have observed happens if I delete a short title from the beginning of the DVD (eg make a mistake when starting the recording, then STOP, ERASE and repeat). The biggest issue is that it records at the lowest possible quality, at 8hours or worse. If I use Manual FR instead of Timer/FR, it works as expected.

I noticed some occasional "moody" behaviors of the ES20:



Consumer Alert!!! Sell or return your ES20 and buy the new improved ES15 coming out in April. The ES20 is a bug factory. :eek:

http://gadgets.fosfor.se/panasonic-diga-dvd-line/

Consumer Alert!!! Sell or return your ES20 and buy the new improved ES15 coming out in April. The ES20 is a bug factory. :eek:

http://gadgets.fosfor.se/panasonic-diga-dvd-line/

Who's to say the ES15 won't be a bug factory.

I think you mean NTSC (National Television Standards Committee), the television standard in North America (and other areas).

Converting between NTSC and PAL is an often-asked question. There are converters out there. And DVD Players that can do the conversion upon playback. You can even load the video into a PC and convert it that way I believe. Off the top of my head I can't point you straight to an answer, maybe a search both here and on the Internet in general will reveal something to solve your problem.


I am sorry. It was my mistake. I mean to say NTSC. I appreciate your response. I am sure there are new dvd players which have the option switch for NTSC & PAL.

Consumer Alert!!! Sell or return your ES20 and buy the new improved ES15 coming out in April. The ES20 is a bug factory. :eek:

http://gadgets.fosfor.se/panasonic-diga-dvd-line/

LOL. It's not that bad :)

It's probably a good idea to wait for a few reviews/reports on the ES15/ES25/etc before buying them, or have a good return policy if you plan to buy them the day they are released.

If I were to chose between the ES15/ES25, I would probably get the ES25 because of HD upconversion, HDMI and SD/Photo storage.

You can only record 16:9 if the source sends the 16:9 flag.
For example, the DirecTV HD Tivo receiver (HR10-250) does NOT send this flag.
This is really only a problem if you intend to replay the recording on a 4:3 aspect ration TV as a 16:9 TV will format the picture properly.


How do I record a DVD from my (HR10-250) fot it to be shown on a 4:3 TV? The programming is already saved into the Tivo.
Thanks for any help....

I just bought my ES20 on Sat and did some tests. There is another thread that covers 16:9 recording pretty thoroughly, but to summarize as best as I understand it (someone can correct me if I'm mistaken):

The 4:3 recording mode doesn't cut off any of the picture or add any letterboxing, it just "squishes" it from the sides to make it fit a 4:3 aspect ratio. If you look closely at the picture in the manual, you can see this is the case. Most, if not all, 16:9 format televisions will then take the squished 4:3 format picture from the DVD player and "unsquish" (to use a highly technical term) it to properly fit the screen. This is the "standard" mode on my tv. So while it is recorded in squished 4:3 aspect, it gets "unsquished" by the tv and displayed in the correct 16:9 ratio . I verified that this worked correctly by recording a 16:9 format HD broadcast (wasn't recorded in HD, of course) onto a DVD-RW and playing it back on both the ES-20 and my Samsung HD up-convert DVD player. In both cases the picture was in the correct 16:9 format. The problem occurs when you try to play the video back on a 4:3 tv, it will looked squished in this case.

The ES20 will record 16:9 onto the DVD-RAM, my guess is that the difference is that the picture will be formatted such that it will appear letterboxed and not squished when played back on a 4:3 tv, but not really sure. Haven't tried this yet. My understanding from the other thread is that in order to actually record in 16:9 format, there needs to be a flag sent from the set top box to tell the DVD player to record in this format (this was for a Sony, I assume it applies to others as well), but only one or two models of the set top boxes do this, this may explain the reason you couldn't record in 16:9 on your Toshiba, it may not have been getting the proper signal. I don't understand why your tv didn't properly expand the 4:3 image though, unless the Toshiba added some additional formatting since it was told to record in 16:9, but didn't work correctly because it didn't get the required flag from the source? Just a guess, I'm new to this and still trying to understand it all myself.
Actually my recordings off of HD do properly fill the screen at 16x9 but I need to use "zoom" rather than "full". I was concerned that use of my set's "zoom" to fill the screen would cause a loss of picture quality but it doesn't seem to be the case.

When I play a dvd recorded in 16x9 by the old toshiba it does play back in my set's "full" mode with the Panasonic es20, but stretched. No problems playing any recorded disc on my 4x3 set.

So, as long as I know needing the set's "zoom" mode does not cause degragation of picture quality I need not be conscerned..., right?

So, as long as I know needing the set's "zoom" mode does not cause degragation of picture quality I need not be conscerned..., right?

Theoretically Zoom is of lower quality than the original, but in practice, it depends on various factors on how it affects perceived PQ.

How can I put two, 35 minute programs on a DVD-R in best quality? I figured FR mode would squeeze 2 programs on a disc, but you cannot pause in FR. Pausing which would allow me time to swap in the 2nd source program. I could just record the 1st program in XP and use FR for the 2nd program. Unless someone has a work around for not pausing in FR.

Just thinking, what happens if I tell the recorder I have want to FR a 70 minute program, but stop the recorder after the first 35 minutes, swap sources, then FR the second 35 minutes?

Mike

Set FR length initially to 80 minutes. You simply stop the recording after the first 35 minute program is done. Then record the second 35 minute program with FR mode set to 40 minutes. Both programs will fit on the one disc, with some space to spare so you don't burn all the way out to the edge... and the recording quality will be about the same for both programs.

Yep, That's the way to do it :) & let's hope Panasonic corrected the "FR Pause Glitch" on the new ES15 or at least on the new ES25 anyway.

Set FR length initially to 80 minutes. You simply stop the recording after the first 35 minute program is done. Then record the second 35 minute program with FR mode set to 40 minutes. Both programs will fit on the one disc, with some space to spare so you don't burn all the way out to the edge... and the recording quality will be about the same for both programs.

Forgive me for asking, but what is the concern about burning all the way out to the edge? And does this mean I should also stop the 2nd recording after 35 minutes, or just let the recorder keep going for the full 40 minutes, thereby burning "blank" out to the edge?

Thanks in advance,
Mike

The outer edge of a DVD is more susceptible to errors relating to bad tracking of the laser with respect to the surface of the disc, due to the disc being not quite exactly flat (axial runout). The further from the center you go, the more pronounced such axial runout is. Think of the disc wobbling slightly as it rotates.

Correct. Only the best quality blank discs (like Japanese manufactured Taiyo Yuden) can generally be counted on to burn OK all the way out to the very edge of the disc. With medium and bulk quality blanks, most burning and playback problems can be avoided by not trying to "max out" the disc capacity.

Recording from cable channels is just a matter of tuning to the channel instead of IN2.

How about DVD to VCR function in ES-20? I don't see any. Is there anyway to record dvd on vcr tape?

How can I put two, 35 minute programs on a DVD-R in best quality? I figured FR mode would squeeze 2 programs on a disc, but you cannot pause in FR. Pausing which would allow me time to swap in the 2nd source program. I could just record the 1st program in XP and use FR for the 2nd program. Unless someone has a work around for not pausing in FR.

Just thinking, what happens if I tell the recorder I have want to FR a 70 minute program, but stop the recorder after the first 35 minutes, swap sources, then FR the second 35 minutes?

Mike

I use this as well to put multiple programs at FR. I usually do three 90-minute titles on one DVD. If I am not watching, I set an alarm clock to remind me to stop the recording otherwise it will probably run until it is out of space :) I usually give the recordings at least 1 minute buffer on the start/finish to cover rounding up/down.

The Manual FR mode has been very reliable for me when doing this. As you mention, Pausing FR would be very very helpful! (Panasonic are you listening???)

How about DVD to VCR function in ES-20? I don't see any. Is there anyway to record dvd on vcr tape?

There is no special DVD-to-VCR function. To record from DVD to VCR, you simply connect the ES20 outputs to your VCRs inputs, start playback on the DVD and press record on the VCR. Assuming there is no copy protection, everything should be okay.

Thanks everyone for the information.

Mike

There is no special DVD-to-VCR function. To record from DVD to VCR, you simply connect the ES20 outputs to your VCRs inputs, start playback on the DVD and press record on the VCR. Assuming there is no copy protection, everything should be okay.

Many thanks for your info. I am going to give it a try tonight. However, there are two inputs and one output on ES20. Does it mean it is direct recording to VCR but bypassing TV? No view on TV?

Many thanks for your info. I am going to give it a try tonight. However, there are two inputs and one output on ES20. Does it mean it is direct recording to VCR but bypassing TV? No view on TV?

The TV is independent of the VCR and the ES20: basically what shows up on the TV depends on how your system is setup.

If your VCR has an output that goes to a TV and if you select that output on your TV then you can see what the VCR is doing.

When recording it is usually a good idea to have a way to look at the screen of the destination (unless you are very familiar with the device or it has a very informative front panel display).

Anyone know if you can run both standard coaxial cable TV and a HD OTA antenna to the ES20? switchbox maybe? My TV does NOT have a built in turner and I would like to try HD OTA.

Thanks

If you're asking if the ES20 has an ATSC Tuner, the answer would be no since no DVD Recorder at this time has an ATSC Tuner.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=636063

Anyone know if you can run both standard coaxial cable TV and a HD OTA antenna to the ES20? switchbox maybe? My TV does NOT have a built in turner and I would like to try HD OTA.

Thanks

There is no such thing as an HD OTA antenna. A VHF/UHF antenna from 30 years ago can be used to pick up digital tv signals the same as the ones you buy now that are labled "For HDTV". Nothing about the antennas have changed. The ES20 can, however, be linked to an HD OTA receiver via S-video. The picture quality is pretty remarkable and you can record DD 2.1.

There is no such thing as an HD OTA antenna. A VHF/UHF antenna from 30 years ago can be used to pick up digital tv signals the same as the ones you buy now that are labled "For HDTV". Nothing about the antennas have changed. The ES20 can, however, be linked to an HD OTA receiver via S-video. The picture quality is pretty remarkable and you can record DD 2.1.

Thanks MR12. I will try the HD OTA receiver. Can anyone recommend a make/model?

Thanks MR12. I will try the HD OTA receiver. Can anyone recommend a make/model?
Check the hd hardware forum out.
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/forumdisplay.php?f=25

How is the video and audio output quality using the ES20 as a player for commercial dvd's. I am thinking of getting this and using it as my primary player as well as a recorder (try to limit clutter on the stand). I have a 51 inch HDTV so video quality is important when watching movies.

Thanks,
Bob

How is the video and audio output quality using the ES20 as a player for commercial dvd's. I am thinking of getting this and using it as my primary player as well as a recorder (try to limit clutter on the stand). I have a 51 inch HDTV so video quality is important when watching movies.

Thanks,
Bob
Bob,

We're very happy with the playback quality of the ES20.
It's connected to a Sony KD34XBR960 HD set and our DVD collection never looked better. Beautiful picture quality with vibrant yet not oversaturated color and crystal clear detail without grain or harshness. If your monitor accepts 480P and upconverts, you will not go wrong using this as your everyday player.

- Joe

Excellent, thanks.

Bob

Some questions I could use help with:

Have had a es20 for a couple days, first dvd recorder. Am on rabbit ears tv reception, tv set with rf in only, am using a vhs unit to interface the es20 with the tv. Also have a HTPC with a 4x3 panasonic 75u projector.

Initial reason for buying the es20 is for getting my analog 8mm camcorder tape to dvd. Want ability to do advanced editing and reproduction, so need to replace the HTPC's dvd player with a writer. Figured using a -rw in the es20, then into the htpc for editing. Re reading this thread, I see dvd writers that will read dvd ram are common and inexpensive? So I might use dvd ram to the pc instead of -r/-rw.. Thoughts?


1. Not clear about the file formats the es20 will use, and what the pc will see. Will something like smartripper see the dvd ram files, and what about the 5 minute finalized -r/-rw chapters? Is this not a problem to rip to HD and edit? Will I see big vob's or a bunch of 5 minute vob's. I have ripped to HD in the past but will be new to doing anything edited related.

2. Any ideas why I have no signal when using s video from es20 to the projector? Played around with options on both units..

3. What about a component to vga cable, es20 to projector. Looking for a better TV signal than composite. Component out only works in dvd playback? so could record tv in dvd ram and use chase play to get 'live' tv into the projector via component?

Appreciate any ideas/help

1. I would like to make DVD copies of my VHS movies...does the ES20 do this in real time? Would it be any faster or slower than real time?

2. I would like to made CD-R/WMA copies of my music cassette tapes so that I can listen to them on any CD player...is this possible with the ES20 or would I have to record them into some DVD-R/+R format?

3. Does the ES20 have any built-in copy protection circuitry that would prevent #1 and #2 to begin with?


I have no need to record TV broadcasts or to transfer camcorder videos to DVD, so if #1 and #2 are not possible then I won't be buying the ES20.

If anyone knows of any other makes/models that would allow me to do #1 and #2 please let me know, thanks.

I tried the Panny E20 and was not impressed. The picture quality was good but no better than some less expensive units. The fact that any disc feature (format, finalize, etc, block out the screen while being performed is stupid to say the least.. When you insert a new blank disc you have to have your tv on to see the format disc? Y/N. Well duh, why not just do it. The commercial skip only works if your using the ram disk. Did they ever think I might want to use it on a DVD-RW disk or a DVD plus or minus disk. There is no disk editing features for cutting out commercials etc. Plus what they do have only works on DVD-RAM(VR) I have a Panny 42" Plasma HDTV and it is the best. I can't believe they fell so short on their DVD recorders. The best featured DVD recorder I have found is made by FUNAI electronics. Auto initalize new disks. Can be set to auto finalize disks either at the end of a programmed recording session or at disk full. No more waiting to finalize when you go to take out the disk, its already done. Has a full complement of editing tools second to none. Can edit out commercials, create chapers, change the picture on the menu for the program. Its unbelievable. Funai builds DVD and DVD/VCR recorders also under the Symphonic, Emerson and Sylvania brands. The only draw back is the remote. While its larger than the Ilo's remote, it is still to small for my taste. The model I bought was the Emerson EWR20V5 DVD & VCR recorder combo which has more buttons due to the VCR. The picture recording is excellent and records in stereo. The fast forward is alot more fluid than the Panny when skipping forward. The commercial skip works on any disc and each time you press the button it adds 30 secs to the on screen display as it skips forward. This is the best DVD recorder that I have tried, and believe me I have tried most of the top brands.

Happy Recording

Hey Dominator, I'm with you on the Funai! I picked up a Sylvania DVR-90VF combo unit from Sears 2wks ago on sale for $150, it is the latest model, & can play 8X media (factory upgraded from the older models), and I am constantly being pleasantly surprised by the features, stability of playing, & burning of discs, and the overall common sense user friendliness of the unit, everthing about it is fluid. DVD Pic. Quality, pretty good, and I did not buy it just for the VCR, my older panny VCR's have a better pic, although it's not that bad. I was just trying to find any Funai spinoff Basic DVD recorder only, but couldn't? Like looking for a needle in the haystack at this time. I've been hesitating returning it because it won me over, and I can find nothing wrong with it. (by the way, I just found out the tuner is Stereo!), and surround has more dimension then my Panny RV-26. Another item, Funai is a japanese based company.

I just wish it came in Black, & had flexible record, or 3hr record mode.

Some questions I could use help with:

Have had a es20 for a couple days, first dvd recorder. Am on rabbit ears tv reception, tv set with rf in only, am using a vhs unit to interface the es20 with the tv. Also have a HTPC with a 4x3 panasonic 75u projector.

Initial reason for buying the es20 is for getting my analog 8mm camcorder tape to dvd. Want ability to do advanced editing and reproduction, so need to replace the HTPC's dvd player with a writer. Figured using a -rw in the es20, then into the htpc for editing. Re reading this thread, I see dvd writers that will read dvd ram are common and inexpensive? So I might use dvd ram to the pc instead of -r/-rw.. Thoughts?


1. Not clear about the file formats the es20 will use, and what the pc will see. Will something like smartripper see the dvd ram files, and what about the 5 minute finalized -r/-rw chapters? Is this not a problem to rip to HD and edit? Will I see big vob's or a bunch of 5 minute vob's. I have ripped to HD in the past but will be new to doing anything edited related.

2. Any ideas why I have no signal when using s video from es20 to the projector? Played around with options on both units..

3. What about a component to vga cable, es20 to projector. Looking for a better TV signal than composite. Component out only works in dvd playback? so could record tv in dvd ram and use chase play to get 'live' tv into the projector via component?

Appreciate any ideas/help

I only have an suggestion for #2. Are you able to get any output from the ES20 using the S-video output? eg can you see it on a TV, VCR, etc? Or is the problem only when used with the projector?

I don't have anything that takes Component input so I don't know how it behaves.

I don't have any experience with PC DVD burners, so i dont have any experience there either. Using -RAM with the ES20 for your tasks as described above has two potential benefits: -RAM lasts for many more burns than -RW, and you don't have to finalize the -RAM. (unless the PC DVD burner can read the unfinalized -RW(V) generated by the ES20).

1. I would like to make DVD copies of my VHS movies...does the ES20 do this in real time? Would it be any faster or slower than real time?
The ES20 can only do it at real time. There is no high speed or low speed mode.


2. I would like to made CD-R/WMA copies of my music cassette tapes so that I can listen to them on any CD player...is this possible with the ES20 or would I have to record them into some DVD-R/+R format?


I haven't tried that but it should work (I am guessing)


3. Does the ES20 have any built-in copy protection circuitry that would prevent #1 and #2 to begin with?


There is copy-protection when you try to copy a commercial (store-bought) DVD to it. I have not tried commercial VHS tapes yet but I should now that you have reminded me :)

There are some add-on devices that allow you to legally make copies for fair use that are discussed in this forum.

So far I have been able to record on any media (+R/-R/-RW) without any copy-protection the following things from cable: all analog/digital cable channels, Showtime, Free OnDemand, Showtime OnDemand. I have not tried recording a PayPerView movie yet.

I tried the Panny E20 and was not impressed. The picture quality was good but no better than some less expensive units. The fact that any disc feature (format, finalize, etc, block out the screen while being performed is stupid to say the least.. When you insert a new blank disc you have to have your tv on to see the format disc? Y/N. Well duh, why not just do it. The commercial skip only works if your using the ram disk. Did they ever think I might want to use it on a DVD-RW disk or a DVD plus or minus disk. There is no disk editing features for cutting out commercials etc. Plus what they do have only works on DVD-RAM(VR) I have a Panny 42" Plasma HDTV and it is the best. I can't believe they fell so short on their DVD recorders. The best featured DVD recorder I have found is made by FUNAI electronics. Auto initalize new disks. Can be set to auto finalize disks either at the end of a programmed recording session or at disk full. No more waiting to finalize when you go to take out the disk, its already done. Has a full complement of editing tools second to none. Can edit out commercials, create chapers, change the picture on the menu for the program. Its unbelievable. Funai builds DVD and DVD/VCR recorders also under the Symphonic, Emerson and Sylvania brands. The only draw back is the remote. While its larger than the Ilo's remote, it is still to small for my taste. The model I bought was the Emerson EWR20V5 DVD & VCR recorder combo which has more buttons due to the VCR. The picture recording is excellent and records in stereo. The fast forward is alot more fluid than the Panny when skipping forward. The commercial skip works on any disc and each time you press the button it adds 30 secs to the on screen display as it skips forward. This is the best DVD recorder that I have tried, and believe me I have tried most of the top brands.

Happy Recording

One correction on the ES20 Commercial Skip: It works on unfinalized -R, +R and -RW(Video). But it does not work once you finalize them. You do not need to turn on the TV to format it though, once you become familiar with the menu sequence.

I believe Panasonic is adding an auto-finalize type of thing in their 2006 models. Perhaps they have discovered a number of people want such a feature.

I agree with you those format and finalize menus ask for confirmation too many times. Maybe they need to add a "Just Do It" button :)

I haven't used any other recorders, so I don't know how they all compare.

Does the Funai use the +R/+RW or both +/-?

I like that the Panny's are a pain with the "Flialization" because you have no right to complain if you screwed up & finalized something by mistake which I've almost done a couple of times if it wern't for all that button pressing.

But maybe they could add an option like "Don't Show Me This Again" :D for people that can't stand it.

Funai/ Emerson/Sylvania/Symphonic/Audiovox,,, Use -R/-RW media, and give you a clickable option in the menu for auto-finalize when finished.

I wish the ES20 Commercial Skip worked with finalized discs. I wonder what changes when finalizing a disc that disables this feature.

Mike

I was doing a Timer/FR last night and I noticed something:

When the recording started today and ended tomorrow, the FR mode would report thousands (!) of hours left oh the DVD. When I changed the ending to 11:59PM of the same day, it showed the correct amount of time. I have only observed this specific behavior on one DVD so far. I have noticed the "thousands of hours" problem a few times before. The problem is when it thinks there are thousands of FR hours left, it will use the lowest possible mode to record (something like 8h EP) which could be a disaster if you are trying to fill up a disc with a recording at a higher quality.


I will test this more later tonight when it gets closer to midnight. A "live" FR mode does not have this problem.

This could explain the inconsistencies of the Timer/FR mode - the bug may actually be the day/date change!

How is the video and audio output quality using the ES20 as a player for commercial dvd's. I am thinking of getting this and using it as my primary player as well as a recorder (try to limit clutter on the stand). I have a 51 inch HDTV so video quality is important when watching movies.

Thanks,
Bob

Bob, when you asked about the playback quality last week I failed to mention one annoying feature: no memory. Unlike other DVD players that will resume at the point a disc is stopped, the ES 20 will not do so once the unit is turned off.

It is annoying since we watch some movies over a span of a day or so but if that is not a problem, certainly go ahead with the set. It's 5.1 is fine.

I was doing a Timer/FR last night and I noticed something:

When the recording started today and ended tomorrow, the FR mode would report thousands (!) of hours left oh the DVD. When I changed the ending to 11:59PM of the same day, it showed the correct amount of time. I have only observed this specific behavior on one DVD so far. I have noticed the "thousands of hours" problem a few times before. The problem is when it thinks there are thousands of FR hours left, it will use the lowest possible mode to record (something like 8h EP) which could be a disaster if you are trying to fill up a disc with a recording at a higher quality.


I will test this more later tonight when it gets closer to midnight. A "live" FR mode does not have this problem.

This could explain the inconsistencies of the Timer/FR mode - the bug may actually be the day/date change!


Regarding my earlier posting about FR mode and not filling the disc:

I just checked the disc properties. Recording started at 9:59PM and went for 2hrs 29 mins. It only partially filled the disc. I still have 2hrs 50min available in LP mode.

This appears to be the same bug you have experienced.

Just to clarify, since you have noticed this on only one DVD so far, does this mean you have successfully recorded FR mode when ending the next day? Or have only recorded into the following day on only one occasion?

Did the "thousands of hours" show up on the DVD after it was burned? Or just when setting up the recording schedule? When playing around just now, I do not get "thousands of hours" to display in the schedule. That does not mean it won't happen in future of course. The other times that you noticed "thousands of hours", what did you do to work around it? Or did the recordings just happen to come out properly anyway?

Mike

I purchased the Panasonic ES-20 last week because my 8 year old Panasonic VCR was on its last legs. I have a HD Tivo so I didn't need a recorder with a hard drive. But I wanted to archive some of my VCR tapes and occasionally copy programs from my Tivo to disc to share with friends and family.

I purchased the ES-20 from Amazon for $169 including shipping, and amazingly, received it in two days. Prior to burning any discs, I flashed the firmware to the latest version, which was a painless process.

I have been very happy with the unit so far, with no glitches to date. I have filled 9 discs from old VCR tapes (approx 50 hours of recording time), and the recording quality looks very good on my Panasonic plasma. I have used different brands and types of discs, and the recorder has never flinched. I don't anticipate needing much in the way of editing features, so the lack of them doesn't bother me. I just wanted a dependable machine that would do what I wanted it to do for a decent price, and so far it has.

I am pleased with my decision to go with the ES-20.

Funai/ Emerson/Sylvania/Symphonic/Audiovox,,, Use -R/-RW media, and give you a clickable option in the menu for auto-finalize when finished.

That is a very practical feature especially for people who fill up a DVD in one session!

I wish the ES20 Commercial Skip worked with finalized discs. I wonder what changes when finalizing a disc that disables this feature.

Mike

I am guessing the crazy marketing people are responsible.

The ES20 can CM-skip/TimeSlip on unfinalized +Rs but not on finalized.
The ES20 cannot CM-skip/TimeSlip on finalized -Rs but the S29 (dvd player) can.
The S29 can CM-skip/TimeSlip on -R but not on +R


Memo to Panasonic:

Dear Panasonic Marketing people,

Please stop screwing around with the feature sets! :)

Regarding my earlier posting about FR mode and not filling the disc:

I just checked the disc properties. Recording started at 9:59PM and went for 2hrs 29 mins. It only partially filled the disc. I still have 2hrs 50min available in LP mode.

This appears to be the same bug you have experienced.
Wow I think we are close to nailing down the bug :) I don't remember for sure, but after you asked the question, the Timer/FR ones that I can remember off the top of my head were scheduled at night (and finished after midnight). Not 100% sure though. I will try a few more on -RW/-RAM, or on my "test/ruined" -R/+Rs.


Just to clarify, since you have noticed this on only one DVD so far, does this mean you have successfully recorded FR mode when ending the next day? Or have only recorded into the following day on only one occasion?
Some of the Timer/FRs that went into the following day completed successfully but only when they showed the correct duration when pressing the remote's "Display" button twice. I think the successful ones were mostly 4h:20m-4h:40m. The ones with problems were of shorter FR durations (in between 2h to 4h:0x minutes).

If the "thousands of hours" appeared, every single one was recorded at 8hr EP or so. I notice from your example above that the recording mode was slightly longer than 8hEP. That was the case in a couple of mine when I did the calculations.

The "live" FR mode complete successfully whether they crossed over a day or not. I did not notice "thousands of hours" with "live" FR mode on discs that just showed me "thousands of hours" with Timer/FR.



Did the "thousands of hours" show up on the DVD after it was burned? Or just when setting up the recording schedule? When playing around just now, I do not get "thousands of hours" to display in the schedule. That does not mean it won't happen in future of course. The other times that you noticed "thousands of hours", what did you do to work around it? Or did the recordings just happen to come out properly anyway?

Ooops sorry I didnt specify enough details. The "thousands of hours" appear on the TV screen when I press the remote's DISPLAY button twice when a Timer/FR scheduled recording is in progress. I dont remember what the front panel LCD shows. I dont recall noticing the "thousands of hours" displayed at any other time or place.

Every single time I noticed "thousands of hours" the recording was recorded at the lowest possible quality (8hr EP or so), but at the correct duration (but essentially unusable since most of the stuff I record look horrible at 8hr EP).

Initially I had assumed it was either bad media or because I had already previously erased title(s) from the DVD, but that doesn't seem to be the case. The workaround was to do a "live FR" which worked every time but it has the downside of not turning the ES20 off when it finishes recording.

Another thing I am going to test is how to specify the end time: One way is by entering the time directly (eg 3:05AM), the other is by pressing the up/down arrows with by-minute/30-minute increments. Hopefully if the bug happens in only one of the two, then we have a workaround! I usually enter the time by numbers, not by pressing the up/down buttons.

I received my ES20 today. I have a question about playback. Are most of you guys and gals using the ES20 for playback too or are you using a dedicated player? How does the quality compare to your dedicated if you are using such? Can I get rid of my Magnovox (which has been a good player) and utilize the ES20 alone? I'm projecting with a Panny PT-L500u through component. I would appreciate any comments...


TIA

I received my ES20 today. I have a question about playback. Are most of you guys and gals using the ES20 for playback too or are you using a dedicated player? How does the quality compare to your dedicated if you are using such? Can I get rid of my Magnovox (which has been a good player) and utilize the ES20 alone? I'm projecting with a Panny PT-L500u through component. I would appreciate any comments...

TIA

I have an ES20 but I can't comment on picture and sound quality since I am using a small TV and entry-level components.

Generally, the stand-alone dvd players have more features when playing commercial or finalized DVDs.

I had an ancient Apex dvd player and just recently got a Panasonic S29. The main reason I got the S29 was so that I can watch other DVDs while the recorder is recording. The secondary reason was to prevent excessive wear on the recorder since I use it a lot. The additional playback features of the standalone dvd player come in handy as well.

I received my ES20 today. I have a question about playback. Are most of you guys and gals using the ES20 for playback too or are you using a dedicated player? How does the quality compare to your dedicated if you are using such? Can I get rid of my Magnovox (which has been a good player) and utilize the ES20 alone? I'm projecting with a Panny PT-L500u through component. I would appreciate any comments...


TIA

We use the ES 20 for playback however we also have a non-progressive scan Sharp player which we use when recording onto the ES 20 or to give the ES 20 a break from being used so much.

The Sharp is not progressive-scan but it's picture quality is quite good. If your Magnavox is not progressive scan it might not completely match the picture quality of the ES 20 but still be good enough as a backup.

I would suggest holding on to your older player but to compare a DVD on each before making a final decision.

Mike99,

I have a couple of updates:

1) I tried the same thing with a Sony 2x DVD-RW which for me it has been as reliable as DVD-RAM (no problems whatsoever so far). It did the same thing: If the Timer/FR duration went past midnight it showed "thousands of hours". If it ended before midnight it was all good.

Actually I counted the zeros and it is actually 1.1 million hours! The front panel LCD shows "FR 66:03" - just 66 hours :) [this is when I press DISPLAY twice on the remote while the Timer/FR recording is in progress].

2) A correction:

Some of the Timer/FRs that went into the following day completed successfully but only when they showed the correct duration when pressing the remote's "Display" button twice. I think the successful ones were mostly 4h:20m-4h:40m. The ones with problems were of shorter FR durations (in between 2h to 4h:0x minutes).
I mentioned above that there were some Timer/FR that completed successfully overnight but when I tried to find a specific DVD to check it out I couldn't think of any off the top of my head. I don't have a PC DVD drive to check the start time, and the finalized ones don't have any time stamp since I edit the title name. So, to summarize, I am not sure if any Timer/FR crossing the day boundary completed as expected.

Mike99,

I have a couple of updates:

1) I tried the same thing with a Sony 2x DVD-RW which for me it has been as reliable as DVD-RAM (no problems whatsoever so far). It did the same thing: If the Timer/FR duration went past midnight it showed "thousands of hours". If it ended before midnight it was all good.

Actually I counted the zeros and it is actually 1.1 million hours! The front panel LCD shows "FR 66:03" - just 66 hours :) [this is when I press DISPLAY twice on the remote while the Timer/FR recording is in progress].

2) A correction:

I mentioned above that there were some Timer/FR that completed successfully overnight but when I tried to find a specific DVD to check it out I couldn't think of any off the top of my head. I don't have a PC DVD drive to check the start time, and the finalized ones don't have any time stamp since I edit the title name. So, to summarize, I am not sure if any Timer/FR crossing the day boundary completed as expected.


If the "thousands of hours" only appears while the recording is in progress, the problem is going to be difficult to catch and/or correct if one is not around.

I recall only one time that I recorded into the next day, but will play around a bit. Also, I have been using the up/down arrows to set the time, & channel. I did not know that you could enter the times directly. I thought I tried this setting the channel & it did not work. So I figured it would not work with time either. Thanks for the info.

Mike

I received my ES20 today. I have a question about playback. Are most of you guys and gals using the ES20 for playback too or are you using a dedicated player? How does the quality compare to your dedicated if you are using such? Can I get rid of my Magnovox (which has been a good player) and utilize the ES20 alone? I'm projecting with a Panny PT-L500u through component. I would appreciate any comments...


TIA

I use my ES20 for playback also. It replaced an older Sony. The Sony would not even play a CD-R. Talk about being outdated. I cannot tell any difference in the PQ between the two.

What I miss with the ES20 is being able to display the playback time remaining for either the whole movie or just a chapter. The Sony did both, in addition to how much has already played. The Sony also displayed the video & audio bit rates.

Mike

Mike99,

I have a couple of updates:

1) I tried the same thing with a Sony 2x DVD-RW which for me it has been as reliable as DVD-RAM (no problems whatsoever so far). It did the same thing: If the Timer/FR duration went past midnight it showed "thousands of hours". If it ended before midnight it was all good.

Actually I counted the zeros and it is actually 1.1 million hours! The front panel LCD shows "FR 66:03" - just 66 hours :) [this is when I press DISPLAY twice on the remote while the Timer/FR recording is in progress].

2) A correction:

I mentioned above that there were some Timer/FR that completed successfully overnight but when I tried to find a specific DVD to check it out I couldn't think of any off the top of my head. I don't have a PC DVD drive to check the start time, and the finalized ones don't have any time stamp since I edit the title name. So, to summarize, I am not sure if any Timer/FR crossing the day boundary completed as expected.


I tried several scheduled timer recordings that went past midnight & also got over a million hours when displaying the status on screen, and over 62 hours on the unit's front panel. It's weird to see the remaining time change when viewing the status before recording, to a million hours after recording starts!

I even split up the recording. I timed to 12:00am for program 1. And then made program 2 start at 12:00am. Both in FR mode. I figured if it did not roll over midnight, maybe all would be well. No such luck - program 1 changed to a million hours, with the resultant slow speed and poor quality.

I guess I'll do the firmware upgrade. But not until I watch a few programs that I time-shifted. Just in case something goes wrong & the unit becomes inoperable. I'll keep you informed.

Mike

I tried several scheduled timer recordings that went past midnight & also got over a million hours when displaying the status on screen, and over 62 hours on the unit's front panel. It's weird to see the remaining time change when viewing the status before recording, to a million hours after recording starts!

I even split up the recording. I timed to 12:00am for program 1. And then made program 2 start at 12:00am. Both in FR mode. I figured if it did not roll over midnight, maybe all would be well. No such luck - program 1 changed to a million hours, with the resultant slow speed and poor quality.

I guess I'll do the firmware upgrade. But not until I watch a few programs that I time-shifted. Just in case something goes wrong & the unit becomes inoperable. I'll keep you informed.

Mike

Interesting stuff! So basically if we avoid a Timer/FR from crossing a day boundary, it will record as expected. I tried one to start and finish right after midnight, and another one during the day, and they both recorded as expected. So it appears we have narrowed down the scope of the Timer/FR bug which is a good thing. Now I have to stay up until after midnight if I want to start an overnight Timer/FR from VHS or DVR! Grrrrrrr @ Panasonic! Of course this does not help with RF recordings since their start/end time is fixed.

I was doing ChasePlay of an RF recording (9-11pm) on a DVD-RAM and while in playback, at one point, pressing Display twice showed me millions of hours left! I do not remember exactly when it happened, I think it was either as the recording was ending, or after it ended. It did not happen while the recording was in progress. But everything recorded as expected.

I also noticed that while doing ChasePlay I didn't get any close captioning on the TV. When I played the program after the recording finished the close captioning on the TV was okay. I don't remember if this was how it is designed or a bug...

I tried several scheduled timer recordings that went past midnight & also got over a million hours when displaying the status on screen, and over 62 hours on the unit's front panel. It's weird to see the remaining time change when viewing the status before recording, to a million hours after recording starts!

I even split up the recording. I timed to 12:00am for program 1. And then made program 2 start at 12:00am. Both in FR mode. I figured if it did not roll over midnight, maybe all would be well. No such luck - program 1 changed to a million hours, with the resultant slow speed and poor quality.

I guess I'll do the firmware upgrade. But not until I watch a few programs that I time-shifted. Just in case something goes wrong & the unit becomes inoperable. I'll keep you informed.

Mike


I upgraded the firmware & it made no difference. I sent Panasonic an e-mail & will see what they say.

Mike

I upgraded the firmware & it made no difference. I sent Panasonic an e-mail & will see what they say.

Mike

I agree. After a few weeks of testing I've concluded that the firmware update is useless in fixing the timer recording issues. Panasonic needs to get a fix out that actually works.

I upgraded the firmware & it made no difference. I sent Panasonic an e-mail & will see what they say.

Mike

I just found an older DVD i recorded earlier on and did not finalize. Same thing: Started at 10:30pm, finished at 2am at Timer/FR, recorded at 8hr FR instead of filling up the disc. I think it is almost guaranteed that a Timer/FR that crosses into the following day would not fill up the disc, but record at the lowest possible resolution.

That behavior is actually pretty easy to explain as a bug that miscalculates the length of the program due to it crossing days. It would come up with a negative length which may be interpreted as a really large positive number, then try to figure out which FR speed is best for it and of course pick the longest one (8hr).

That behavior is actually pretty easy to explain as a bug that miscalculates the length of the program due to it crossing days. It would come up with a negative length which may be interpreted as a really large positive number, then try to figure out which FR speed is best for it and of course pick the longest one (8hr).

Someone needs to teach Panasonic engineers how to do binary addition and subtraction! The funny thing is that when it gets in this weird mode, it actually goes slightly longer than 8hr. It's like an 8hr10min mode.

Now I wonder if this bug is present in other Panasonic DVD recorders of the same and of previous generations!

Is it my imagination or are most of the bugs and gripes being reported on this thread all coming from ES20 owners who are trying to record TV/cable broadcasts, rather than those recording from DVDs, VHS, CDs or cassettes?

Just asking as a prospective ES20 buyer, since I will be using it for everything else other than TV recording...doesn't sound too buggy there, or am I missing something?

Edster after a few days use now, I find it to make clean, clear,excellent recordings, with great sound,,, of anything. Be aware the tuner is not the best, and I haven't even tried the S-video, or component cables yet. Good Luck, Mike

I upgraded the firmware & it made no difference. I sent Panasonic an e-mail & will see what they say.

Mike

Panny's reply was to call them for assistance, so I did. I explained the problem to the gentleman I spoke with & that others also had experienced the same. He was not aware of the bug & also did ask co-workers. I suggested he try out a simple scheduled recording & also referred him to this forum. I explained the firmware upgrade made no difference. He said the newest upgrade was about a 1 1/2 weeks ago, which is a newer date than what is on their web site. He did not know the latest version number because he did not have one, but would mail me a disc & should take about 3 days. This latest version is supposed to correct scheduled recordings, but not known if it corrects this particular bug. I explained their Canadian web site listed a newer upgrade number than the USA web site. But again it is not known which version he is sending to me. I'll report back after I get the new disc & do the latest upgrade.

Mike

Edster after a few days use now, I find it to make clean, clear,excellent recordings, with great sound,,, of anything. Be aware the tuner is not the best, and I haven't even tried the S-video, or component cables yet. Good Luck, Mike

Thanks. I really really wish it could burn CDs too, only the LiteOn 5005 does that but I've read mixed reviews on that one.

Is it normal that the audio on a -RW disc is only through the center channel? When I look at the display it says "stereo", and plays fine when using 2-channel, but not prologic.

Abanks8, Ok, here's the issue I have, maybe your problem too, In my area of Pa. Blue Ridge cable, when using the RF (coax) connection, from the cable box output, there is no stereo signal, only mono, if you bypass the cable box using (coax) right from the wall, you should get stereo, but lose the premium channels. But, when you use the composite A/V cables from the cable box using L1, or L2, and use the cable box as the channel tuner, it should be stereo

Try this and see if that's your problem also? If so SUCKY isn't it!

You might be able to use the RF cable (coax) out of a stereo VCR, with the ES-20 on channel 3 (like a VCR), if you use the composite in from the cable box to the VCR, and composite out to the TV, like I'm doing. Then you should have stereo, and the cable box as your channel selector. But, only being able to utilize the present channel on the cable box for viewing, or recording.

Is it normal that the audio on a -RW disc is only through the center channel? When I look at the display it says "stereo", and plays fine when using 2-channel, but not prologic

Do not be confused by the wonderful pronounced High Fidelity quality mono sound you will get, but you want this to be in stereo, (separation of channels) in order to capture, and play the surround sound. It can be deceiving.

...I've pretty much decided to get the ES20 anyways even if it doesn't burn CD-Rs!

I figure I can just burn music from cassettes and CDs into DVD-R, and put the DVD-R into my computer's DVD drive, copy to my computer's HDD as .wav or mp3 files and then use my computer's CD burner to put it onto CD-Rs.

Decided that since I can get the ES20 from my local Circuit City for maybe $10 more than online, it'd be safer in case I needed to make any returns/exchanges. The LiteOn 5005 just sounds like it is not as mechanically reliable and has inferior playback capability.

Just wanted to make sure. Am I missing anything there?

Edster, you might want to check this unit out, it also supposedly records to CD-R/RW, it is new to their website, because I've been checking there recently. It is probably a Lite on clone, but might be worth a gamble.
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=646857

Edster, you might want to check this unit out, it also supposedly records to CD-R/RW, it is new to their website, because I've been checking there recently. It is probably a Lite on clone, but might be worth a gamble.
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=646857

Thanks! You're right, according to the RadioShack site it can record to CD-R but it costs $100 more than the Panny, and I needed the $100 for a Sima CT-200 to go with it anyways. It probably is licensed from LiteOn somehow, because "All Write Technology" is a LiteOn trademark if I'm not mistaken.

Damn, sure wish I could find one without the 80GB HDD for around $150 instead.

Is it my imagination or are most of the bugs and gripes being reported on this thread all coming from ES20 owners who are trying to record TV/cable broadcasts, rather than those recording from DVDs, VHS, CDs or cassettes?

Just asking as a prospective ES20 buyer, since I will be using it for everything else other than TV recording...doesn't sound too buggy there, or am I missing something?

A number of the bugs are in the Timer/Scheduler, which usually appear when people are recording TV/cable broadcasts. That, along with media sensitivity with +R discs are probably causing a lot of of the problems reported.

For non-timer recordings, the ES20 cannot pause when recording in FR mode, which may be a problem for those who want to remove commercials by pausing while recording. You can pause if you use XP/SP/LP/EP in non-timer recordings.

Phooey!

After tearing through 10 hours of camcorder content on the analog input without a hitch, I have burned three coasters trying to record material off the firewire port.

Each time, 52 minutes in, the picture from the ES20 freezes while the camcorder plays on. If I press "stop" on the ES20 I see "writing information on the disc" which never completes; I have to pull the plug to regain control. This has happened three times in a row: twice with original firmware, and once with newer firmware dated Dec 2005. I've sent in a plea to Panasonic support and will follow up here. If unresolved, this thing is going back to the store.

This is all on the same source DV tape, using the same Verbatim 8x DVD-R media I've used to capture 6 discs of analog content. I'll guess I'll try a different source tape while I wait for Panny to respond.

Even worse! I figured as a workaround, I'd back the tape up to where the recorder froze, and continue on the same DVD. 90 seconds into this attempt, the #%&#er froze again. I'm using XP instead of SP, I wonder if that's the issue--I was able to add a third title and finish the tape in SP mode.

Edit: the third title didn't show up when I went to play the disc elsewhere. Bleh.

Phooey!

After tearing through 10 hours of camcorder content on the analog input without a hitch, I have burned three coasters trying to record material off the firewire port.

Each time, 52 minutes in, the picture from the ES20 freezes while the camcorder plays on. If I press "stop" on the ES20 I see "writing information on the disc" which never completes; I have to pull the plug to regain control. This has happened three times in a row: twice with original firmware, and once with newer firmware dated Dec 2005. I've sent in a plea to Panasonic support and will follow up here. If unresolved, this thing is going back to the store.

This is all on the same source DV tape, using the same Verbatim 8x DVD-R media I've used to capture 6 discs of analog content. I'll guess I'll try a different source tape while I wait for Panny to respond.

You can reset the ES20 without unplugging it, by pressing the power button on the ES20 (not the remote) for 10+ seconds. It is mentioned in the back of the user manual in the troubleshooting section.

I have no experience with the DV input so I don't know.

Did you try using other DVD types or brands? For example, if the problem happens with the Panasonic DVD-RAM (eg the one included with the ES20) that would almost certainly rule out any DVD media issues. It may be a good idea to try with rewriteables first, so you don't waste the write-once DVDs.

You can reset the ES20 without unplugging it, by pressing the power button on the ES20 (not the remote) for 10+ seconds. It is mentioned in the back of the user manual in the troubleshooting section.
Handy. Thanks!

I have no experience with the DV input so I don't know.

Did you try using other DVD types or brands?
I've got 10 DVDs full of SP camcorder content--not one issue with this media (Verbatim -R 8x). I've recorded a couple more hours using DV at the SP level, so I believe I've got a problem with XP.

So now that you mention it, maybe there is indeed a problem with media at the XP speed--I am asking it to write to disc twice as fast after all.

Last night I tried to reproduce the problem with a DVD-RW, but I was unable to get the machine to recognize/format the disc.

I guess I'll live with SP until this batch of blanks is gone, but it's still bumming me out.

I have a DMR ES-20 and have had problems getting good volume out of my recordings off my Moto 6412 DVR. I had the DVR connected to the ES-20 via red/white cables and the resulting DVD could barely be heard with my Onkyo receiver turned all the way up. I tried using the optical connection and got slightly more volume out of the DVD but certainly not loud enough.

Is there something wrong with my ES-20 or am I doing something wrong? Should I go to Circuit City and swap out the ES-20?

By the way, I am recording HD content onto a -R disc. (It looks great! I just need sound!)

Thanks in advance.

My ES-20 is going back in the box, and back to the store as soon as I have time to get rid of it.

I've had it for a week, and things were going well at first. I've been recording the Olympics on the DVR, then snaging highlights on the DVD.

Last night, I set the thing to record the entire opening ceremonies and went to bed. This morning I found the ES-20 frozen solid, and once I rebooted it wouldn't recognize the disc that had been burned.

I figured I'd flash the firmware and see how that works. The update went smoothly, and I went back grabbing Olympic highlights.

That's when it happened again. I had something like 25-26 clips on the DVD, and was adding another when the ES-20 once again locked up. Again, I had to re-boot, and again I had a disc that the player doesn't recognize. The display simply says "Err"

I'm really, really upset about this. In the grand scheme of things it is not a big deal, but I am a big Olympic Games freak, and I'm sorry to have lost all of that work.

Unless someone can point me to a magic bullet that will salvage my highlight DVD, this thing is going back, and it will be the last Panasonic product I buy.

After reading this thread, and my own experiences, I'm convicned that the ES-20 is A PIECE OF WORTHLESS JUNK.

Fed, up. I'm taking it back to the store.

Different source tape, Sony camcorder plugged into DV/firewire input. Verbatim 8X DVD-R, MCC formula -- a known good brand, and I have 12 good burns in a row from the analog input on this media.

53 minutes into the SP recording I start to hear brief audio dropouts, and after a couple of minutes of that the video starts to stutter a bit. Then the video freezes again, same symptom as before.

Now I'm pissed and just want to finish this project. So I reformatted the DVD-RAM that came in the box with the player, and tried to record the material to that. Same result!

Conclusion: this unit can't 60 minute recording sessions over firewire, with or without the latest firmware. Bye bye ES20. :-(

I have a DMR ES-20 and have had problems getting good volume out of my recordings off my Moto 6412 DVR. I had the DVR connected to the ES-20 via red/white cables and the resulting DVD could barely be heard with my Onkyo receiver turned all the way up. I tried using the optical connection and got slightly more volume out of the DVD but certainly not loud enough.

Is there something wrong with my ES-20 or am I doing something wrong? Should I go to Circuit City and swap out the ES-20?

By the way, I am recording HD content onto a -R disc. (It looks great! I just need sound!)

Thanks in advance.

Jake,

Adjust the audio output on your cable box to "other" (rather than HDMI or Dolby Digital) then the audio range to "narrow" (instead of wide or normal). This will increase the analog input going into your DVD recorder either directly or though a recording saved on DVR. When set to HDMI or Dolby (both digital) the volume is lower on non-digital sources like a DVD recorder.

When you don't want to record a program onto DVD re-adjust your settings back to the above for 5.1 sound from a live broadcast or DVR (just remember it will be lower should you decide you want to keep in on DVD).

- Joe

Slightly OT, but I get better results moving stuff from the 6412 to the ES20 using a 2 step process: transfer to laptop via firewire, then from laptop to recorder via s-vid.

Switching gears, I'm also on the verge of returning the ES20 to the store. Anyone know if the EH50 is in stock anywhere?

Jake,

Adjust the audio output on your cable box to "other" (rather than HDMI or Dolby Digital) then the audio range to "narrow" (instead of wide or normal). This will increase the analog input going into your DVD recorder either directly or though a recording saved on DVR. When set to HDMI or Dolby (both digital) the volume is lower on non-digital sources like a DVD recorder.

When you don't want to record a program onto DVD re-adjust your settings back to the above for 5.1 sound from a live broadcast or DVR (just remember it will be lower should you decide you want to keep in on DVD).

- Joe

Thanks so much, Joe, I really do appreciate it!

I'll give it a whirl when I get home from work.

Thanks so much, Joe, I really do appreciate it!

I'll give it a whirl when I get home from work.

Jake,

It will work because I've had to make the same adjustment.

It is especially helpful for listening or recording from any music stations your provider offers - the sound will be rich and fuller set this way.

Let me know how it works out,

Joe

I received the firmware update Panasonic sent me which, hopefully, was to correct the timer FR mode problem previous discussed & experienced by some. Well it did not make any difference. It was version U3-152, dated Jan 23, 2006. This appears to be the same one mentioned on the Canadian Panny web site. The disc is labeled "Panasonic of North America", which should be for both USA and Canada. Anyway, it did not make any difference.

Those who have other problems may want to try this latest update & download it from Canada.

When I spoke with Panny, they gave me the address of a local Digital Service Center & said I could send my unit in (but cannot drop it off). I politely commented what good will that do since they will not have any newer firmware than the version being sent to me. Since their response time for mailing the disc to me was quick, perhaps I'll mail them a letter & hope for a quick reply.

Mike

I received the firmware update Panasonic sent me which, hopefully, was to correct the timer FR mode problem previous discussed & experienced by some. Well it did not make any difference. It was version U3-152, dated Jan 23, 2006. This appears to be the same one mentioned on the Canadian Panny web site. The disc is labeled "Panasonic of North America", which should be for both USA and Canada. Anyway, it did not make any difference.

Those who have other problems may want to try this latest update & download it from Canada.

When I spoke with Panny, they gave me the address of a local Digital Service Center & said I could send my unit in (but cannot drop it off). I politely commented what good will that do since they will not have any newer firmware than the version being sent to me. Since their response time for mailing the disc to me was quick, perhaps I'll mail them a letter & hope for a quick reply.

Mike

Interesting. Thanks for letting us know! It looks like the Panasonic engineers don't know how to do basic calculations :-(

Ever since we confirmed the day-changing bug of a Timer/FR, all the same-day Timer/FRs I have done have been successful. I do manual FR if they cross into the next day.

Interesting. Thanks for letting us know! It looks like the Panasonic engineers don't know how to do basic calculations :-(

Ever since we confirmed the day-changing bug of a Timer/FR, all the same-day Timer/FRs I have done have been successful. I do manual FR if they cross into the next day.

Doing a manual FR is a solution since we do know what causes the problem. I do mostly time-shifting so this won't be a big inconvenience for me. But you never know when I might need to use FR. After all the bug already bit me once.

I did type a letter to Panasonic. They were responsive & quick to mail me the update disc, so I'm hoping for a quick reply. I'm not expecting any miracles. But who knows, maybe it will get things going toward another firmware update. I did mention others had the same problem & therefore sending in my unit for repair was not going to solve the problem. So we'll see.

Mike

Jake,

It will work because I've had to make the same adjustment.

It is especially helpful for listening or recording from any music stations your provider offers - the sound will be rich and fuller set this way.

Let me know how it works out,

Joe

It worked like a charm! Thanks!

It worked like a charm! Thanks!

Hi Jake,

:) Glad to be of help. Sometimes I still forget to change the audio output prior to recording something onto DVR and get stuck with lower volume as well. :eek: You'll really notice a difference in sound on the music channels. :cool:

- Joe

Doing a manual FR is a solution since we do know what causes the problem. I do mostly time-shifting so this won't be a big inconvenience for me. But you never know when I might need to use FR. After all the bug already bit me once.

I did type a letter to Panasonic. They were responsive & quick to mail me the update disc, so I'm hoping for a quick reply. I'm not expecting any miracles. But who knows, maybe it will get things going toward another firmware update. I did mention others had the same problem & therefore sending in my unit for repair was not going to solve the problem. So we'll see.

Mike

Hopefully they will get their act together and fix it. I can't believe they didn't test something like this when they were producing the ES20.

I wonder if the ES10 or the ES30/40 have this bug.

I recorded a game from ESPN-Classic on my Comcast Moto 6412 DVR.

Then I recorded that to the Panasonic ES20 with Line-In NR = off.

Then as a test, I recorded a small part with Line-In NR = On.

ESPN Classic has a ticker at the bottom of the screen. Sometimes it is stand-still, sometimes it moves right-to-left across the screen (it is a ticker after all). When it moves, and with LineNR=ON, the letters are smoothed out so that you can't easily read them. With LineNR=OFF, the letters are readable.

Part of the issue is compression by Comcast/DVR as ESPN Classic comes off the wall with some minor compression artifacts to begin with.

(Line-IN NR = Noise Reduction applied to the Line 1 and Line 2 Inputs).

I'll have to play with Noise Reduction on the RF input. The tuner on the ES20 is not as clean as the tuner on S-VHS recorder, which I use for TV viewing. And the S-VHS tuner is also better than my TV tuner.

However recorded material on the ES20 ends up better looking than what was just viewed thru its tuner section. So I'm presuming Noise Reduction when recording is making the difference.

I'll try to play with NR in next day or two & see what happens.

Mike

I am thinking of buying a ES20. I plan to use this only for archiving VHS tapes and pulling content from my Dishnetwork DVR 522.

The 522 has a S-Video out and a Digital Audio out. These are hooked into a Yamaha Audio-Video receiver HTR-5850.

The DVR 522 will record Dolby 5.1 audio to the hard drive, from movies, and it plays back fine. My question is, will I be able to burn DVDs, on the ES20, that are Dolby 5.1 for playback? If so, how? If not, what DVD Recorder will do this? I do not have HDTV.

Thanks,

That's a negative. No DVD Recorders can take digital audio input, or even more than stereo analog audio input.

I have an ES30V and am trying to get things working with my Harmony 659 remote. Everything works well (although I had to 'teach' the remote most of the commands). The only thing I cannot get to work properly is the On and Off button. When I use the Harmony Remote to turn the ES30V on, the front panel of the ES30V says REMOTE and there is nothing on the screen. I press the DIRECT NAVAGATION key and it says HELLO and reads the disk. When I press the Harmony remote to turn the ES30V off it says REMOTE again and then goes to NAVI. I have to turn the ES30V off directly or wait for it to time out and shut itself off.

Does any one have any advice on how I can get the Harmony remote to truly turn off the ES30V?

Usually when that sign comes up in the display it means the REMOTE is not sending out the right Panasonic code to the recorder.

Remember the Panny Recorder has 3 different codes that it can be set on.

See your Owners Manual For:
"When Other Panasonic Products Respond To This Remote Control"
And it will tell you how to change the Remote Codes to 1, 2 or 3 & as you change them see if your Harmony will work on one of the codes.

I know the Number 1 code (The Factory Setting) on my Panny E55 is the standard Panasonic Code for DVD Products & I had to change the code on the recorder because it's remote was also working my Panny DVD player.

So fool with the Recorder Codes & maybe you'll get lucky & your Harmony will work on one of them.

Usually when that sign comes up in the display it means the REMOTE is not sending out the right Panasonic code to the recorder.

Remember the Panny Recorder has 3 different codes that it can be set on.

See your Owners Manual For:
"When Other Panasonic Products Respond To This Remote Control"
And it will tell you how to change the Remote Codes to 1, 2 or 3 & as you change them see if your Harmony will work on one of the codes.

I know the Number 1 code (The Factory Setting) on my Panny E55 is the standard Panasonic Code for DVD Products & I had to change the code on the recorder because it's remote was also working my Panny DVD player.

So fool with the Recorder Codes & maybe you'll get lucky & your Harmony will work on one of them.

I have 2 Panasonic recorders in the same room, and I set 1 to remote #1 and the other to remote #2. The remotes work fine for each recorder, but when I use remote #1, recorder #2 shows "check remote 1" on the display, and vice versa. Is this normal behavior?

Thanks for your answer and suggestions. Thing is I taught the Harmony remote the Panasonic remote's signal for On/Off. I did not use the codes. Maybe I have to teach it again. Will try and report back.

rgazzara, That's "Normal" & it's Panasonic's way of the Recorder telling you that the Recorder's Code doesn't match the Remote's Code. But it would have been nice if they had given us the option of turning "off" The Remote Check Display.

marchristensen, Not sure what you mean the Panasonic's ON/OFF code?

But try "Learning" the ON/OFF Code with the "Recorder" & "Panasonic Remote" both set for Code 1 then Code 2 then Code 3 because maybe they are different & the Harmony will "Learn" one of the Panny Codes?

rgazzara, That's "Normal" & it's Panasonic's way of the Recorder telling you that the Recorder's Code doesn't match the Remote's Code. But it would have been nice if they had given us the option of turning "off" The Remote Check Display.

Thanks Bill, that eases my mind.

I have 2 Panasonic recorders in the same room, and I set 1 to remote #1 and the other to remote #2. The remotes work fine for each recorder, but when I use remote #1, recorder #2 shows "check remote 1" on the display, and vice versa. Is this normal behavior?

I have a Panasonic DVD recorder and DVD player in the same room. I changed the remote code on the recorder, but everytime I press a button on the DVD player remote, the DVD recorder's front panel LCD/LED display shows "RC3" as a reminder that I am using a different remote control code.

I find this rather annoying, so what I have done is I found an angle that (the dvd player's remote control commands) hit the dvd player but not the dvd recorder, so I don't get the annoying message on the recorder :-)

As Bill1313 said above, it would have been nice if you could turn off the warning, or if they would show it a couple of times per session and then auto turned it off.

marchristensen, Not sure what you mean the Panasonic's ON/OFF code?

Harmony 659 is supposed to be able to auto program the remote, by my just telling it (via Harmony iweb site) that my DVD Recorder is a ES30V. That did not work, and I had to line the remote from the ES30V up with the Harmony 659 remote and send each buttons's signal to the Harmony remote. All buttons work except the on/off button. I will try and do that one again. I wasn't sure what REMOTE means on my remote. I have no way that I am aware of for putting a code into the Harmony Remote for the ES30V On/Off button.

I'll have to play with Noise Reduction on the RF input. The tuner on the ES20 is not as clean as the tuner on S-VHS recorder, which I use for TV viewing. And the S-VHS tuner is also better than my TV tuner.

However recorded material on the ES20 ends up better looking than what was just viewed thru its tuner section. So I'm presuming Noise Reduction when recording is making the difference.

I'll try to play with NR in next day or two & see what happens.

Mike

Well there is no Noise Reduction on the RF input that can be turned on/off, only the Line-IN inputs. I do not have anything connected to a Line-In input. I try to use analog RF cable direct from the wall as much as I can. Eventually I will play with the Line-In NR as I do have some tapes & Laser Discs that I want to transfer to DVD-R.

I did toggle the MPEG-DNR on & off, but could not tell any difference. Either on stuff I recorded or commercial DVD.

Mike

I was at Fry's Electronics the other day & they had the all black version on the ES20. Of course as I'm thinking about it, maybe Panasonic is trying to get these out of their warehouse & into the B&M retail market in order to clear them out to make room for new models.

Mike

Well there is no Noise Reduction on the RF input that can be turned on/off, only the Line-IN inputs. I do not have anything connected to a Line-In input. I try to use analog RF cable direct from the wall as much as I can. Eventually I will play with the Line-In NR as I do have some tapes & Laser Discs that I want to transfer to DVD-R.

I did toggle the MPEG-DNR on & off, but could not tell any difference. Either on stuff I recorded or commercial DVD.

Mike

I didn't notice any noticeable difference with MPEG-DNR On/Off either. I do have a small analog TV and entry-level cables/switches, so unless it's a dramatic change, I won't be able to tell.

Mine doesn't have the NR option on the RF input either. Maybe they automatically clean up the RF input signal? In the future, I'll try feeding it a "bad" RF signal and see if it improves after it is recorded.

I was at Fry's Electronics the other day & they had the all black version on the ES20. Of course as I'm thinking about it, maybe Panasonic is trying to get these out of their warehouse & into the B&M retail market in order to clear them out to make room for new models.

Mike

do you remember how much Fry's was selling them for? Amazon.com has them for $170 shipped before $20 rebate.

do you remember how much Fry's was selling them for? Amazon.com has them for $170 shipped before $20 rebate.

$199 was on several boxes. You may want to call your local Fry's just to be sure.

$199 was on several boxes. You may want to call your local Fry's just to be sure.

hmm, not that great. Even CC had them for less, last I checked.

I had about 4-5 DVDs that refused to finalize in the past, but I noticed a new bug two times so far on write-once media:

This happens when one of recorded titles fails to create a thumbnail. When I go to Direct Navigator it does not show a thumbnail and it won't let me edit (by pressing SubMenu). This apparently causes the finalization process to freeze because it cannot create a thumbnail (how stupid is that Panasonic?). The DVD plays fine in the recorder and additional titles can be added but refuses to finalize, unless the offending title is deleted.

Obviously if it's a short title and there is sufficient space you can re-record it. But if it's long or not enough space or the original is gone, then no luck. :-(

I recorded 4 tapes with the recorder set to 2 hr sp on a verbatim DVD-RW. I started recording by pressing the record button then set time to 2 hours.

The first tape recorded on the DVD-RW played on my computer, no problems. I check the disk on my computer and all the files are there.

The other DVD-RWs play on the panny recorder but not on the computer. On the computer, the title file is there but the movie is not (files with 1 gig). So the computer does not see them but the panny plays the DVD-RW with the movie intact. All were finalized after recording.

I want to move the movies to my video editing program to split them into separate chapters, and re-edit them with new menus, but if I cannot see the files, that is impossible.

One would think the 1 gig vob files would be visible on the computer (using explorer), but they are not. I also tried to use other programs to extract all the files on the disk, but they did not see the files that contained the movies.

Any ideas on what is happening?

I suspect the problem is in finalization of the disks. I ran into the same problem as NCAAHOOPS. One of the offending disks did not finalize I tried several different times and nothing happened. The finalization page came up but no movement on the countdown bar.

I just ran another test and it worked fine. One difference. Finalization took much longer than the failures, about three times longer. When the other disks were finalized, it was fairly quick.

So maybe there is a problem with the recorder finalizing DVD-RW disks. Sometimes it works fine and others it will not. After I had the problem, I did re-set the recorder by pulling the plug, so maybe there was a bug floating around in the electron pool that caused a glitch with finalizing the -RW disks.

There is no problem finalizing DVD-R disks. I have not had a bad one yet.

If you couple my problem with NCAAHOOPS, maybe the finalization process likes you to go through the proper set of hoops and make a new title and thumbnail before you finalize a DVD-RW disk. For all the DVD-R disks, I did make a new title and thumbnail.

When I worked with programmers, one thing I found is they wrote their programs to their way of doing things, and if you deviated from that, problems happened. Might be the problem here, at least occasionally.

I keep reading that these "Taiyo Yuden" DVD-Rs are almost totally bug-free and playable on almost all DVD players. Anybody here ever use them?

I keep reading that these "Taiyo Yuden" DVD-Rs are almost totally bug-free and playable on almost all DVD players. Anybody here ever use them?


When i entered the DVD recorder arena thats all anybody ever suggested.

Over 400 TY's,no coasters,and all work on all machines i have ever tested.

IMO-they are the best!

If you couple my problem with NCAAHOOPS, maybe the finalization process likes you to go through the proper set of hoops and make a new title and thumbnail before you finalize a DVD-RW disk. For all the DVD-R disks, I did make a new title and thumbnail. I had finalization issues with a small percentage of +R and -R, but not with -RW so far (I have finalized about 20 -RWs).


What do you mean by this?
maybe the finalization process likes you to go through the proper set of hoops and make a new title and thumbnail before you finalize a DVD-RW disk. I didn't notice any difference whether you edit the title or thumbnail. You can just finalize after the recording finishes.


The finalization problems I had were of two types:
1) Failed thumbnail caused the menu creation to freeze during finalization. Only had 2 of these.
2) No problem with thumbnails, menus created properly during finalization, but the progress bar does not go anywhere. I think I had 4-5 of these.

In both cases, I had to power off, and power on with the 10-second method to "revive" the ES20.

In either case, the DVDs play with no problems in the DVD recorder, but not finalize.

My experience was the same as yours but I went straight from recording to finalize. The recorder played the disk fine but the disk could not be finalized. Just showed the finalize screen but no movement on the progress bar.

I agree it is not DVD-RW related but something else is going on. I just recorded two of the tapes that I had problems with and the file structure is fine.

I read elsewhere that someone had a problem with the copy protection feature kicking in when their tape was a home movie and had no copy protection. If that occurred during recording, then maybe the disk cannot be finalized because of the file structure (incomplete file) on the disk. The file is playable by the recorder, but since it is incomplete, not able to be finalized by the recorder. And if the disk is finalized, the files will not show up on a computer but the recorder will play them (my experience) but not playable by my computer. Just a guess. But it does explain what I have seen so far.

Also, everything looked fine on the menu screen for both the ones I could not finalize and the ones I could but which would not play on the computer (the files were not there) but would on the recorder. Which does make sense. I have no problem using this feature to play back shows I recorded on the DVD-RW on the recorder without finalizing, but the DVD-RW is not recognized by my computer until I finalize it. Possibly, the file structure is established during finalizing, so it conforms to a playable DVD (1 gig files). If it is not touched, but left open, it would be seen by the recorder, but not a computer.

Also, everything looked fine on the menu screen for both the ones I could not finalize and the ones I could but which would not play on the computer (the files were not there) but would on the recorder. Which does make sense. I have no problem using this feature to play back shows I recorded on the DVD-RW on the recorder without finalizing, but the DVD-RW is not recognized by my computer until I finalize it. Possibly, the file structure is established during finalizing, so it conforms to a playable DVD (1 gig files). If it is not touched, but left open, it would be seen by the recorder, but not a computer.

Oh I forgot to mention that sometimes finalization works after you open/close the tray or "reboot" it with the 10-second method (no need to unplug). I think this may do it if it freezes right away - before it shows the menu-creation step. From what I recall, if it freezes during/after the menu-creation step, it refuses to finalize no matter what.

That's why I am lobbying for Panasonic to add the DVD-RW(VR) mode. If they do that, there would be no need to finalize everything, you can just grab the DVD and play it in a compatible dvd player or use it on a compatible PC/Mac drive. No finalization, no reformatting/unfinalizing!

That's why I am lobbying for Panasonic to add the DVD-RW(VR) mode. If they do that, there would be no need to finalize everything, you can just grab the DVD and play it in a compatible dvd player or use it on a compatible PC/Mac drive. No finalization, no reformatting/unfinalizing!

Those sound like the reasons I like DVD-RAM disks.

Those sound like the reasons I like DVD-RAM disks.

Yes, DVD-RAM is great especially if there is heavy duty usage! The main problem is price/availability/playback-compatibility compared to -RW, especially when using them as short/medium-term storage.

For me, the main issue is price. For example, I record stuff from the Science channel but I don't have time to watch them during the basketball season and most of them I don't want on permanent storage. This would be ideal for DVD-RW(VR), since I have more flexibility than Video mode, if there's something I want to keep for reference, I just delete the rest and re-fill the DVD. I can't do that with DVD-RW(Video), and I don't want to keep expensive DVD-RAMs sitting around like VHS tapes :-) Of course if I could find DVD-RAMs at DVD-RW prices, then I wouldn't have a problem :-)

Yes, DVD-RAM is great especially if there is heavy duty usage! The main problem is price/availability/playback-compatibility compared to -RW, especially when using them as short/medium-term storage.

For me, the main issue is price. For example, I record stuff from the Science channel but I don't have time to watch them during the basketball season and most of them I don't want on permanent storage. This would be ideal for DVD-RW(VR), since I have more flexibility than Video mode, if there's something I want to keep for reference, I just delete the rest and re-fill the DVD. I can't do that with DVD-RW(Video), and I don't want to keep expensive DVD-RAMs sitting around like VHS tapes :-) Of course if I could find DVD-RAMs at DVD-RW prices, then I wouldn't have a problem :-)

I hear where you're coming from on price, but considering the number of write/rewrite cycles possible on DVD-RAM, I don't think $2/disc ($1/disc during a good sale) is expensive. I remember when VHS tapes were several dollars apiece.

Now compatibility is another issue. If you plan to give the DVDs to someone else, then DVD-RAM compatible DVD players can be an issue, but if you watch them yourself, it should not matter. How compatible is DVD-RW(VR) anyway? I remember Kelson saying that their compatibility was only slightly better than DVD-RAM.

If you are going to keep it for reference, just burn it to DVD-R.

I hear where you're coming from on price, but considering the number of write/rewrite cycles possible on DVD-RAM, I don't think $2/disc ($1/disc during a good sale) is expensive. I remember when VHS tapes were several dollars apiece.

Now compatibility is another issue. If you plan to give the DVDs to someone else, then DVD-RAM compatible DVD players can be an issue, but if you watch them yourself, it should not matter. How compatible is DVD-RW(VR) anyway? I remember Kelson saying that their compatibility was only slightly better than DVD-RAM.

If you are going to keep it for reference, just burn it to DVD-R.

If I wasn't renting a DVR then I would use DVD-RAMs for daily/temporary recordings since they are ideal for that type of thing. But for short-to-medium term temporary storage, - they may sit for weeks/months before you get around to watching them, DVD-RW are ideal.

DVD-RW(VR) is not very compatible with older players, but the dvd players that came out the last couple of years seem to be DVD-RW(VR) friendly. I couldn't find a list, so I started a thread with that as a question. For DVD players, -RW(VR) is more widespread than DVD-RAM (mainly Panasonic DVD players). Compatibility is not an issue for me internally, since my dvd player plays DVD-RW(VR) - although I personally haven't tested it :-)
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=648383

If I know ahead of time it is a reference item, then i would use DVD-R :-) I was referring to things that are likely to be deleted after watching them, but sometimes I may want to save a title out of 3-4 per DVD :-)

$2 per disc is not expensive if one is buying 1 or 5 or 10, but at 100 (4 25pks of DVD-RW), then the difference in price can pay for another DVD recorder :-) I wish I could find them on a $1 sale :-) The only time I found a sale was the Office Depot double-sided on clearance, but by the time I went back after researching them online they were gone!

I understand Panasonic wants to promote DVD-RAM, but they could find middle-ground: Offer DVD-RW(VR) but only allow Chase Play with DVD-RAM :-)

I am not saying that I don't like or use DVD-RAM. It's just that DVD-RW(VR) is an additional option that offers more flexibility than DVD-RW(Video) for in-house usage, especially if one does not have a HDD model.

Yes, DVD-RAM is great especially if there is heavy duty usage! The main problem is price/availability/playback-compatibility compared to -RW, especially when using them as short/medium-term storage.

For me, the main issue is price. For example, I record stuff from the Science channel but I don't have time to watch them during the basketball season and most of them I don't want on permanent storage. This would be ideal for DVD-RW(VR), since I have more flexibility than Video mode, if there's something I want to keep for reference, I just delete the rest and re-fill the DVD. I can't do that with DVD-RW(Video), and I don't want to keep expensive DVD-RAMs sitting around like VHS tapes :-) Of course if I could find DVD-RAMs at DVD-RW prices, then I wouldn't have a problem :-)

I was at a Walmart about a week ago & they had Panasonic DVD-RAM discs. Their regular price was 30% less than Panny's retail price for a 5 pack. These were the Video formatted versions and came with the large, black DVD type case. Instead of the thin jewel case that came with my data formatted discs. As I sit here typing & thinking how thick the package was, I now question if it was really a 5-pack or perhaps less. Hmmm, now I wonder. Anyway, I was surprised Walmart had them. This particular store is quite large and has more stuff than my closest one. IOW, all stores may not sell the RAM discs.

Mike

I am not saying that I don't like or use DVD-RAM. It's just that DVD-RW(VR) is an additional option that offers more flexibility than DVD-RW(Video) for in-house usage, especially if one does not have a HDD model.

Perhaps Panasonic will offer DVD-RW(VR) on their new 2006 models.

Perhaps Panasonic will offer DVD-RW(VR) on their new 2006 models.

That would be a good idea for Panasonic!

It will be interesting to see how Pioneer implements DVD-RAM, and whether they offer the option of Video or VR mode like they do with DVD-RW. Also will they give it all the features/options that they give -RW(VR) or will they restrict it? Common sense says give the user as much flexibility and options as possible but the marketing people usually like to screw around with the feature sets.

Well I've just seen some serious motion artifacts with my ES20. I've been using mostly 4hr LP mode & doing time shifting. I guess I've just been lucky in what I've been recording. But I recorded Charlies Angels Full Throttle from analog cable. I've never seen it and figured watching some cute girls could not hurt. But some of the action scenes really broke up the picture. I'm guessing it's due to the low bit rate needed in order to maintain full 720x480 resolution. However it could be the source. I don't know. But I've never noticed this before. Now I'll have to scrutinize future recordings for artifacts.

Mike

Well I've just seen some serious motion artifacts with my ES20. I've been using mostly 4hr LP mode & doing time shifting. I guess I've just been lucky in what I've been recording. But I recorded Charlies Angels Full Throttle from analog cable. I've never seen it and figured watching some cute girls could not hurt. But some of the action scenes really broke up the picture. I'm guessing it's due to the low bit rate needed in order to maintain full 720x480 resolution. However it could be the source. I don't know. But I've never noticed this before. Now I'll have to scrutinize future recordings for artifacts.

Mike

Yes, I have found as well that the LP mode is the most likely to throw block parties, I'm guessing because it has a high resolution and low bit rates. For me, the 4h20min-4h40min FR seems to be a decent compromise over LP for heavily compressed materials. What I mean by decent compromise is that it maybe okay for some people who are not demanding on PQ and have smaller TVs. PQ purists who want a pure clean perfect picture will barf at them :-)

I also agree that the source can be a big factor. LP recordings of sports that I have made from the ES20's RF have less artifacts than the ones from the Comcast DVR that pre-chews everything (double compression) or from VHS-EP (no surprises here).

Yes, I have found as well that the LP mode is the most likely to throw block parties, I'm guessing because it has a high resolution and low bit rates. For me, the 4h20min-4h40min FR seems to be a decent compromise over LP for heavily compressed materials. What I mean by decent compromise is that it maybe okay for some people who are not demanding on PQ and have smaller TVs. PQ purists who want a pure clean perfect picture will barf at them :-)

I also agree that the source can be a big factor. LP recordings of sports that I have made from the ES20's RF have less artifacts than the ones from the Comcast DVR that pre-chews everything (double compression) or from VHS-EP (no surprises here).

So if I understand this correctly, even though 4hr20min FR is longer than 4hr LP, resolution decreases but bit rate goes up. With a net increase in PQ. At least on smaller TVs. The presumption being that the lower resolution may be noticeable on larger TVs. I currently have a 27" Sony so not sure if I would notice a resolution decrease. As I'm typing this I'm thinking - would 4hr20min FR be kicked down to the same resolution as 6hr EP?

Overall bitrate cannot be higher if you are putting more material on the disc. Overall bitrate is simply a function of how much material is on the disc duration-wise (assuming a full disc). The more duration, the less bitrate. But decreasing the resolution allows more of those bits to be used per pixel, since you have reduced the number of pixels by cutting the resolution (in half typically).

Put very simply:

BITRATE (in bits per second) = TOTAL SIZE (in bits) / TOTAL DURATION (in seconds)

This does not take into account the various overheads such as VOB-file multiplexing and the information for menus and chapters, and file system overhead. But these are a small fraction of a percent of the total size of a full DVD.

So if I understand this correctly, even though 4hr20min FR is longer than 4hr LP, resolution decreases but bit rate goes up. With a net increase in PQ. At least on smaller TVs. The presumption being that the lower resolution may be noticeable on larger TVs. I currently have a 27" Sony so not sure if I would notice a resolution decrease. As I'm typing this I'm thinking - would 4hr20min FR be kicked down to the same resolution as 6hr EP?

I don't know what resolution is for those as I dont have a PC drive to analyze them. But visibly 6hr EP is way too smoothed out for me - for anything that has action. The only thing I use EP is South Park and talking-head documentaries with very little motion. Around 4h40min is about as low I will go for sports/action. Some people may find that way too ugly for their PQ taste, but I am not picky :)

I would like to say that I have found this thread to be very helpful. I have successfully recorded movies on Fuji -R discs from my TW dvr and sent them to Germany. Some volume was lost, but I now play the movie at full volume and turn my tv off while recording. I went nuts on recording adult and kid movies. I shipped almost 5 lbs of discs in the thin jewel cases and used popcorn packs to fill the empty spaces at a cost of $32.00. So far, there has only been one movie that he turned into a coaster. I am asking for suggestions on shipping. Could I just use the spindle to lighten the load or should I get the paper sleeves?

I don't know what resolution is for those as I dont have a PC drive to analyze them. But visibly 6hr EP is way too smoothed out for me - for anything that has action. The only thing I use EP is South Park and talking-head documentaries with very little motion. Around 4h40min is about as low I will go for sports/action. Some people may find that way too ugly for their PQ taste, but I am not picky :)

Hi Hoops,

After recording two films in the four hour mode I once filled up the remainding 30 minutes in the 8 hour speed to squeeze in an old 90 minute black and white movie and was satisfied with the result (the original source was only fair so I took the chance). Otherwise, I have only gone as high as 4 hours and 20 minutes using flexible recording. If two films go over four hours and one is color I record the color at 4 hours and use flexible for the black and white as long as it doesn't exceed this 260 minute limit by much.

P.S. I encountered my second coaster yesterday after nearly 55 dvds on the E20. Both times they were TDK 16x DVD-Rs but on each I thought I MIGHT have noticed a blemish near the inner ring, which is where the table of contents is located. I then made a test recording on a DVD-RW which finalized OK, so I'm sure it's just the disc. A 97% finalization rate isn't that bad, is it?

- Joe

Hi Hoops,

After recording two films in the four hour mode I once filled up the remainding 30 minutes in the 8 hour speed to squeeze in an old 90 minute black and white movie and was satisfied with the result (the original source was only fair so I took the chance). Otherwise, I have only gone as high as 4 hours and 20 minutes using flexible recording. If two films go over four hours and one is color I record the color at 4 hours and use flexible for the black and white as long as it doesn't exceed this 260 minute limit by much.

P.S. I encountered my second coaster yesterday after nearly 55 dvds on the E20. Both times they were TDK 16x DVD-Rs but on each I thought I MIGHT have noticed a blemish near the inner ring, which is where the table of contents is located. I then made a test recording on a DVD-RW which finalized OK, so I'm sure it's just the disc. A 97% finalization rate isn't that bad, is it?

- Joe

97% is a good rate! I am somewhere around 96-97%. One of these days I will do a post mortem on all the troubled DVDs. Now I just throw them in a box. Most of the catastrophic problems were with +R and of those half of them were with Philips +R. Shockingly I finished almost three quarters of a Playo -R 50pk without any problem so far.

97% is a good rate! I am somewhere around 96-97%. One of these days I will do a post mortem on all the troubled DVDs. Now I just throw them in a box. Most of the catastrophic problems were with +R and of those half of them were with Philips +R. Shockingly I finished almost three quarters of a Playo -R 50pk without any problem so far.

Hi Hoops,

My brother purchases DVD-Rs in individual jewel cases because he is concerned some might become damaged being on top of each other in spindles. Any thoughts? (I find it's still less expensive to buy 25 spindle packs of DVD-Rs and 25 pack thin jewell cases than packs of five or ten in jewel boxes.)

Hi Hoops,

My brother purchases DVD-Rs in individual jewel cases because he is concerned some might become damaged being on top of each other in spindles. Any thoughts? (I find it's still less expensive to buy 25 spindle packs of DVD-Rs and 25 pack thin jewell cases than packs of five or ten in jewel boxes.)

I noticed that in some spindles (maybe 1 in 5 spindles) there's one DVD (usually near the top) that has some issue, but I don't know if it is coincidence or not. The 5pk/10pks with jewel cases are too expensive for me. I buy slimline jewel cases in 50pks or 100pks when they are on sale - they usually cost around 10c-13c per. Office Depot usually has Buy1Get1 for 100pks for $25. I also have paper sleeves and plastic/vinyl sleeves that I usually use when I ran out of jewel cases.

I rarely use DVD-RAMs, and this is the first time that this has happened to me:

The DVD-RAM in question was playing fine in both my recorder and player before this:

I was editing a Panasonic DVD-RAM that was about 50% full. I only used this -RAM 4-5 times. Basically I was trying to shorten a title by creating two additional chapters, one at the beginning and one at the end. Then I checkmarked the two chapters and pressed erase chapter. The ES20 went to the thumbnail screen with the two erased chapters gone, but only showed a blank thumbnail for the remaining chapter and at the same time the ES20 became FROZEN. None of the buttons worked so I had to reset it with the 10-second method.

When it rebooted, it reported that the DVD-RAM was not readable and wanted to format it. My DVD player also did not recognize it after the freeze. So I lost all the contents and had to reformat! Grrrrrrr! (I don't have a PC drive so I couldn't test/try to recover).

It appears that the freeze ruined the file structure (or something along those lines) and made it unrecognizable to the recorder/player. So I lost all the contents! This is unacceptable!

You guys that are copying home video from the es20 to a PC for editing/burning, I'd like to hear your techniques.

I've used Smartripper to read a finalized -RW and it reported some files were still locked. I am getting the vob's, and a video_ts, but the TS won't start a VOB in Power DVD. VOB's will play by themselves. Do you guys just use software to re author the vob's? Or is anyone getting all the files off a -R/-RW?

What about RAM discs, at least one guy here bought a PC DVD that read RAM, what does the ripping software see on a DVD RAM disc?

If you're talking about home-burned DVDs, you don't need SmartRipper. Both Tsunami MPEG Encoder and Tsunami DVD Author will read video directly from a DVD once placed in a drive on the PC. Or of course you could copy the VIDEO_TS folder to your PC hard drive first.

Tsunami MPEG Encoder is useful for when you want to make a PC-based video from some material on a DVD (like a WMV file). Tsunami DVD Author is useful for when you want to make a new DVD using the material from one or more source DVDs, with no re-encoding. There are other similar applications out there of course. But few if any come close to the quality of MPEG encoding provided by Tsunami MPEG Encoder. That's why I got it.

If you are getting "some files are locked" from SmartRipper it means the DVD is copy-protected. At least that's what it always means when I see that. SmartRipper is useful for pulling off VOB files on a per-chapter basis from a DVD, and of course for getting past the CSS. PowerDVD will play the resulting VOB files just fine. Using the Stream Processing of SmartRipper, you can also extract demultiplexed video and audio streams, which can later be multiplexed back into an MPEG file that is bit-for-bit the same as the MPEG information on the DVD (which is encapsulated in the VOB files), and thus playable with Windows Media Player. No doubt other DVD-ripping software can also yield that MPEG information easily enough.

I noticed that in some spindles (maybe 1 in 5 spindles) there's one DVD (usually near the top) that has some issue, but I don't know if it is coincidence or not. The 5pk/10pks with jewel cases are too expensive for me. I buy slimline jewel cases in 50pks or 100pks when they are on sale - they usually cost around 10c-13c per. Office Depot usually has Buy1Get1 for 100pks for $25. I also have paper sleeves and plastic/vinyl sleeves that I usually use when I ran out of jewel cases.
Hi Hoops,

I'm with you on that one. Able to get a pack of 50 slim cases for $4.99 at our local Wholesale Liquadators plus a spindle of 25 TDK-Rs (x16) for $14.99, so it's $35 for 50 discs and cases, which averages 70 cents per disc. The ten packs with cases at best go for $8.99 so the cost of 50 would be $45, or 90 cents per disc. At first, this might not seem like much but if I can save $20 per 100 discs, why not? Miss having the paper inserts, but I've been cutting index cards down to size to make up for it. Also, I prefer slim jewel cases because they allow me to store twice as many dvds.

Does any one know how to record DVD-RAM in 16:9 ratio from s-video in?

I know if I use other than dvd-ram. Only 4:3 ratio is avaliable.

I formatted a DVD-RAM cartridge in the ES20 (while in the SP mode, not that it makes any difference), then put the disc in one of my DMR-E50's, and the display showed 2:07 available! I re-formatted the RAM in the E50 and got 2:00 available...go figure? :rolleyes:

Jake,

Adjust the audio output on your cable box to "other" (rather than HDMI or Dolby Digital) then the audio range to "narrow" (instead of wide or normal). This will increase the analog input going into your DVD recorder either directly or though a recording saved on DVR. When set to HDMI or Dolby (both digital) the volume is lower on non-digital sources like a DVD recorder.

When you don't want to record a program onto DVD re-adjust your settings back to the above for 5.1 sound from a live broadcast or DVR (just remember it will be lower should you decide you want to keep in on DVD).

- Joe

Joseph -

I too am having similar sound problems. Only when I record material off of my DVR, I am not getting any sound. I can get sound when I record from my VCR and from the tv but not from the DVR.

Do you think I have a problem with my connections? Also, how do you adjust the audio output like you mention above? I don't see that in the menu anywhere.

Thanks

I formatted a DVD-RAM cartridge in the ES20 (while in the SP mode, not that it makes any difference), then put the disc in one of my DMR-E50's, and the display showed 2:07 available! I re-formatted the RAM in the E50 and got 2:00 available...go figure? :rolleyes:


I routinely record about 2:07/2:08 on RAM and 2:09 on the other DVD formats on a Panasonic DMR-EH50 so this is not to surprising and reports by others on this board have shown similar results when formating on a PC burner and taking the RAM to a Panasonic DVR. The Panasonic is only showing a conservative figure of what it can really record on the disks when formating with it.

Remember there are variables in the MPEG recording that can cause the file size to be slightly different from recording to recording for a certain time frame so there has to be some "wiggle" room or we would have people complaining they are not getting a full 2 hrs on the disks, which has happend with some other makes of recorders.

Joseph -

I too am having similar sound problems. Only when I record material off of my DVR, I am not getting any sound. I can get sound when I record from my VCR and from the tv but not from the DVR.

Do you think I have a problem with my connections? Also, how do you adjust the audio output like you mention above? I don't see that in the menu anywhere.

Thanks

Hi Rubanto,

Be sure the audio cables to your recording device are connected to the DVR's "Out To VCR" jacks. Also, make sure these same cables are connected to the appropriate line input on your recording device.

As far as settings, click the settings button twice to go from a main settings menu to a menu of additional settings. In that list, there are two for audio: 1) Audio Output and 2) Audio Range. For recording from the DVR to your recording device it's best to have the OUTPUT set to "other" and the RANGE to "narrow" (this provides louder ouput for non-digital equipment). For listening to through your TV set it to HDMI/NARROW or to listen through your a/v receiver set it to DOLBY/WIDE.

Hope this helps.

Joe

Hi Rubanto,

Be sure the audio cables to your recording device are connected to the DVR's "Out To VCR" jacks. Also, make sure these same cables are connected to the appropriate line input on your recording device.

As far as settings, click the settings button twice to go from a main settings menu to a menu of additional settings. In that list, there are two for audio: 1) Audio Output and 2) Audio Range. For recording from the DVR to your recording device it's best to have the OUTPUT set to "other" and the RANGE to "narrow" (this provides louder ouput for non-digital equipment). For listening to through your TV set it to HDMI/NARROW or to listen through your a/v receiver set it to DOLBY/WIDE.

Hope this helps.

Joe

Well I got it to work. The menu looked different from what you mentioned. Mine said audio set up and under that I changed the setting to advanced and the compression to heavy. This worked but I wonder if what I did is the correct way because it is different from what you talk about. You have a moto 6412 also, correct?

Well I got it to work. The menu looked different from what you mentioned. Mine said audio set up and under that I changed the setting to advanced and the compression to heavy. This worked but I wonder if what I did is the correct way because it is different from what you talk about. You have a moto 6412 also, correct?

No, we have the SA 8300 HD-DVR.

Basicly, the audio output of a Dolby Digital audio signal either being listened through or recorded onto an analog source (DVD recorder or VHS) will be much lower compared to the volume heard through an audio receiver with Dolby Digital. To compensate for this for recordings, the audio has to be converted to non-Dolby and the dynamic range set to as little as possible. This drop in volume will be most apparent recording something broadcast in 5.1 or a music channel.

Glad it worked out for you.

Joe

If you have connected your recorder digitally to your receiver, is there any reason to also use analog audio cables?

If you have connected your recorder digitally to your receiver, is there any reason to also use analog audio cables?

only if you are playing CDs through your DVR and prefer the sound of the DVR's DACs rather than the receiver's DACs. Depends on the quality of your receiver's DAC...for instance if it were something like a Harmon Kardon 635 or 7300 I probably would expect to hear better SQ from the HK's DAC.

Hi everybody!

I'm posting in hopes that somebody may be able to shed some light as to whether the following problems are legitimate DMR-es20 bugs, or in fact, I may have simply bought a defective unit.

Thanks in advance; and here we go:

Out of the box I noticed the following irregularities:

1- I used one touch recording for one hour on a DVD-Ram disc in SP mode and the unit failed to stop recording and continued recording until disc space ran up.
(This may have been a glitch or a one time thing since it hasn't happened again.)

2- I had 2 hrs left in LP mode, but the show I was recording ran 2 and a half. I used the Flexible Recording mode, expecting the recording quality to be close to LP mode. Instead I got EP mode quality. A friend told me that while FR recordings between SP & LP will find a "quality middle-ground"; anything above the LP speed will make the recording look like an EP recording even if FR was used. Is this true?

3- One of my timer recordings failed to bring the picture and sound up. This was akin to a tuner failure (i guess). Basically, I got 30 min of Black Screen.

You know when you turn the unit on, or change the channel, and there is like a half a second of Black Screen before the channel comes up... well, my recording was like that. Black screen for 30 minutes. If it helps, I have basic cable (analogue, I think); and the es20 unit is conected to the cable outlet. So a cable box malfunction is out of the question, because there isn't one.

4- In one of my finalizations, the system froze. Had to reboot, and had no problem finalizing; but found this issue annoying. (Sony DVD-R 8x, made in Japan, media was used)

For some reason I thought these problems would get fixed with the Firmware update; so I did it the update thing.

After the update I encountered the following irregularities:

1- The Firmware update screwed the thumbnails in some of my unfinalized DVD-R recordings. Some of the Images I'd chosen were no longer being displayed in the navigation screen. Let's say that I had 3 recordings on a DVD-R 8x disc, w/ 3 distint thumbnails; well, in one of the recordings the thumbnail I wanted wouldn't take and the image would reset to the first image of the recording. This is a continuing problem. Some of my new recordings are resetting to a 00.00 thumbnail position instead of the usual 00.05.

2- 4 out of 5 Recordings made on a DVD-R x8 disc using Flexible Recording, involving an extended time (movies lasting between 1hr 45 min and 2:30) failed to play, once finalized, on my computer and/or other DVD players, past the 4th chapter. I have had no problems playing the rest of my burns on other DVD’s or my computer, as they consisted of a series of 30 minute programs.


Because I find the Thumbnail problem so annoying, and completely attribute it to the Firmware Update; I decided to do another update using the Canadian download (which is a higher version).

Well, the thumbnail problem is still there.


Like I said, I used Sony DVD-R x8 media made in Japan; of which I'm very confident was not a factor. Especially because I know the thumbnail issue was not a factor until I did the Update. So I'm asking, are these problems common?

I'm concerned that Panasonic may have thrown caution to the wind and decided to forgo quality control, or refurbish defective machines, or basically make them cheap in order to sell 'em cheap.

Comments?

I noticed my chapter markers went from 5 minutes to 2 minutes after the firmware update on the USA web site.

Hi everybody!

2- I had 2 hrs left in LP mode, but the show I was recording ran 2 and a half. I used the Flexible Recording mode, expecting the recording quality to be close to LP mode. Instead I got EP mode quality. A friend told me that while FR recordings between SP & LP will find a "quality middle-ground"; anything above the LP speed will make the recording look like an EP recording even if FR was used. Is this true?

This is not unexpected. 2hrs LP is half of the disc, so if you use 2:30FR it's like 5hr EP mode.


4- In one of my finalizations, the system froze. Had to reboot, and had no problem finalizing; but found this issue annoying. (Sony DVD-R 8x, made in Japan, media was used)
On rare occasions I have also noticed that it refuses/freezes when it comes to finalizing some DVDs.

Also on rare occasions it refuses to edit a title, which also causes finalization to freeze.


After the update I encountered the following irregularities:
I haven't done any firmware upgrades yet...


2- 4 out of 5 Recordings made on a DVD-R x8 disc using Flexible Recording, involving an extended time (movies lasting between 1hr 45 min and 2:30) failed to play, once finalized, on my computer and/or other DVD players, past the 4th chapter. I have had no problems playing the rest of my burns on other DVD’s or my computer, as they consisted of a series of 30 minute programs.
There is the dreaded 2:38FR bug that I got with DVD+Rs, but so far I did not have any problems with DVD-R FR recordings.

I play the recordings on an ancient Apex recorder (only plays +R) and a recent Panasonic dvd player. I haven't noticed any playback problems but I don't play every DVD I burn end to end.

Like I said, I used Sony DVD-R x8 media made in Japan; of which I'm very confident was not a factor. Especially because I know the thumbnail issue was not a factor until I did the Update. So I'm asking, are these problems common?
I have used about 100 of those Sony DVD-R 8x Made in Japan (from Staples) and they were very reliable so far.

In some rare occasions it seemed to ignore my new choice of thumbnail, but I think that may have been a +R issue, since I don't recall seeing it recently (I switched from +R to -R). I think I solved that when it happened by chosing a thumbnail further away and then going back to where I inteded it.

I noticed my chapter markers went from 5 minutes to 2 minutes after the firmware update on the USA web site.

Did that happen when you record exactly the duration and at the same quality level?

Chapter markers seem to be all over the place depending on the duration/quality-level. I think I saw them as low as 3 minutes and as high as 6 minutes. I think typically the better quality of the recording (eg XP), the shorter chapter marks are, but I haven't looked into it in detail.

1- I used one touch recording for one hour on a DVD-Ram disc in SP mode and the unit failed to stop recording and continued recording until disc space ran up.

One touch recording on SP 2hr mode will record for 2 hrs, unless you press the button a few times to set the unit for, 30mins 2nd press- 60mins 3rd press-90mins 4th press- 120mins5th press.

3- One of my timer recordings failed to bring the picture and sound up. This was akin to a tuner failure (i guess). Basically, I got 30 min of Black Screen.

This sounds like a source issue, are you sure you had the proper input selected on the unit for that particular timer recording?

"Did that happen when you record exactly the duration and at the same quality level?"


I am still characterizing the matter on my end.

Is this a Feature or a Bug?

So you start an OTR (One Touch Recording) by pressing the Record button multiple times, eg one hour recording. The display shows "OFF 1:00" and keeps counting down. I have noticed that the clock keeps ticking even if you pause the recorder. I haven't tested this completely yet. I plan to start a 30 minute record and pause it for most of the time, and see how much is actually recorded when it finishes on its own.

I don't know how OTR works on other recorders/models, so I can't compare, but I would think that it should be 1 hour of actual recording, not 1 hour of clock time. But that's just me... That's why I consider it Feature or Bug... I will try to find out how other recorders behave in this situation.

This has a welcome benefit for those who are worried about filling up a DVD: You can press Pause for a few seconds or a couple of minutes before you start recording, so you end up with 1:59SP or 3:59LP instead of 100% full.

ok...I have to ask...both circuit city and best buy people recommended this unit for archiving high-def programs to DVD that I had recorded on my high-def hard-drive receivers. I don't want to save many, only a few, and occasionally make a DVD to give to a friend.

So I finally got one of these units and, guess what, I open the first page of the manual and, there, in the upper right corner, it says it will not record 16x9 material on most media. And looking through this thread, it appears you MAY be able to record 16x9 onto DVD-ram, but it will be squashed horizontally and, if you play this back on a 4x3 HD CRT, which I have (Sony 32HS500), you will be watching a squashed program. Ugh!!!

Now I guess I can try things out for myself, but will I just be wasting my time???

Thanks - Tony

(Of course, I've already opened the box - but without taking the unit out - but this probably will still make it an open box unit for CC if/when I return it...)

ok...I have to ask...both circuit city and best buy people recommended this unit for archiving high-def programs to DVD that I had recorded on my high-def hard-drive receivers. I don't want to save many, only a few, and occasionally make a DVD to give to a friend.

So I finally got one of these units and, guess what, I open the first page of the manual and, there, in the upper right corner, it says it will not record 16x9 material on most media. And looking through this thread, it appears you MAY be able to record 16x9 onto DVD-ram, but it will be squashed horizontally and, if you play this back on a 4x3 HD CRT, which I have (Sony 32HS500), you will be watching a squashed program. Ugh!!!

Now I guess I can try things out for myself, but will I just be wasting my time???

Thanks - Tony

(Of course, I've already opened the box - but without taking the unit out - but this probably will still make it an open box unit for CC if/when I return it...)

There is a sticky thread at the top of the list of threads in the Forum that deals with recording high definition programming. I haven't yet tried to record 16x9 on -RAM and then play it back. My TV is 4:3 SDTV anyways. You may be able to adjust your source as well (eg cable/satellite box).

There is a sticky thread at the top of the list of threads in the Forum that deals with recording high definition programming. I haven't yet tried to record 16x9 on -RAM and then play it back. My TV is 4:3 SDTV anyways. You may be able to adjust your source as well (eg cable/satellite box).
yes, I read through that thread, too, but ultimately it doesn't tell you what you need to know about specific devices...having now hooked up the ES20, and tried several things, I now know a lot more than that thread about how the ES20 works...

I have a 4x3 HD CRT, too, and I have found that DVD copies from 1 of my recording devices make DVDs that play ok to my TV...pretty good playback (though not, of course, HD). However, I still don't know how they'll play back on 16x9 HD TVs...there's a chance they won't play back widescreen, which would be too bad...

and I still have to check my 2 other digital receiver/recorders...when I've finished, I'll probably post a detailed report on that other thread...

However, I still don't know how they'll play back on 16x9 HD TVs...there's a chance they won't play back widescreen, which would be too bad...One easy way to determine this is to tell your DVD Player that you're connected to a 16:9 display. Then play the DVD (and imagine your screen is 25% wider than it is). Basically, if you don't get the lettterboxing, you're good.

Another way would be to put the DVD in your PC drive and check it with IFOEdit.

ok...I have to ask...both circuit city and best buy people recommended this unit for archiving high-def programs to DVD that I had recorded on my high-def hard-drive receivers. I don't want to save many, only a few, and occasionally make a DVD to give to a friend.

So I finally got one of these units and, guess what, I open the first page of the manual and, there, in the upper right corner, it says it will not record 16x9 material on most media. And looking through this thread, it appears you MAY be able to record 16x9 onto DVD-ram, but it will be squashed horizontally and, if you play this back on a 4x3 HD CRT, which I have (Sony 32HS500), you will be watching a squashed program. Ugh!!!

Now I guess I can try things out for myself, but will I just be wasting my time???

Thanks - Tony

(Of course, I've already opened the box - but without taking the unit out - but this probably will still make it an open box unit for CC if/when I return it...)

Tony, we have a HD DVR and have been able to record HD material onto DVD-R discs. No DVD recorder can record in HD quality but the disc does look nice using the higher speeds. The DVD plays back in 4x3 and if you have a 16x9 set (like we do) the zoom feature can be used to fill out the screen. On 4x3 sets (like we also have) it will appear letterboxed.

Hope this helps
Joe

yikes, Amazon.com has hiked this model up to $190 shipped from a low of $150 with rebate a few weeks ago, and pricegrabber.com shows this as the lowest pricepoint available.

Is this model about to be discontinued or something?

Is this model about to be discontinued or something?

Panasonic has announced the 2006 models at CES, and some people have reported that some of them have slowly began shipping. So it will be discontinued/disappear in the next few days/weeks/months.

Another clock bug?
I've had my ES-20 since Jan. and not any problems till last week. The auto clock is no longer working properly so I set the time manually and set the timer. When I came home the program I set didn't record because the clock defaults to Jan.2004 and the timer is set to 2006. This has happened several times. The power has not gone off recently in the house and even when it did in the past the auto clock would re-set the unit properly. Anyone else going through this?

Another clock bug?
I've had my ES-20 since Jan. and not any problems till last week. The auto clock is no longer working properly so I set the time manually and set the timer. When I came home the program I set didn't record because the clock defaults to Jan.2004 and the timer is set to 2006. This has happened several times. The power has not gone off recently in the house and even when it did in the past the auto clock would re-set the unit properly. Anyone else going through this?

I personally never had any problems with the clock. It has been correct since the day I bought it.

I think 1-2 people mentioned clock problems in other thread titled something like "ES20 problems"

Interesting touch (very minor feature) but semi-practical:

When the ES20 is turned OFF, pressing the Eject button on the remote control opens the DVD tray and turns on the machine. <b>However,</b> if there is a Timer program pending (red clock light is on), Eject does not open the tray nor turn on the machine. You have to use the Power button on the Remote to turn the machine on. Essentially it prevents you from accidentally turning the machine on while a Timer event is pending.

I did a search for this but didn't find a solution.

I've finalized about a dozen dvd-R's but now when I try to finalize the player freezes up. Are there any workarounds to get it to finalize the disc or is there a FW upgrade to solve this?

Such behavior is usually attributable to media problems. Switching brands of DVD-R might help.

Firmware upgrades may also help.

I did a search for this but didn't find a solution.

I've finalized about a dozen dvd-R's but now when I try to finalize the player freezes up. Are there any workarounds to get it to finalize the disc or is there a FW upgrade to solve this?

I have found two types of finalization problems with DVD-Rs:

1) ES20 creates the thumbnails but freezes when it shows the progress bar, which shows no progress. I do not have a workaround for this.

2) One of the titles recorded for whatever reason cannot create a thumbnail and refuses to be edited in Direct Navigator. This also causes finalization to fail. However if you delete the offending title, you may be able to finalize the disc.


But there are some promising news:

Some ES15 users (who are also ES20 users) have reported that they were able to finalize DVDs that were recorded with the ES20 and refused to finalize in the ES20. More details are in the ES15 threads.

I have observed this occasionally with VCRs when recording from a VHS tape. I currently have the VCR connected at IN2. I do not remember if this happened with IN1 when i had the VCR on IN1. (Now the cable box is using IN1).

The tuner picture from the VCR is showing fine on the ES20.IN2. But when I play a VHS tape (TV RF VHS recordings, not commercial movies), the picture is jumpy with 3-4 thick horizontal wavy flashy lines. If I stop/restart play or eject/insert the VHS tape it still happens. The VHS tuner's output is always showing properly throughout this. If I watch the VHS picture directly (without the ES20), it shows fine. So I am guessing the problem has to do with the ES20. The only way to fix this is to turn off the ES20 and then turn it back on. Then everything is fine.

I am not sure what/why this is happening, but at least it has a simple workaround :-)

I have observed this occasionally with VCRs when recording from a VHS tape. I currently have the VCR connected at IN2. I do not remember if this happened with IN1 when i had the VCR on IN1. (Now the cable box is using IN1).

The tuner picture from the VCR is showing fine on the ES20.IN2. But when I play a VHS tape (TV RF VHS recordings, not commercial movies), the picture is jumpy with 3-4 thick horizontal wavy flashy lines. If I stop/restart play or eject/insert the VHS tape it still happens. The VHS tuner's output is always showing properly throughout this. If I watch the VHS picture directly (without the ES20), it shows fine. So I am guessing the problem has to do with the ES20. The only way to fix this is to turn off the ES20 and then turn it back on. Then everything is fine.

I am not sure what/why this is happening, but at least it has a simple workaround :-)

Not too sure if this is a problem with the ES 20. I was also going to connect a VCR to it but decided to try it with my HD DVR cable box, which also has a video input. I was hoping for a better picture but it was also distorted. Both our problems might be due to using digital equipment or feeds (component or HDMI cable).

Not too sure if this is a problem with the ES 20. I was also going to connect a VCR to it but decided to try it with my HD DVR cable box, which also has a video input. I was hoping for a better picture but it was also distorted. Both our problems might be due to using digital equipment or feeds (component or HDMI cable).

In my case there is nothing digital involved. The VCR is connected to the ES20 with the yellow RCA/composite, and nothing else in the path has anything digital. I need a TV upgrade :-)

In my case there is nothing digital involved. The VCR is connected to the ES20 with the yellow RCA/composite, and nothing else in the path has anything digital. I need a TV upgrade :-)

Hi Hoops,

I have the Sony kd34xbr960 and will try to hook my VCR via the ES 20 to see if it works and will let you know.

I have observed this occasionally with VCRs when recording from a VHS tape. I currently have the VCR connected at IN2. I do not remember if this happened with IN1 when i had the VCR on IN1. (Now the cable box is using IN1).

The tuner picture from the VCR is showing fine on the ES20.IN2. But when I play a VHS tape (TV RF VHS recordings, not commercial movies), the picture is jumpy with 3-4 thick horizontal wavy flashy lines. If I stop/restart play or eject/insert the VHS tape it still happens. The VHS tuner's output is always showing properly throughout this. If I watch the VHS picture directly (without the ES20), it shows fine. So I am guessing the problem has to do with the ES20. The only way to fix this is to turn off the ES20 and then turn it back on. Then everything is fine.

I am not sure what/why this is happening, but at least it has a simple workaround :-)


Also happens with me. I have recorded several vhs tapes with the es20 and quality is great. But I have noticed, time to time, jumping in the picture coming off the vcr through the es-20. Mine is through in1 and svideo out of the vcr to the recorder. And it has nothing to do with copy protection, since the tapes are not.

Yeah, so far I haven't been able to find a pattern on why it happens when it happens. I'll make a mental note of all the variables the next times I notice it. Something similar is also reported in the ES15 threads...

Also happens with me. I have recorded several vhs tapes with the es20 and quality is great. But I have noticed, time to time, jumping in the picture coming off the vcr through the es-20. Mine is through in1 and svideo out of the vcr to the recorder. And it has nothing to do with copy protection, since the tapes are not.

Basically, what it comes down to is that you need a very good stabilizer input box on certain VHS tapes (those made by yourself). I wonder if it has something to do with 2 head recordings because out of all the tapes I've went through, only my wedding tape was like this and I believe it was recorded with a 2 head VHS Camcorder. It does this on all the Panasonic DVD Recorders that I own though. The picture will jitter and stop for a little while, then it starts again. I'm trying to hunt down a store that has a really good stabilizer like the SIMA one though. Hopefully one with a good return policy, so I can get this "one tape" done and well, you know :D

Basically, what it comes down to is that you need a very good stabilizer input box on certain VHS tapes (those made by yourself). I wonder if it has something to do with 2 head recordings because out of all the tapes I've went through, only my wedding tape was like this and I believe it was recorded with a 2 head VHS Camcorder. It does this on all the Panasonic DVD Recorders that I own though. The picture will jitter and stop for a little while, then it starts again. I'm trying to hunt down a store that has a really good stabilizer like the SIMA one though. Hopefully one with a good return policy, so I can get this "one tape" done and well, you know :D

The tape was a commercial movie (Republic Pictures home video). I have a Sima and the jitter was actually worse with it in the chain, so I removed it.Since the Sima tries to stabilize sync problems, my guess is the equipment that was used for recording was not the best they could use, since I have not seen the problem on Turner Classic VHS tapes. The Turner's I copied are not copy protected and did not have the Sima in the chain but were rock solid. (Wife loves Nelson Eddy pics, so I transferred her collection to DVD.)

The 2-head vs 4-head VCR may be a good lead to investingate! Now I have to figure out how many heads my VCRs have :-)

I just tried using the Panasonic S29 remote control on the ES20 trying to see if there are any hidden playback features in the ES20 that are not available on the ES20 remote. Unfortunately there are none :-(

Panasonic told me NOT to install the Canadian firmware updates.

Even thou the version number is the same as the USA version, the software is different. And any problems that may be the result of this may NOT be reversible.

Please wait for the latest version that Panasonic is working on.

Mike

so which is the best sony recored for picture quality?

so which is the best sony recored for picture quality?

I am not familiar with Sony recorders. You may want to post your question as a new thread in this forum, since more Sony users are likely to see it there.

I recently noticed that when there is a pending Timer Recording (machine turned OFF, with red clock light on the front panel), the ES20 starts almost instantenously when i press the ON button. When there isn't a pending Timer recording , it takes a few seconds before being ready to use. (I have the Quick Start disabled).

Another difference when there is a Timer Recording pending: You cannot use the Play button to turn on the recorder. You have to use the Power button to turn it on. When there isn't a Timer recording pending, pressing the PLAY button starts it up, and pressing eject opens the tray. They probably have this distinction so you don't accidentally start up the machine and fail to record the Timer recording...

The 4hr mode looked pretty good on my 27" CRT set. But now I have a 42" set and while still completely watchable, looks very slightly soft in 4hr mode. I did a 3 hr FR mode recording & I thought it looked sharper. But it could just be a difference in the programming source.

While this comes as no surprise, I just was not sure how much the PQ would "suffer" with a larger screen. I'd say the difference between 4hr & 6 hr with a 27" set might be about the difference you would notice when going from a 27" set to a 42" set keeping at 4 hr mode. So if anyone plans on getting a really big set, such as 60", you'll probably wish you did everything in the 2 hr mode.

Just passing along some observations.

The 4hr mode looked pretty good on my 27" CRT set. But now I have a 42" set and while still completely watchable, looks very slightly soft in 4hr mode. I did a 3 hr FR mode recording & I thought it looked sharper. But it could just be a difference in the programming source.

While this comes as no surprise, I just was not sure how much the PQ would "suffer" with a larger screen. I'd say the difference between 4hr & 6 hr with a 27" set might be about the difference you would notice when going from a 27" set to a 42" set keeping at 4 hr mode. So if anyone plans on getting a really big set, such as 60", you'll probably wish you did everything in the 2 hr mode.

Just passing along some observations.

Hi Mike,

Does your new set upconvert signals? If it does, keep your DVR set to 480I instead of 480P for playback. I noticed improved PQ when I let my set upconvert rather then feeding it progressive scan signals which cannot be upconverted.

Any display with more than 480 lines of native vertical resolution MUST upconvert 480-line signals it receives, or else the resulting picture would not occupy the full vertical dimension of the screen. 480p signals can (and must according to above) be upconverted.

Any display with more than 480 lines of native vertical resolution MUST upconvert 480-line signals it receives, or else the resulting picture would not occupy the full vertical dimension of the screen. 480p signals can (and must according to above) be upconverted.

Hi Bob,

There are certain adjustments on my HD set that cannot be made when the TV senses a progressive signal. This occurs on SD signals upconverted by my HD Cable Box or when the output of the DVD recorder is at 480P. I am able to make these adjustments when the cable box or DVD recorder is sending out an interlaced signal at 480I. Wouldn't this mean that the TV is upconverting the signal to it's native resolution which is higher than the 480P output of the Panasonic DVD recorder? The picture quality is better when keeping the ES20 at 480I.

- Joe

Yes, your display is upconverting anything it gets that has less resolution than its native resolution. That is what I said in my post which you quoted. All upconversion does is interpolate (make up) pixels where there were none in the source image. To put a 480-line image on a 720-line display you must come up with another 240 lines of image, those are determined by taking every two source lines and making three out of them. Some upconversions are better than others in that regard. The same thing happens in the horizontal dimension, for example, mapping the 720 pixels across of an SD image onto the 1280 pixels across of an HD display.

What he said, plus...

You probably have a progressive TV that just/only upconverts (expands) the progressive signal when it senses a 480p signal. When you set the ES20 for 480i output, you're adding a "deinterlacing" step, which may explain the "settings" you say are available that way, while not available when set at 480p.

If your ES20 allow you to set output for 720p, do that and you might get the "optimum" PQ for your setup?

(P.S. The deinterlacing step can make fast-moving objects appear with blocky edges, whereas a 720p signal makes such objects appear sharper.)

Added: You never said what output connections you're using (Composite, Component, S-Video, HDMI)? That may make a diff. also, esp. with a purely progressive setting.

What he said, plus...

You probably have a progressive TV that just/only upconverts (expands) the progressive signal when it senses a 480p signal. When you set the ES20 for 480i output, you're adding a "deinterlacing" step, which may explain the "settings" you say are available that way, while not available when set at 480p.

If your ES20 allow you to set output for 720p, do that and you might get the "optimum" PQ for your setup?

(P.S. The deinterlacing step can make fast-moving objects appear with blocky edges, whereas a 720p signal makes such objects appear sharper.)

Added: You never said what output connections you're using (Composite, Component, S-Video, HDMI)? That may make a diff. also, esp. with a purely progressive setting.


Hi,

I use component cables for DVD, HDMI for HD and the set is a Sony KDL34xbr960. The ES20 outputs 480I or 480P (progressive scan, not upconversion to 720P). Comparision with optimum settings made for each option I found picture quality better by retaining the DVD player at interlaced and the HD DVR set to HDMI rather than an upconversion mode.

There was no problem with fast moving action scenes and use of the Sony's DRC mode (not available for progressive signals) helped to increase details on the DVD and standard TV signals.

Thanks as always,

Joe

I have been using this thread as a reference when using my ES20, but have come across something not mentioned. If answering, please note that I am new to digital, having always been a vhs user.

I purchased the dvr player in December and have used it occasionally for recording, playback and general dvd rental. About three months into the relationship, I received the "disc cannot be played in your region" on brand new yoga discs labeled for my region. After unplugging the unit overnight, the discs played. However, I am receiving this error all the time now no matter which disc I play, i.e., rental, home formatted or newly purchased movies.

Does anyone have an answer to this problem? I wanted to post here before calling Panasonic.

Thank you for any help you might be able to offer.

I suspect Panasonic Customer Support will have you try a hard rest (a.k.a. Factory Reset), which puts the unit back to the configuration it was in when it was shipped from the factory. Offhand I'm not sure what the procedure is for that particular model, but hopefully someone here can help with that, and/or you can find it in the manual (near the back typically, Troubleshooting).

I have an ES30V - Can you please tell me what discs you have successfully 'finished' using your similar DVD recorder. What is the brand and the speed (4x, 8x etc). Thanks.

I have been using this thread as a reference when using my ES20, but have come across something not mentioned. If answering, please note that I am new to digital, having always been a vhs user.

I purchased the dvr player in December and have used it occasionally for recording, playback and general dvd rental. About three months into the relationship, I received the "disc cannot be played in your region" on brand new yoga discs labeled for my region. After unplugging the unit overnight, the discs played. However, I am receiving this error all the time now no matter which disc I play, i.e., rental, home formatted or newly purchased movies.

Does anyone have an answer to this problem? I wanted to post here before calling Panasonic.

Thank you for any help you might be able to offer.

This is a known problem/bug in the ES20. There is a firmware download that is supposed to fix it. It is available here. (http://www2.panasonic.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/vDownloads?storeId=15001&langId=-1&page=DVDFirmware)

I have not tried it, so I cannot vouch for its validity, but others in this forum may have.

If you decide to update the firmware of your ES-20, read the instructions carefully, and come back here for questions if you have any.

I'm only getting SAP audio passed through my ES20 on cable broadcasts. I've already checked my audio settings and the SAP is turned off. Any ideas what my problem might be?

Hello, I've had my ES-20 for some time now, and I'm having some troubles with power failure.

1. About 2 months ago, I had a long power failure. When the power came back, I started to have some problems with the cable reception. It seems like I have to disconnect the antenna(not the video cable) that goes from the DVD-RECORDER to the TV, and this will keep the signal smooth. This is not good, as you may think, because now I can't watch my TV when I'm recording something.

2. Yesterday, there was another power failure. Now, when I turn the DVD on, anything that I try to watch is giving me a "splitted" screen. It looks really bad, is like its showing the image duplicated.

Any ideas/similar problems.

No clue on what's up with the ES20, but after you figure it out, you might be wise to invest $40 in a "Battery Backup" from Wal-Mart. Besides keeping your TV/DVD equipment settings during a power outage, it will also protect against power surges, fades, etc.

I have had the ES-20 since January. TV reception has never been an issue until today. Essentially the picture is stuck on one frame for each channel. When I switch to one channel and back to the original one, a new image is frozen on my screen.

It's not my TV - I have a VCR hooked up to it as well and there is no problem.

Has anyone encountered this? More importantly, has anyone solved this?

I called Panasonic and they suggested a firmware fix. I don't understand how the machine could suddenly just stop playing TV broadcasts.

Any insights/suggestions/comments would be appreciate.

Tim

I'm having an aggravating problem with scheduled recordings in my ES-20. The Scheduled Recording display commonly miscalculates which upcoming events can be recorded -- "OK" or date for a recurring event -- and which ones don't have space -- with an "!". If I have weekly events, it gets worse; although the top of the display says I have time available -- say, 1:45 -- sometimes a one-time event I add for sooner than the next occurence of the weekly event gets a "!" and does not record. I installed the U3-150 firmward update, but the problem didn't change.

Questions: 1) Has anyone seen a good description of what "weekly recording ... code bug" is supposed to be fixed by U3-150? 2) Has anyone seen a problem like this mentioned in a forum? 3) Has anyone received a firmware update later than U3-150?

Thanks for any help.

I'm having an aggravating problem with scheduled recordings in my ES-20. The Scheduled Recording display commonly miscalculates which upcoming events can be recorded -- "OK" or date for a recurring event -- and which ones don't have space -- with an "!". If I have weekly events, it gets worse; although the top of the display says I have time available -- say, 1:45 -- sometimes a one-time event I add for sooner than the next occurence of the weekly event gets a "!" and does not record. I installed the U3-150 firmward update, but the problem didn't change.

Questions: 1) Has anyone seen a good description of what "weekly recording ... code bug" is supposed to be fixed by U3-150? 2) Has anyone seen a problem like this mentioned in a forum? 3) Has anyone received a firmware update later than U3-150?

Thanks for any help.

According to the Panny engineer I spoke with, this is a built in "feature" of all panasonic recorders. It does not appear with HD recorders. The idea is we consumers are too stupid to realize that we need to put a new disk in so it will not record at all, even if we do. There are lots of posts on this problem in this thread, but there will be no fix. It is a Japanese recording industry standard. I bought a Poloroid (Phillips) recorder with a HD and no problems with scheduled recordings.

In essence, you cannot schedule more programs in a day than you have room on half a disk, even if you put in a new disk. So if you have a one hour SP weekly scheduled program that is the only program that will record that day. If you have 2, only one will record. What happens is the first records then sets aside room for it to record again, even though it is a week from then, and will not allow the next program to record.

It stinks and had I known about it I would have turned in the ES20 since I wanted to use it as a time shift (VCR). It does ahave great picture quality, so I only use it to archive.

Thanks beekeeper. I've searched this forum for a reference to this problem, but I haven't had any success at finding it. Maybe I was searching for the wrong thing. Any change anyone can point me to a thread that discusses this problem?

If you go to the Panasonic Canada website, you will find the latest firmware listed is U3-158 (dated July 03, 2006) and it has a text file describing the last few firmwares and what they fix. It looks like there are a couple of fixes for the scheduling issues that you have listed. I do not own an es20, but I can't believe the Canadian es20 is so much different to the US version. But you install that firmware at your own risk. If you do install it, do not forget to report your findings whether good or bad. Hope this helps.

Thanks psigp. I'm not having any success finding this on the Panasonic Canada site. I haven't found a search capability there. Selecting "Customer Support", there is an option for "Downloads", there is an option for "software, driver and firmware", but searching on everything I can think of -- ES20, E20S, E20P, DVR, etc. -- returns nothing for the ES20. Has anyone posted a link here to find this text file? Thanks for any help.

Simply type in dmr as your search text in either the Model Number or Keyword dialog boxes and that will bring up a list of all the Panasonic DVD Recorder firmwares. I would post a link to the page but when you put the url in a browser it brings you to the search page instead of the final firmware listing page. Hope this helps.

I've been busy with summer & vacations, but a week ago I did call the Panasonic engineer I've been speaking with regarding the firmware update to fix the timer "FR" mode Midnight bug. I was told the new firmware update should be on their web site in a week or two. It will have an August 2006 date. Maybe this will also take of other timer problems that people are experiencing.

Perhaps whoever does the upgrade first can start a new thread discussing their results.

Thanks psigp. That works. The .txt file description sounds like it definitely addresses my problems. I'm going to take Mike99's suggestion and watch the US site every day to see if a US version is posted there soon.

While we're waiting, I had emailed Panasonic Customer Support about a time when I had a daily half-hour show scheduled at LP, next to record the following day, and I loaded a freshly-formatted disc and added a schedule for a 2 1/2 hour movie at LP the same evening, and the Scheduling display had a "!" by the movie schedule, indicating not enough time to record the movie that evening. They finally replied:

"Thank you for your inquiry. Based on the information you have provided, the length of time you have scheduled to record is over 4 hours. The machine sees one recording as 2 hours and 39 minutes. The second scheduled recording (5 days at 39 minutes each day) adds up to 3 hours and 15 minutes. That amounts to almost 6 hours of recording. We suggest you set the recording mode at EP, or do one scheduled recording at a time."

Would you buy a time-shifting device, DVD or VCR, if you knew it worked this way?

There certainly are some scheduled timer bugs with this unit. I do mainly time shifting so having a trouble free timer is a must. Panasonic explains away why the machine does what it does. Why it can't fit a program, etc. This is not a first generation recorder, and setting & recording a scheduled program should not be creating the various problems that we keep reading about.

I realize recording on disc is different than recording on tape. All my VHS tapes have a little extra length, which provides a little extra recording time. Discs do not. But the DVD recorder machine should allow for slight timer differences. I've been told that sometimes the disc gets so full that you cannot finalize it. Why the heck do they allow this to happen? We put a man on the moon over 35 years ago. Why can't the recorder figure out to always leave a little extra space?

Anyway, I'm hoping the new firmware might fix several bugs that are timer related.

Hello AVS forum users, I am back after almost three months!

A couple of new observations on the ES20:
* Pressing STOP right after you start a recording may get the recording confused and freeze and would need the 10-second reboot to recover
* Stopping an FR mode recording towards the end of the DVD (eg when the DVD is almost full) is more likely to cause finalization problems than if you let it fill it up). (This with DVD-R)
* Massive editing when the disc is almost full is also likely to cause problems. I had a music DVD with each song as a separate title but I did not edit most of the title names until I was ready to finalize. This created confusion on the DVD and ES20 (it even undid a block of title name changes!!!!), and I cannot finalize. Ever since I am editing title names right away on DVDs planned to have 12+ titles and I have'nt expercienced the same problem again

I have an ES30V - Can you please tell me what discs you have successfully 'finished' using your similar DVD recorder. What is the brand and the speed (4x, 8x etc). Thanks.

Here is my tape-delayed reply. These are all the DVDs I have tried so far (as far as I can remember), in order of my personal preference:


DVD-R
--------
* TDK 16x/8x DVD-R (made in taiwan) - disk says 16x, box says 8x - 25pk
* Maxell 8x (50pk)
* Verbatim 16x DVD-R (30pk) and 50pk
* Sony 8x DVD-R (Made in Japan) 50pk
* TDK Snap 16x! (30pk in 3 cases of 10) - The new colorful TDKs
* HP 16x red color (50pk)
* Staples 8x ; (probably 16x too I forgot :-) - various packages
* Office Depot 8x
* Fuji 8x DVD-R (Made in Taiwan) tri-color 30pk (3x10)
* Fuji 8x Silver
* Playo (50pk)
* Philips (25pk) (I do not recommend with this recorder)


DVD+R
---------
* TDK 8x DVD+R - 25pk
* Staples 8x DVD+R 50pk
* Fuji 8x DVD+R (Made in Taiwan) tri-color 30pk (3x10)
* Fuji 8x DVD+R silver 25pk (made in taiwan)
* Philips 8x DVD+R 25pk (I do not recommend these)


DVD-RW
-----------
* Sony 2x DVD-RW 25pk (made in .tw)
* Office Depot 4x DVD-RW 25pk (made in taiwan)
* TDK 2x DVD-RW 5pk in tall slim cases (Made in Taiwan)


DVD-RAM
------------
* Panasonic 3x DVD-RAM (5pk and one included with Es20)
* Panasonic 3x 15pk sold by Panasonic.com
* Maxell 5-pack with jewel case

Thanks psigp. I'm not having any success finding this on the Panasonic Canada site. I haven't found a search capability there. Selecting "Customer Support", there is an option for "Downloads", there is an option for "software, driver and firmware", but searching on everything I can think of -- ES20, E20S, E20P, DVR, etc. -- returns nothing for the ES20. Has anyone posted a link here to find this text file? Thanks for any help.

http://www.panasonic.ca/PDP/Software/dmres20.zip

I found it. Thanks.

so what happens bad if you install the canada firmware and if you do.. can you install back the current firmware that is on the us site? Anyone? Anyone?

Thanks,
Brad

Thanks for taking the time to doucment. So you have had no disc problem? All recorded discs could be viewed and finalized? I am doing better finalizing immediately. It was finalizing after the disc had been laying around awhile that was the problem.

Here is my tape-delayed reply. These are all the DVDs I have tried so far (as far as I can remember), in order of my personal preference:


DVD-R
--------
* TDK 16x/8x DVD-R (made in taiwan) - disk says 16x, box says 8x - 25pk
* Maxell 8x (50pk)
* Verbatim 16x DVD-R (30pk) and 50pk
* Sony 8x DVD-R (Made in Japan) 50pk
* TDK Snap 16x! (30pk in 3 cases of 10) - The new colorful TDKs
* HP 16x red color (50pk)
* Staples 8x ; (probably 16x too I forgot :-) - various packages
* Office Depot 8x
* Fuji 8x DVD-R (Made in Taiwan) tri-color 30pk (3x10)
* Fuji 8x Silver
* Playo (50pk)
* Philips (25pk) (I do not recommend with this recorder)


DVD+R
---------
* TDK 8x DVD+R - 25pk
* Staples 8x DVD+R 50pk
* Fuji 8x DVD+R (Made in Taiwan) tri-color 30pk (3x10)
* Fuji 8x DVD+R silver 25pk (made in taiwan)
* Philips 8x DVD+R 25pk (I do not recommend these)


DVD-RW
-----------
* Sony 2x DVD-RW 25pk (made in .tw)
* Office Depot 4x DVD-RW 25pk (made in taiwan)
* TDK 2x DVD-RW 5pk in tall slim cases (Made in Taiwan)


DVD-RAM
------------
* Panasonic 3x DVD-RAM (5pk and one included with Es20)
* Panasonic 3x 15pk sold by Panasonic.com
* Maxell 5-pack with jewel case

so what happens bad if you install the canada firmware and if you do.. can you install back the current firmware that is on the us site? Anyone? Anyone?

Thanks,
Brad


I don't recall the details, but the Panasonic engineer said there may be differences and do not use the Canada version on USA machines. And you may not be able to correct it. If the Canada version is a higher number than the USA version, the machine will not accept the "older" number of the USA version. It would look at this as a downgrade and not proceed.