I am looking to replace 3 DVD Recorder/VHS combo units with one that works completely and realiably. Apparently that's not available. But does anyone know if the Panny DMR-EH75V (or any others) have the ability to copy VHS to DVD/edit/dub from the remote control?

I have 2 LiteOn units and both DVD recorders failed within less than a year (will only read a disc recorded on another unit and doesn't record at all) but the one great feature is when I want to edit out commercials - I don't have to get up every 3.5 minutes. Shouldn't this be automatic?

My JVC $350 machine from 2-3 years ago is more reliable (still transfers and records) but you literally have to get up to press the dub button constanly. How freakin ridiculous. BUT I can't find a unit that has the ability on the remote control - for sure - because it apparently isn't something anybody lists as a spec.

Unit must absolutely record and play both DVD-r/-rw, dvd+r/+rw. Would like a hard drive, but not necessary. Must have IR blaster/digital tuner/Pro scan/and the rest of the usual higer end features.

Does auto finalize mean it finalizes after every recording or can I set it up so I can record or transfer multiple shows and finalize at the end?

Any help would be much appreciated since I've got 2 units that are now vcr's with a crappy unreliable dvd player in them and a JVC that only reads a new disc so I have to fill the whole thing (-RW) and finalize forever because once I shut it off or finalize, it will never read the disc again.

If you know how to fix any of my three units I already have, that would be fabulous as an extra treat! I record on 3 TV's at once usually transferring on one and taping on the other two.......gotta have one that works

THANKS

An easy thing to try on all older units is to reset the unit, then set the clock manually and turn DST OFF. This has solved many mysterious and diverse problems on diff. units so far.

More info here. (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=846731)

Thanks for the suggestion, I'm going to try it with all three tonight. I have unplugged for hours and even days with the hopes of a reset that will save my 3 units and it hasn't worked out any of the kinks (hence the search for a new one) but never tried the clock/DST stuff. Can't weait to try - I'll try anything!

The DMR-E75V doesn't have a digital tuner - only analog. But the IR blaster and the TVGOS works with many cable and satellite tuners. And it seems to be a pretty well built unit.

I've never done any VHS to DVD dubbing with mine yet, so I don't know the answer about the remote-controlled dubbing part. I'll have to sit down and read through the manual later when I've got more time.

And yes, you don't have to finalize the disc until you want to.

If you have been trying to edit VHS to Disc use the punch and crunch "pause" / "record" method, then if you go with the EH75, you will find dubbing from VHS to HDD, editing on the HDD and then dubbing to Disc to be much less labor intensive (and more controlled). And yes, you can do that all from the comfort of your Lay-Z-Boy by using the remote.

The DMR-E75V doesn't have a digital tuner - only analog. But the IR blaster and the TVGOS works with many cable and satellite tuners. And it seems to be a pretty well built unit.

I've never done any VHS to DVD dubbing with mine yet, so I don't know the answer about the remote-controlled dubbing part. I'll have to sit down and read through the manual later when I've got more time.

And yes, you don't have to finalize the disc until you want to.

Thanks for the info...

1. Does "analog only" effect my ability to record 4 programs in a row on different channels without being at home? I can't have to change the channel manually - I record too much. What if any are the drawbacks to analog only? I have over 700 DVD's/VHS between self-recorded/transferred but from reading this forum , it turns out I don't know as much as I should about the features out there.

2. I have comcast cable now and am about to switch to directv - likely compatible?

3. It looks like "vferrari" has verified the remote copying etc... but if ever you find out different or details about the remote transfer process - please let me know...it's the most important part of a combo for me.

If you have been trying to edit VHS to Disc use the punch and crunch "pause" / "record" method, then if you go with the EH75, you will find dubbing from VHS to HDD, editing on the HDD and then dubbing to Disc to be much less labor intensive (and more controlled). And yes, you can do that all from the comfort of your Lay-Z-Boy by using the remote.


Yikes...Thanks for the info..as mentioned in my other reply, there are things I should know that I am just now learning from this forum...You lost me on HDD part. I don't have the feature now - you mean transfer vhs to the hard drive then edit it and transfer that to the disc, right? Just want to be sure...

Thanks for the info on the remote, my husband laughs but it's crucial - whenever he passes by and I just got up to push the dub button 410 times in a row, every 2 minutes, it's 2 minutes later AGAIN and I do our hand jesture that means Can you push the button so I don't have to get up this time? Lazy, absolutely :)

I'm sure I'll have plenty more questions before I pick my new DVD Recorder/VHS Combo...

Yikes...Thanks for the info..as mentioned in my other reply, there are things I should know that I am just now learning from this forum...You lost me on HDD part. I don't have the feature now - you mean transfer vhs to the hard drive then edit it and transfer that to the disc, right? Just want to be sure...


Yes, that's what he meant. The Panny EH75 is a 3 way unit-dvd recorder with hard drive and vcr.

Thanks for the info...

1. Does "analog only" effect my ability to record 4 programs in a row on different channels without being at home? I can't have to change the channel manually - I record too much. What if any are the drawbacks to analog only? I have over 700 DVD's/VHS between self-recorded/transferred but from reading this forum , it turns out I don't know as much as I should about the features out there.

2. I have comcast cable now and am about to switch to directv - likely compatible?
1.) If you're using a separate, outboard tuner, then it doesn't really matter what kind of tuner the unit has built-in - since you won't be using that one anyway. It does have an analog tuner, so you could continue to use analog cable with it. If you should ever upgrade to digital cable, or if they "force" you to somewhere down the line (by getting rid of the extended basic analog channels), you will need their box anyway to receive anything more than just the local digital channels.

The hard drive is really great to have, because you will have MUCH more room to record TV shows than you would on a DVD or tape (and you won't have any need to rent a DVR - which Direct will most likely try to talk you into renting when you sign up :rolleyes: ). The unit has an attachable, "IR blaster", which is on a thin cable, and will change the channels on the outboard tuner. You can use either the "TV Guide on Screen" feature to schedule recordings (it's a built-in, free 8-day guide), or you can just bypass that and schedule the timer recordings manually.

2.) The latest, 9th generation of TVGOS that is implemented in the EH75 is supposed to be compatible with Direct, Dish and digital and analog cable. I can say that it works fine with my Dish 322 tuner, and has always worked great (for myself and many others here) with analog cable or OTA.

I know there are mentions here of people having success getting the TVGOS to work with and download the program info from Direct's tuners.

But, like I said, even if there is any problem getting the TVGOS feature to work, you can still just program timers manually. When it does work though, it's great - especially for free. Either way, the IR blaster should work with most common, standalone tuners. And that's how you'd have to do it with any of the newer, digital-tunered models that are out, anyway (none of them include TVGOS - at least yet). And even if the IR blaster by chance wouldn't work with your outboard tuner, I believe you can also set timers manually on a Direct TV tuner - at least with Dish's you certainly can.

The EH75 (or any recorder, for that matter) will always be compatible with any outboard tuner - to the extent that the tuner can be (and usually is) connected to the recorder through a line input (which all recorders have).

As far as question number 3 goes - like I said, I don't have much experience with VHS to DVD recording yet, but vferrari knows his stuff with the EH75, and whatever he says, is good enough for me ;).

The EH75V has almost all the features you mentioned. It's not perfect, but I've been overall very pleased with mine. It does have a pretty good vcr and good dvd playback. But you will need to be patient with the instruction manual as it's pretty convaluted. In some ways, just experiment with the remote and you'll discover stuff faster than reading the manual. And I'd go through this forum looking for hints as you'll learn a lot.

It has the "old" analog tuner (which is decent, but not great) and you'll have to look through this forum to verify that its TVGUIDE programming system will work with directtv. I believe there are manual programming methods, but I've never had to use them.

If you record straight to the hard drive from the TV channel, you can edit (shorten) out commercials on the hard drive (takes me about 5 minutes in my recliner for a 30 minute program - using the remote) and then record to DVD at high and low speeds while you go away and do something else. Various rules for each speed - good learning opportunities there! Video tape to hard drive dubbing isn't automatic. You have to set the Panasonic to record from the tape to the hard drive for a time length longer than the program on the video tape or let it run to the end of the tape. Then you can edit out the extra footage from the hard drive copy after the dubbing finishes. You can finalize later, but there are risks to that. The hard drive is just big enough for me to save shows for several months on it and then burn them all onto a dvd at one time.

For more information concerning the operation of the TVGOS with DirecTV on the EH-75, click here. (http://www.tvgos.com/support/directv/)

The TVGOS web site describes the various DirecTV tuners that are known to work or not to work with the TVGOS. It even gives you directions on how to get the TVGOS working with DirecTV.

Good luck.

Does auto finalize mean it finalizes after every recording or can I set it up so I can record or transfer multiple shows and finalize at the end?

I haven't used the normal copy mode which uses the "Copy Navigator", but according to the manual, it looks like it does always finalize automatically and you don't get a choice in the matter.

However, in "Advanced Copy" mode, which I use because it's identical with the normal dubbing mode on my old E85, after you've set up the list of titles to copy from HDD to DVD and click a button to start the copy process, it asks you if you want to finalize the DVD when finished.

According to the manual, it looks like "One Touch Copy" mode using the front-panel buttons also gives you the choice of finalizing or not.

You can finalize a DVD as a separate operation under "DVD Management" in the "Functions" menu.

I'm just starting to do research on these types of players. One question about the DMR-EH75V:

If I have it hooked up to a cable box, can I record from HD channels? I realize it would not be recorded at HD resolution...but would it be full frame of the widescreen at least (without using the TV's zoom feature)?

I have my EH75 hooked to my DirecTivo and I record widescreen programming frequently. It starts out HD, but I play it 480i out the s-video connector. On a 4:3 television it looks terribly compressed, but on my 16:9 television it looks perfect and the quality is excellent. The only issue would be that it does not record the widescreen flag to the DVD-R disk, so the player does not know that the content is widescreen. This isn't a problem, except for the person wanting to watch these on a 4:3 television. It would look, as I said, terribly compressed.

The biggest question is: does your cable box support compressed widescreen output at 480i on an interconnect that you can use with the EH75? If you cable box can do it, then the EH75 won't care.

I have my EH75 hooked to my DirecTivo and I record widescreen programming frequently. It starts out HD, but I play it 480i out the s-video connector. On a 4:3 television it looks terribly compressed, but on my 16:9 television it looks perfect and the quality is excellent. The only issue would be that it does not record the widescreen flag to the DVD-R disk, so the player does not know that the content is widescreen. This isn't a problem, except for the person wanting to watch these on a 4:3 television. It would look, as I said, terribly compressed.


When you say compressed, do the people look tall and squished? That's how I record HD content from my cable box, but I needed a Polaroid DVD recorder to convert from component (cable box output) to S-Video (EH75V input) to avoid automatic letterboxing :mad: If DirectTV boxes output the full widescreen content via the S-Video jacks, I'm switching!!!
(I burn to RW discs and set the 16:9 flags to handle 4:3 TVs)

They do, so I always get perfect widescreen recordings. My dad's cable box doesn't, and his recordings are always letterboxed. I have no regrets switching from cable to sat.

They do, so I always get perfect widescreen recordings. My dad's cable box doesn't, and his recordings are always letterboxed. I have no regrets switching from cable to sat.
Have you considered the Apple TV Converter for your Dad's box to preserve WS via S-Video (and strip CP as a bonus!)? (http://www.svideo.com/appletv2tv.html)

Here's a thread where Nextoo tested it. (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=828063&highlight=Apple+TV)

When you say compressed, do the people look tall and squished? That's how I record HD content from my cable box, but I needed a Polaroid DVD recorder to convert from component (cable box output) to S-Video (EH75V input) to avoid automatic letterboxing :mad: If DirectTV boxes output the full widescreen content via the S-Video jacks, I'm switching!!!
(I burn to RW discs and set the 16:9 flags to handle 4:3 TVs)
On a 4:3 set, the people look tall and squished. Your cable box is saving your from what it thinks is a bad aspect ratio by not allowing the anamorphic compression. The DirecTV boxes allow this 16:9 into 4:3, so when I play back my videos using stretch mode on my 16:9 set, all the aspect ratios are correct. The HR21-700 that I have is great for this. I have no experience with the other DVRs, but I expect they all work the same. The TIVO did this also.

Have you considered the Apple TV Converter for your Dad's box to preserve WS via S-Video (and strip CP as a bonus!)? (http://www.svideo.com/appletv2tv.html)

Here's a thread where Nextoo tested it. (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=828063&highlight=Apple+TV)

Hey wajo... funny talking to you on a thread other than the Philips ;)
I have one of the Apple TV converters as well, and I use it occasionally when I temporarily move my cable box to record a scrambled channel in 16:9 on my Philips. The only problem with it is that my cable box also puts bars on the SIDES of standard def 4:3 content going through component! :mad: So if I use the Apple converter 100% of the time where I have my cable box and Panasonic recorder, I'd be screwed for 4:3 content. With the Polaroid, I can change the input between S-Video and component depending on the aspect ratio of what I'm recording. It's a PITA if I want to schedule recordings in different aspect ratios while I'm away though. Damn cable box! Sounds like I need to switch to DirectTV.

MISPAT, I didn't know some boxes add SIDEBARS as well. Now THAT'S a ROYALPITA! :D

Have you considered the Apple TV Converter for your Dad's box to preserve WS via S-Video (and strip CP as a bonus!)? (http://www.svideo.com/appletv2tv.html)

Here's a thread where Nextoo tested it. (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=828063&highlight=Apple+TV)
Didn't know that. Thanks for the tip wajo! He works around the letterboxing for now using the zoom on his tv, but the pic quality suffers a bit.