Besides the obvious ( VCRs, SD readers Etc) are there any differences in Tuner quality, DVD recording bewween the 17, 27, 37, 47 series of recorders?
Specs look identical on the Panasonic site. Thanks.

Besides the obvious ( VCRs, SD readers Etc) are there any differences in Tuner quality, DVD recording bewween the 17, 27, 37, 47 series of recorders?
Specs look identical on the Panasonic site. Thanks.

They are all basically the same recorder, except for the obvious that you pointed out. Another point is that the 27/47 has upscaling via HDMI that the 17/37 does not. I did not need upscaling, HDMI or VHS so I bought a 17.

HomeVideoGuy, How long have you had your 17? I tried 2 and both died within a month. My first 27 also died, and I'm on my 2nd 27!!! I love the PQ of both but the reliablity....I was wondering if maby I'd have better luck with a 37 or 47 with the VHS. I also dont need the VHS, but with my previous generation Panny I had a ES30 with the VHS, and somtimes when the unit would lock up, NOTHING but inserting a VHS would wake the thing back up. P.S. On the 17/27's I got U99 errors after about 30? hrs. of recording and NOTHING I tried could clear it, and Panasonic Tech support was usless. I only use name brand -RW's

But anyway, the tuners and recording quality should all be equal.

Thanks all. I agonized all afternoon and finally bought the Phillips with the HD.
My Current Panny works fine and will serve as aspare. I just could not residt the lure of the 160GB drive even though the Pannys picture would have probably been better.

I'm not personally familiar with the picture quality of Panny's SD digital tuners, but all I can say is the Philips tuner doesn't look all that hot on my 50" Pio display. It looks great on my 32" 480i analog set, though. Hopefully it'll look satisfactory on your TV.

None of the tuner outs look good, not just your Philips. The tuner output of the current crop of DVD recorders, even with the presence of a digital HD "ATSC" tuner, is dumbed down to 480i. This is done because it needs to be dumbed down to that res for the DVD recording section to record it.

In the future, (next year?) they will use a more sophisticated chip called the "domino 5" which can simultaneously down rez for recording and provide pass through of the true HD 720/1080 signal out the ports.

I contacted Panasonic & asked if the EZ17 reduced an HD tuner input signal to the broadcast bandwidth of 4.2Mhz or the DVD bandwidth of 6.8Mhz since the unit does record to DVD discs. Panny responded it used 6.8Mhz.

While the unit does output 480i, a 480i DVD quality signal should look better than a 480i OTA analog signal due to the greater bandwidth. The HD programs I record look very good. Even if I just pass the signal thru the EZ17 the picture looks very good. It's just a guess, but if the unit dumbs down a HD signal to 6.8Mhz for recording it may also be passing thru the same signal. Again, not HD but better than analog OTA or Comcast cable.

HomeVideoGuy, How long have you had your 17?

Bought mine the first week available; April '07. I am not usually an early adopter. I guess I have been fortunate. I only use mine for timer recording, but I have never had any of the other problems attributed to them while checking my recordings and flipping thru the tuner, etc. I record about 4-5 hour long timer settings a week plus the occasional unedit classic on TCM. It has inexplicably missed 2 timer settings this Fall, both of which were weekly settings it already recorded previous weeks and it already had other successful recordings on the disc in the recorder at the time. It has been very reliable, even more so than my Samsung R-330 and I can't even trust my Samsung R-130 anymore.

None of the tuner outs look good, not just your Philips. The tuner output of the current crop of DVD recorders, even with the presence of a digital HD "ATSC" tuner, is dumbed down to 480i. This is done because it needs to be dumbed down to that res for the DVD recording section to record it.

In the future, (next year?) they will use a more sophisticated chip called the "domino 5" which can simultaneously down rez for recording and provide pass through of the true HD 720/1080 signal out the ports.

I contacted Panasonic & asked if the EZ17 reduced an HD tuner input signal to the broadcast bandwidth of 4.2Mhz or the DVD bandwidth of 6.8Mhz since the unit does record to DVD discs. Panny responded it used 6.8Mhz.

While the unit does output 480i, a 480i DVD quality signal should look better than a 480i OTA analog signal due to the greater bandwidth. The HD programs I record look very good. Even if I just pass the signal thru the EZ17 the picture looks very good. It's just a guess, but if the unit dumbs down a HD signal to 6.8Mhz for recording it may also be passing thru the same signal. Again, not HD but better than analog OTA or Comcast cable.


I'll second the motion on that point. Unless you've tried it, you don't know how good a job the Panasonic does recording downrez'd HD. Recording from analog sources is on par with other recorders, although I like getting 7hrs 20 min of SP quality recording in LP mode on a DVD+R DL.

I am not going to start the whole digital encoding of an analog source topic again :eek: but recording OTA HD is definitely benefiting from the above mentioned higher bandwidth:D. I don't need HD pass thru, if it won't record it anyway.

I don't doubt these Panny's make excellent 480i recordings, the very best the DVD format is capable of perhaps, I was just explaining to the 50 inch Pio plasma poster why he was noticing "the tuner doesn't look all that hot" as he put it. It's because all the "HD" ATSC tuners in this year's DVD recorders can't provide any more than 480 lines, no exceptions. You can have a bandwidth pipe "the size of the Lincoln tunnel" and you still won't get 481 lines or resolution, plain and simple. What I find insulting is that the ATSC HD tuner inside (LSI Domino 3) is capable of providing 720p/1080 true HD resolution, but then it wouldn't be able to record or provide a signal to the s-video and composite jacks simultaneously, so they decided to delete that option. :mad:

Millions of people have HDTVs that need some sort of an external STB to view HD, its a shame that these DVD recorders can't act as one, at least while not recording.

Homevideoguy, Very envious of you and your luck with your dmr-ez17. I've had many Panny's of various ages before, some are still working fine (2)es10's, (1)es15 and 1 es-30 still working(95% of the time). Another es30 is basically only usefull as a player due to self check errors. I really liked my ez17 for it's record quality off of HD broadcasts. Much better than previous Panny's. My first ez17 that died was inside a glass video cabnit, it was second to the top and I thought there was adaquate ventelation, I have a es10 and es15 lower on the stack and they have been just fine. My second ez17 died and it was on top of the glass cabnit, heat should not have been an issue. My first ez27 died also as a standalone in another location. Knock on wood(or I guess plastic/steel) my 2nd ez27 has been working fine for several weeks in place of the first ez27...
In reguards to your comment about missing timer recordings, there is a SERIOUS bug in the EZ series(at least the 17&27's )timer recordings using the daily and what I use ALL the time, weekly settings. I will try and explain what happens and the workarounds that I have found. Please excuse me if it gets long.

The bug happens in the following scenerio. Lets say you setup weekly recording for Monday(doesent matter the day) from 7-9pm(time doesnt matter except recording must mostly fill up the disc). You also setup a event for a following day(lets say Tue for example). After the Monday event finishes IF you change to a new blank DVD(style doesnt matter, +-R/RW/RAM) before Midnight and turn off the dvd recorder, NO events after that day will record! You can also notice that after inserting the new DVD monday after the first event there will be a ! after all events on the list(except the date listed after the event that already finished!) This is wrong since that event is already been recorded. All previous Panny's did not work this way, only this new EZ series.

The workaround for this "bug" is to
1. Do not change to the new disc until after midnight, obviously sometime before the tuesday's(in example) start time.
2. Do NOT use weekly or daily events. One time events do not have this "bug"
3. Make sure that there is adaquate time left on disc after Monday's(in example) event to fit tuesday's(in example) event.
Note option 3 does not work for me since I usually use FR and fill up the disc for best quality on each event. I use -rw's and don't save things, I just record over them.
4. What I do most, Just power up the machine Tuseday(in example) morning, wait until it's done doing it's thing(about 30 seconds) and then just simply turn the machine back off. That's it! It will record Tuesday's(in example) event just fine. I'm now in the habit of powering up/down my panny every morning if I have a event that day. (note also unplugging replugging in unit tue(in example) will also enable it to record the next event)I know it sounds HOKEY that a person has to resort to this crap, but until Panny comes out with a firmware fix, it's what I have to do. I've toyed with the idea of putting the unit on a wall timer to cut power to the unit every morning for 1 min, but for now I just turn it off/on.

As noted this "bug" was not on any of my previous Panny's, only this EZ series. I've called Panasonic MANY times about this, telling them they need to update there firmware, and hit a BRICK wall each time. I can never make it past the supervisor's of the phone answering people! Frusterating to say the least.

Hope these workarounds help somone from missing a scheduled event, with these EZ units.

...there will be a ! after all events on the list(except the date listed after the event that already finished!) This is wrong since that event is already been recorded.

I have definitely noticed this happening. Most times it has not caused me a missed recording however. In fact, it just happened again Wed night - when changing out a full disc - but I think it recorded last night. I'll have to check. I really don't recall it missing recordings at disc changes. In fact, I know I have had the above happen only to power off the unit, power it back up and a check of the timer showed everything was fine. But I do know it missed a few timer settings that would have filled the disc for no reason I could figure. Thanks for the info. I'll have to pay closer attention if (when) this happens again. I usually fit everything on one disc but many weeks I change discs right after the last scheduled recording with no problems.

HVG,
It took me a while to figure out the above workarounds. It started when I was recording "dancing with the stars" monday and then tuesday results shows. I couldnt figure why it was not ever recording the tuesdays show, my wife was going nuts(ok me too;)) I even called my local ABC channel and suggested to them that they might be enabling the "copy once" bit and they said they are not using that feature yet....Anyway if that was so it should have recorded on a RAM disc, according to the manule.
A person might not notice this if they were to power up the player, say to play a disc, or whatever and then it would record the next event, and also I'm not to sure how many people use the weekly or daily timer settings, as noted if you don't, no problem. I believe the "bug" is somehow related to how this unit handles the midnight, next day changeover for the scheduled events.
Note I've tried changing the "quick start" option on/off and it does not effect this "bug".
Another thing I dont like about this EZ series panny is that you MUST turn off the unit to have it record. All of my previous pannys did not have to be off to start the timer recording. One step forward.....I'll be one of the first in line when Panasonic introduces the next series, which I have heard will have HD pass thru, and hopefully fixed all the quirks of these units. Oh and a HDD would be nice too:)

I was just explaining to the 50 inch Pio plasma poster why he was noticing "the tuner doesn't look all that hot" as he put it. It's because all the "HD" ATSC tuners in this year's DVD recorders can't provide any more than 480 lines, no exceptions.I'm very well informed and aware of that.

It's not the resolution I'm talking about. If you had read any of my other posts on the DVDR3575H in any other threads, you'd see that I had no expectations of anything above normal, average, run-of-the-mill 480i resolution and detail. The 480i-native programming from the digital tuner isn't even close in picture quality to the same programming from the same source coming from any of my HD tuners, set to output at 480i, going to the same display (Pio Elite 1140HD), using the same connectors and connections.

The picture quality coming out of the Philips is MUCH softer and noisier. Even when running my E* SD through a line input, it comes out looking worse than it does going through my Panny or Sony recorders, or when the E* tuner's just hooked up directly to the display.

So it may not even be the tuner per se, but just the general picture output quality.

I never expected anything even close to HD - but I was certainly expecting better. A sharper and cleaner picture at least. I have to max out the noise reduction and jack the sharpness way up. Maybe I just got a bad unit.

I still would be curious to see how the newer Pannies and other's digital tuners perform, though. Some could possibly be better. But I'll probably just wait and see what comes out in the next batch of HDD models, because I would never buy a recorder without a hard drive, anyway.

I'm very well informed and aware of that.

It's not the resolution I'm talking about. If you had read any of my other posts on the DVDR3575H in any other threads, you'd see that I had no expectations of anything above normal, average, run-of-the-mill 480i resolution and detail. The 480i-native programming from the digital tuner isn't even close in picture quality to the same programming from the same source coming from any of my HD tuners, set to output at 480i, going to the same display (Pio Elite 1140HD), using the same connectors and connections.

The picture quality coming out of the Philips is MUCH softer and noisier. Even when running my E* SD through a line input, it comes out looking worse than it does going through my Panny or Sony recorders, or when the E* tuner's just hooked up directly to the display.

So it may not even be the tuner per se, but just the general picture output quality.

OK, got it. Sorry, I've never read anything you've written other than the post I was responding to. :o

Your findings that your Philips DVD recorder's direct tuner image is inferior to your other direct HD tuners set to 480i output may also be because the image goes through mpeg compression and then de-compression before you see it. At least I know for a fact it did on my two Philips DVD recorders (DVDR985 and 80) with no way to bypass that sequence. It does have some value though in that one can see on the fly a good approximation of what the various extended speeds will do to the image if recording is then invoked, and lets one choose accordingly, but it is annoying that even in the best quality 1 hr speed (do they still call that "HQ" these days?) one can still see artifacts.

I don't know if Panny has the same non-defeatable "feature" but if one of the owners could please comment it would be appreciated. Obviously a simple test would be to look at the "live" tuner feed while the unit is set to the longest possible (worst quality) speed. A quick look at one of the better quality speeds may not immediately show this compromise.

I can only comment on my most recent EZ-27, as noted both my previous EZ-17's have died. On the EZ-27 I have, changing the recording speed does NOT effect the PQ of the passthru signal.
I had to check this since I really never watch live tv thru it's digital tuner. As you all know it's much better to use the tv's HD tuner. Kind of a odd thing about the Philips, but since I would never watch live through it's tuner, I guess it's ok, but nice to know anyway.

Your findings that your Philips DVD recorder's direct tuner image is inferior to your other direct HD tuners set to 480i output may also be because the image goes through mpeg compression and then de-compression before you see it. At least I know for a fact it did on my two Philips DVD recorders (DVDR985 and 80) with no way to bypass that sequence.Hmmmm. Interesting. I'll have to check that out later and see if I can spot any difference. I have had it set on the second best speed most of the time I've had it. I tried it on the best one, but left it on the 2nd, because I didn't originally notice a difference in the recording quality. Plus, I haven't recorded anything I've wanted to "keep" yet, so it wasn't important.