Any Contemporary Research IP-HDVR / Panasonic TU-DST50 Owners

Nice. I love my Mits 1100 and 2000. They seem to have far more reliable playback than my JVC DVHS decks. Too bad they have no MPEG2 decoder

What is your favorite DVHS deck?

I have a DST50 and PV-HD1000 (actually, I have two of these).

Yes, they're classics... but...

In my opinion you want to find a JVC DT100U, if you're looking to actually use these for real OTA ATSC work.

The DST50 has an issue in that it doesn't deal well with modern broadcast networks that have sub-channels. I had a problem here in LA some years back, when KCAL-DT (channel 5, CW) began broadcasting with sub-channels, one of which was in Spanish. For some reason the DST50 picked up video from 5.1 but provided the audio in Spanish (from one of the sub-channels).

Also, both of these boxes are really archaic in terms of the GUI to control them. The DST50 can control the PV-HD1000, but it's a very slow and cumbersome onscreen interface. It's very basic and obviously 1st-generation.

Also, there is no "onscreen preview" when fast-forwarding a DVHS recording. So you really don't know when to press STOP. There's also no 30-second skip or similar way to FF through commercial pods.

I haven't used it in quite a while, but I think there are only 1 or 2 timer recording memories if I remember correctly. And there's no date-driven way to set programming. It's simply a Sunday-Saturday (i.e. one week) old fashioned approach. This really isn't adequate for modern situations.


Again, every one of these deficiencies is addressed in a positive way by the DT100U, if you're really looking to use it regularly.

Plus, the DT100U is 5C-compliant, which means it can be connected to Motorola DVRs (also 5C-compliant) as a "legal" firewire-connected recording device for offloading content. The Motorola boxes will not offload to a PV-HD1000 (which is not 5C-compliant).


I acquired my Panny combo way back when, used as my HDTV recording solution when I had Dish Network and their HDTV Modulator (converting their limited HD channels to 8VSB/channel3 which fed the DST50 via coax, for recording on the firewire-connected PV-HD1000).

But as soon as the DT100U came out I bought one, since it was really the modern replacement... and provided total answers or at the very least improvements to everything that was weak, deficient, or missing from the Panny combo.

My Panny combo's been up in my "replaced equipment" cabinet for many years now. I actually bought a second PV-HD1000 a while back, just as a spare because my original had jammed and would not load/eject. I was very fortunate to be able to get it repaired, but still think having a "spare" for any legacy mechanical equipment is a good idea. I'm the king of "they don't make it anymore", and have long ago subscribed to the "spare" system.

I'm surprised you'd make these comments...

The 100U STILL has TWO firewire ports: one on the back, and one on the front (behind the swing-down door, on the right side). They moved on to the front to make it more user-friendly and convenient to temporarily insert cables from other firewire devices like camcorders, to make DVHS recordings from those devices.

Also, the 100U STILL has component video output, in addition to HDMI.

I think the confusion picking up the Spanish audio from one of the KCAL-DT sub-channels may have been more likely caused by something KCAL was not doing quite correctly, although it truly could have been an issue with the DST50 receiver. This was all very early in the OTA ATSC sub-channel game.

Don't really know the answer. But I did want to mention it.



Yes, the PV-HD1000 can be connected directly to an iLink-capable HDTV that has the usual onscreen firewire device GUI. For example, my Sony 34XBR960 can control all of my JVC DVHS boxes as well my PV-HD1000... if I wanted to work that way.

But that is NOT how I use my firewire-connected VCRs, because there is no onscreen overlay of graphics from the box on the firewire stream. You can't use any of the OSD output from the box (e.g. setup, check, etc.) and view those graphics via firewire. Actually, even if you're routing DVR through DVHS and monitoring the DVHS on your HDTV (any way... HDMI, component, firewire, S-video/composite if you've enabled that), you will not see the DVR's onscreen graphics (e.g. Guide, MyRecording list, etc.) since the DVR also does not overlay graphics on its firewire output.

All of these devices only overlay graphics onto their video outputs (HDMI, component, etc.)... not onto their firewire outputs. This makes it very unlikely you'd go through the very cumbersome and "blind" control of a DVHS deck using the TV's iLink GUI interface. Just go ahead and control the DVHS deck with its own remote.


Note that the DST50 OTA/ATSC receiver only contains ONE firewire port, intended to connect the matching PV-HD1000 DVHS box. Same with the PV-HD1000... it only has one firewire port.

So if you plan to use the PV-HD1000 as a firewire-playback device to your HDTV, the DST50 will not be connected in that setup. The DST50 is intended to be an OTA ATSC digital TV tuner, as its input is strictly an RF coax for 8VSB input OTA. It has a component video output only (no HDMI or DVI), and can slave-control the PV-HD1000 via firewire for timer/manual DVHS recordings and playback.

Note that in order to use the PV-HD1000 in "digital" mode, you MUST use the DST50 to control it... and the source for this DTV recording is only via firewire from the DST50. If you just push REC on the remote for the PV-HD1000 you will be using it in old-fashioned standard analog VCR mode (regular old VHS).

Alternatively, if the PV-HD1000 is connected to an iLink-enabled HDTV (like my Sony), you can actually record TO the PV-HD1000 via firewire output from the HDTV when using the ATSC tuner in the HDTV to watch OTA ATSC channels.



The PV-HD1000 will record anything you feed it via firewire. There is no 5C-compliance circuitry in it.

Similarly, the DST50 also is not 5C-compliant in any way (although the replacement DST51 was, after industry shrieks forced Panasonic to stop the DST50).

But given that only copy-freely content is OTA ATSC, and since OTA ATSC is all that the 8VSB-designed DST50 is capable of receiving, there's really no issue of 5C to worry about.

But you will not be able to make usable copies of copy-once content (if you have it, from DVR -> DT100U) onto the PV-HD1000 (connected via firewire from a DT100U). The copy-once content is encrypted, and just physically copying it to a second recorder doesn't make it any less encrypted. Similarly, the DT100U will not even deliver copy-once content to a recording device (PC or PV-HD1000 or second DT100U) that is not 5C-compliant. Hey... the DT100U won't even deliver digital video output over HDMI to a non-HDCP-compliant display device!


As far as the DST50/PV-HD1000 not providing FF live-preview, well this was also true on all of the early first-generation DVHS machines... even the SD DVHS units (5 hours on DF300, 7 hours on DF420).

I'm talking about the Dish Network JVC HM-DSR100U, which was a Dish Network 5000 receiver plus an SD-speed DVHS VCR all built into one box. I had one of those (and it was VERY VERY noisy, because of its internal fan). No FF live-preview here, and it was just SD-speed DVHS.

Also, the DirectTV version of DVHS, three different but identical/compatible models of which were built by Hitachi, Hughes and RCA. I'm talking about the VTDX815A, HDR-205, and VR911HF. I had all of these as well, some in multiples.

These SD-DVHS VCRs were all "outboard" (decks) from the controlling DirectTV receiver, which was the one and only Hughes HIRD-E45 Platinum receiver (I own five, though they're no longer in use since I've discontinued DirectTV in favor of my Ceton card and HTPC)... which had a firewire port to connect to any of the three available "outboard" slave DVHS decks named above.

These three DVHS machines were all essentially identical (actually, Hitachi OEM'd the machines for Hughes, so they were physically identical but with a different logo on the front) near-silent (very nice quality mechanisms, and no fans). But again, no FF live-preview.

It took JVC to conquer this objective, finally, with its family of HD-capable DVHS machines.