Panasonic ES20 - First Impressions (blog style) - Page 2

After a few weeks of using the ES20 for recording sports (mainly basketball) here are my thoughts:

Let me preface this by saying I am not an expert, these are my observations from using the ES20. (See the original post for more on that).

For basketball, I noticed two types of artefacts:

A) The most common is when the camera tries to follow a player after a made basket as he is running back on defense with the background being the crowd in the stands. What macroblocks mostly is the crowd in the stands, which is of no particular interest anyway. But nonetheless some people find it annoying, and others want to have a clean copy. This is sometimes observed in SP mode as well but it is much less pronounced than LP.

B) movement-related: sometimes during fast movement of players. As expected, this is more common in the 4:20-4:50FR mode and rare in the SP mode.


The artefacts seem to depend on various factors -in my estimation-, including:
* mpeg compression and ES20 internals
* quality of the original broadcast (eg compression) - some instances (of digital cable channels particularly) already have light macroblocking in some of these situations
* camera and cameraman handling and position, camera movement, lens, camera angle, etc
* color/lighting in the arena (in some arenas you may notice jaggies in the 3-point lines or the paint lines)


Recording modes and Macroblocking
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LP mode seems to have more macroblocking and artefacts than SP or FR (4:20 to 4:50) or so. EP mode (6h or 8h) is unwatchable for sports because of the compression/smoothing/etc. 3hr-FR seems to behave similarly to LP mode. SP mode is better but not 100% perfect. I haven't used XP much so I can't commend on that one. However the ES20 does not deserve all the blame because I notice lighter compression artefacts in the original Comcast DVR picture and DVR recordings. In other words, the additional compression of the ES20 may be magnifying the side-effects of Comcastic compression. But regardless of that,the final picture is what matters to the viewer


Other important factors to consider
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Another thing to keep in mind is what exactly are you planning to record, and what sources, as different dvd recorders may be more suited for some things better than others.

In my case this falls into two main categories:

1) Active watching and recording. (chase-play live games, live live games, already recorded games or even VCR games). For most new games of the 05-06 season, I record them to the Comcast DVR, then start watching after 30 minutes or so (for chase play/commercial skip), and at the same time record them to the ES20 while watching. This has the benefit of removing commercials since I don't watch the commercials anyway. It only has the additional overhead of pressing PAUSE before and after each commercial break. Not a big deal.

(Btw, most games fit on one disc at SP with room to spare. But if it's a long close game with lots of whistles/delays or it goes into 2nd overtime, you may fill up the disc).

For this type of recording the ES20 has the disadvantage of basically two options: either SP or LP. You can't pause/restart recording with the FR modes. The Pioneer MN-32 mode would give a lot more choice here!


2) Passive recording (eg not watching): This could be either from the RF tuner, cable box, or VHS. FR can be used here to utilize the most out of the disk since the size of the recording is predetermined for non-live games, and can be guestimated for live games (eg 2:30 - 3hr FR)


* I am not doing any PC editing nor do I wish to do any post-recording editing in the device (I would do some if DVD-RW(VR) was available, or if DVD-RAM was as cheap as DVD-R/RW, but as it is right now, there's not much to gain from heavy editing, other than commercial removal which I personally find a hassle unless I am watching/recording at the same time in which case commercial removal is easy)

* For VHS recordings the ES20 does clean up noisy tapes. Don't expect miracles but it can turn an unwatchable tape into a watchable one in _some_ instances. YMMV and it also depends on personal preference, equipment, etc.


6hr VHS or 4hr LP mode
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I think this is one of the biggest trade-offs of both this device and deciding whether to go with DVD or continue with VHS tape. Each has its pluses/minuses, which have long been debated so I won't get into that debate. Neither one is perfect, so it is up to YOU to decide what to use and when. Obviously future generation DVD recorders will improve, so perhaps a hybrid strategy of VHS and DVD at this moment may be one possible solution for those who can't decide between the two.

I don't have any experience with satellite dishes, but the manual mentions the above as a way to connect it to either the cable box or satellite receiver.

Apart from that, I dont know if you can split the satellite signal or what to do for programming with the satellite box.

The SP mode solves most of the motion related problems, but it is not 100% crystal clear. I haven't used XP extensively to comment on that.


It is a good choice, it is a fairly basic and easy to use recorder and one can get started almost right away. There are some other good recorders in the same price range as well, notably some of the Pioneers.

When playing a finalized disc (+/-R) or DVD-Video (commercial DVD) when you press STOP you get a background screen that says "Panasonic DVD-RAM blah blah". You cannot use TimeSlip or view the tuner channels or IN1/IN2/DV.

But I accidentally discovered that if you press STOP one additional time - while on the Panasonic background screen - that screen disappears and you get back the picture that comes in from the Tuner or IN1/IN2. So you don't have to remove the DVD-Video or finalized +/-R to look at the Tuner or IN1/IN2. Be careful not to press STOP many times in a row as the ES20 may reset your current position on the DVD.

Yes, the ES20 in FR recording mode started with the "F REC" button on the remote control ignores the PAUSE button. I just re-tested it using both a Sony DVD-RW and Panasonic DVD-RAM. It keep recording unless you press STOP or the recording completes. The same thing happens if the FR mode is initiated from the menus [Other Functions / Flexible Recording]. The FR mode cannot be paused when using the Scheduler/Timer either.

I guess we have uncovered another difference between the ES10 and ES20?

Pausing in FR mode would be HUGE for me when I record things off the Comcast DVR. Grrrrrr @ Panasonic!

That's true! If I knew about this I would have probably waited to find the ES10 in stock somewhere, instead of getting the ES20. Or perhaps this would have tilted the scales towards the Pioneers. Pausing FR mode is such a great way to utilize available space and control recording quality. It can be sort of simulated on the ES20 in some situations with FR, stop, recalc, start new FR, but even typing the process out in this message is a big hassle and you end up with a handful of titles per ...title.

Maybe I should call Panasonic and demand a firmware upgrade! :-)

Yes it is! It would have been a deal-breaker for me had I known that at purchase time. We will probably not see the flexibility/features of the Pioneer 220 in a sub-$200 recorder again. This would have been an even bigger problem for me if I wasn't using the Comcast DVR to time-shift/stream recorded shows. But my next one will be a HDD-based model, I just don't know if I can give up the Comcast DVR's dual-tuner digital and analog channel recording feature. Do any of the current HDD-based models have dual tuners or can you record one thing to the HDD and another to the DVD at the same time?

I have found that the 4hr:40min FR mode using the ES20's RF tuner is a very good compromise for sports. The picture may not be as good as SP/LP, but it's better than EP, and it is a very reasonable trade-off to 6hr VHS mode. It is by no means perfect, but it doesn't have any annoying compression artifacts. During some close-ups there is soft nanoblocking in the background, but it's not annoying. This I observed after about half a dozen of 4:40 FR recordings using the ES20 RF tuner and playing them back on an ancient Apex dvd player. Similar recordings using 6hr VHS as a source are not as good (as expected because of double compression - I described that in the posts above). I am also starting to believe that some of the artifacts I was observing above were more because of the Comcast DVR, and the LP mode perhaps. 4:40FR is special for sports, because you can record an ESPN double-header (two games played at different arenas; same-arena games have a +20minute increase), and you are almost guaranteed to get the end of the 2nd game even with about 1-2 overtimes. The next thing to test would be LP mode with the RF tuner....