4 von 4 Personen fanden diese Produktbewertung hilfreich.
A solid, reliable product
Bewertet am: Sep 15, 2005
Fazit: Recommended if you can't wait for an affordable model with firewire input
Summary
-------
I bought this Panasonic model after wasting a week trying to get a CyberHome 1600 model to work. This is a great product, but the one feature that is absent is a Firewire input. So, you can never get truly digital quality because you are limited by the two-stage analog-digital conversion if you are recording from a digital device such as a digital camcorder (once when the camcorder converts from digital to analog and once more when the DVD recorder converts from analog to digital). However, this probably wont be much of a issue unless you have a high-end, high resolution camcorder because the single CCD camcorders produce only analog quality pictures anyway. It can also play/slide-show digital pictures from a CD (but not DVD!)
THE GOOD
--------
Very reliable and has never failed or wasted a DVD yet - I have only recorded in the highest quality SP setting, because I have read that the LP (4 hr) mode doesn't give good pictures, but I'll update this review one of these days after I try it. Overall, I'm pleased with this product just because it has been rock solid and does well whatever it claims to do on the box. Recording from my old VHS tapes was pretty decent (in 2-hr SP mode).
I like the feature of playing digital pictures and running a slideshow, however for some unknown reason, it doesn't read DVDs!
THE UGLY
--------
The absence of a Firewire input is quite inexplicable, when you are making a digital recording device, you would think that providing digital input would be a prerequisite. Including it in a model that is priced $200 more is just predatory. I would have waited for an affordable DVD recorder with Firewire, but I had to urgently make DVD backups of some important digital camcorder tapes and I went with the best option available.
You can play or run a slideshow of digital pictures from a CD, but it doesn't read a DVD. This is a DVD recorder/player, why in the world would it not be designed to read files from a DVD?
There is no provision for creating chapters (in all formats except DVD-RAM). This is a major inconvenience because the entire recording will be in a single chapter and if you stop your Play for any reason, you have to fast-forward all the way from the beginning. The only way to create chapters is to manually stop and start, which obviously isn't even worth considering.
