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Panasonic DMR-EX88EB-K Freeview+ 400GB HDD DVD Recorder | |
Brand: Panasonic EAN: 5025232457885 Label: Panasonic Manufacturer: Panasonic Model: DMR-EX88EB-K Publisher: Panasonic Release Date: March 16, 2008 Sales Rank: 2145 Studio: Panasonic Features:
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Editorial Review: Product Description: The Panasonic DMR-EX88 stores over 700 hours of programmes in EP mode. Its equipped with a 400 GB hard drive and is compatible with DivX, meaning you can enjoy your favourite multimedia and get rid of bulky recording equipment. In addition to a 1080p upscaling function, the DMR-EX88 renders videos in Full HD quality using its HDMI connection, while its Juke Box function and USB port keep you entertained with sound and images. The DMR-EX88 also displays ID3 tag information and comes with a DV input that makes archiving data to a DVD extremely easy. Thanks to its Pause Live programme, you can even record an episode of your favourite TV series while watching the beginning of it. The Home Cinema experience is made accessible to all, thanks to the DMR-EX88! Panasonic See more information on Panasonic DMR-EX88EB-K Freeview+ 400GB HDD DVD Recorder at Amazon UK or at Amazon.com Average Rating:  Rating:  - Excellent machine, great picture quality and actually works!I bought a Panasonic DMR EX88EB after a truly awful experience with the buggy rushed-to-market Philips DVDR 5570H. Unlike the Philips machine, the Panasonic just gets on with the job - the EPG was downloaded within minutes of the first power up, the unit responds to remote control button presses quickly, it hasn't crashed once, it's recorded everything I asked it to, and it all just works. Picture quality is noticeably better than the Philips too. Interestingly, my TV now switches to the HDMI input within two or so seconds. It would take 5-10 seconds with the Philips machine (including 2 seconds of bright green screen - very Doctor Who!). Some quirks with the Panasonic I've found so far: - You need a Scart lead during the initial setup (and one isn't supplied in the box), even if you only intend to use HDMI. This isn't documented in the patchy instruction manual. Once the Panasonic and your TV have agreed to talk to each other via HDMI (this happens towards the end of the initial setup), various HDMI menus become available, and you can unplug the bulky Scart lead and put it away. - You can't set another timed recording whilst the machine is recording something. You can't even view the Guide. Odd. - There's a mysterious comb filter in the picture menu. It isn't explained anywhere in the manual what this really does for you. - Most people are using HD TVs, and most are 1080i or p. The ... Read More Rating:  - A waste of spaceI received this piece of panasonic junk for a Birthday/Christmas present! to put it politely...I wouldn`t give this pile of junk to my worst enemy! I`ll start with the Freeview, Watching freeview is AWFUL, the picture regularly and intermittently pixelates and freezes, making recordings from the freeview a hit and miss affair! The Freeview picture is average compared to the Freeview on my Sony TV, and the most UNFORGIVEABLE point: it has just 1 tuner which means you cannot change channels whilst recording a program! for a supposedly all round machine this is unacceptable for a high asking price! Using the DVD player to view JPEG images is also a waste of time! one minute it shows JPEG images no problem, the next minute it plays havoc and refuses to even work at all and won`t even show ANY JPEG images whatsoever! When it does show images, they`re poor quality at the best of times and no matter how much enhancing the images I do on my PC prior to storing onto disc, when I view the enhanced images on the DVD, they are still pretty poor quality! I have since given up using the panasonic DVD to view JPEG photos and bought a PHILLIPS DVD player at £26 from AMAZON and WHAT A DIFFERENCE! So far the PHILLIPS DVD player has displayed EVERY image I`ve thrown at it with NO PROBLEMS at all! the pictures may not be any better than on the panasonic but at least ALL the images have shown up on the PHILLIPS so far! ... Read More Rating: - Panasonic DMREX88Replaced my 6 year old Panasonic HS2 40GB HDD recorder ( Which is still a great piece of kit and reliable) with this one. Had it a week and absolutely love it. having had a Panny before then the layout of the controls and menu's were all very familiar which I think is great as its more an evolution from what worked fine rather than being a revolution. with that said even if you are new to Panasonic recorders you should be able to grasp their menus quicker than most others. What is an absolute dream for me over my earlier DVD recorder is the ability to record back to hard drive from the DVD disk ( previously available on the HS2 from RAM disks only ) I find the digital TV tuner very simple to operate, the ads on the left of the screen from the TV guide dont bother me at all and the ability to make almost one touch recordings by selecting the channel and programme from the Digital TV guide is another pleasure. I could go on all day praising this machine but to sum up Im glad I stayed loyal to the brand and am really pleased to have upgraded to this new generation of recorder. Rating: - Excellent but an opportunity missed Mr Panasonic.It will help you to know that I also have a very similar DMR-E95H (the old flagship) which I have used a lot for the last 4 years. The E95H is now starting to give problems (it appears that the hard disk is very hesitant to start) but it has been extremely useful and I did not hesitate to get another Panasonic machine - even though they share the same drawbacks! The E95H picture is good but the DMR EX88 picture is better in virtually every respect. One very minor quibble is that when viewing my TV (Viera TX32LXD1) via the DMR-EX88's tuner, the picture looks perfect until you do an A to B comparison with the TV's own tuner. If you do that you can see that there is an artificial smoothness introduced by the EX88. You lose a small element of fine 'texture' so that skin looks smoother than it is on the TV's own tuner. It is as if the EX88 has a filter of some sort which has 'decided' that the skin texture is 'noise' - so it has cut it out. Don't misunderstand me, the picture via the EX88's tuner looks incredibly sharp, it just loses a little something in the extra processing but you would never normally look that carefully. Without doing that A to B comparison I would probably consider it 'perfect'. It actually looks sharper than the Viera's own tuner but that may be an illusion brought about by the 'noise' reduction in much the same way that a cartoon image always looks sharp on LCD screens. Presumably because there is no subtlety in the image. It is the subtlety ... Read More Rating: - Brilliant, but flawed.The is a step up from the previous model, with a larger hard drive and the ability to add CD albums, whose titles can be fetched with Gracenote (so you don't have to type them in yourself). It's an excellent recorder, but has some serious limitations. The first is that you can't back up the hard drive. You can put your entire music collection on here, but if the drive fails, you will lose everything. The usb connection is simply for adding mp3 tracks - you can't connect an external hard drive and record onto it. The second also involves the music recording side. Whilst you can create your own "groups" of tracks from mp3 files, you can't from CDs. This means you cannot pick and choose which tracks from your CDs you want to record. It's the whole CD or nothing, with no facility to combine recordings - so you cannot create your own playlists. The documentation is fairly misleading on this, so take note. I bought the previous model, but only recently had cause to burn some DVD discs. I burnt around a dozen, before the RAM drive failed. By this time it was out of warranty, and the cost of repair is greater than buying a new machine. I'm still waiting to see if Panasonic will pay for the repair, as Amazon failed to respond to my complaint about it. However, I was able to save the tv recordings on the hard drive by hooking it up to the new model with a scart cable and setting the new machine to record from the input from the old machine. But you ... Read More Panasonic_DMR-EX88EB-K_Freeview+_400GBPanasonic DMR-EX88EB-K Freeview+ 400GB HDD DVD Recorder | |
