Difference between Panasonic HS and E units?

[Teshia]

What's the difference between the external Panasonic DVD burner line? They have he HS2 model and the newer E80 models, which seem almost exactly the same (apart from the obvious sizes of hard drives) yet the HS line is more expensive. Why? Also, which is better?

[Gil T Pleasure]

HS2, last year's model, features a 40GB HDD + PC card slot + Firewire port + suffers from the black level bug.

E80, on the other hand, is this year's model. It features an 80GB HDD + no PC card slot + no Firewire port + doesn't suffer from the black level bug.

It's big brother, E100 (also this year's model), features 120GB + PC card slot + Firewire port + doesn't suffer from the black level bug.

Draw your own conclusions.

[Gil T Pleasure]

Panasonic DVD-RAM Recorders with HDD Comparison Matrix
http://catalog2.panasonic.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CompareModels?storeId=11251&catalogId=11005&catGro upId=11058&surfCategory=DVD%20Video%20Recorders&it ems=65165|63096|63388|

[Teshia]

Okay, I assume the firewire port is for people that want to dump video camera footage and so on down to DVD, but what's the use of the PC card slot? What kind of stuff are people putting in those slots exactly?

[Gil T Pleasure]

Panasonic DVD-RAM Recorder Features
http://www.panasonic.com/consumer_electronics/dvd_recorder/dvd_recorder.asp

Photo Storage/Viewer (for SD/PC Card Slots)
By putting an SD memory card from a digital still camera into the built-in SD card slot and/or PC card slot on select DVD recorders, you can transfer JPEG or TIFF images to the DVD recorder and view them on your TV. Once in the recorder, you can organize the images into folders and create photo albums that you can store on a DVD-RAM disc or hard drive.


DV Input Terminal
The DV input terminal allows you to connect a compatible digital camcorder to the DVD recorder and transfer your home movies onto the hard disk or a DVD-RAM/DVD-R disc. To make it easier to navigate through the digital camcorder recordings that you transferred to the DVD recorder (hard disk or DVD-RAM/DVD-R disc), the DV Auto Record feature automatically generates a playlist for these transferred recordings by creating a new chapter for every instance of "stop" or "pause" used in the original recording. Once the playlist has been created, you can easily change the order and duration of the chapters, create new ones, and delete the ones you don't want using the on-screen menu.