DMR-HS2

[Mdanner423]

Hey,

I am thinking of buying the DMR-HS2, and had a few questions. As most people, I have done the whole PC thing, of digital video and have had sync problems, any such with this? Even from old VHS tapes that have blue gaps between segments? Second, the JPEG Viewer, is that pretty neat? Can you transfer jpegs from CD-R to the HDD? Or do you have to use compact flash? Anything else I should know about? Im going to be recording VHS---DVD-R, and Dish Network---DVD-R.

Also if you own it, please say where you bought it, how much you paid, and your experience with the seller

Thanks!

[ncgoldwinger]

Mdanner423,

First see my post here before you buy the HS2, especially if you dislike the chrome cabinet..

http://www.vcdhelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=137001

I researched the HS2 almost two months before I ever bought mine and I never read anything regarding sync problems. If there was I would have heard about it somewhere as much reading as I did. I have DirecTV and when playing back a recorded clip you can't tell whether it's live or recorded. It's soooo superior to VHS there is NO comparison.

The JPEG viewer is a nice addition although I doubt I will use it much, if at all, since all my pics gets dumped to my computer instead of viewing on the tv. Yes you can transfer JPEG's to the hard drive but only using a PCMCIA adaptor with the camera card (CF, SM or Memory Stick) but NOT from a CD-R.

"Anything else I should know about?" you asked

Answer : Waste no time breaking out your credit card and get one ordered NOW..

This is the neatest piece of equipment I have bought in a LONG time..

If you read my post I mentioned at the begining it tells where I bought my unit from and how much.

Feel free to drop me a line if you have any other questions..

Rick

(What are you waiting on? You still haven't got it ordered yet? )

[pobox518]

I agree with the other Rick. I had actually ordered this and then cancelled because of some of the negative comments I read. In the end, I ordered it for about $775 incl shipping from Electroline.com and it arrived in about six days with no problems. As I had been warned, there were some compatability problems reading the DVD-R disks on other players. Specifically it would not play on my Apex 1500W. But lo and behold it read on the same machine without problem at my mother-in-law's...go figure...her machine is maybe six months to a year newer. It could not be read by my four-year old laptop, but read fine on my one-year old Dell desktop. We tested the disk on several players in stores and it worked on all of them. Then I went to Costco and tested it on a Panasonic player, which worked fine, and I purchased it for $79 after rebate.

I have been using Fuji disks.

Buy it.

--Rick

[pan-dmre30s]

I bought the cheaper DMR_E30S myself since I didnt care for the Harddrive feature or the Jpeg viewer.

Just for buring my old VHS tapes to DVD-R this unit is perfect.

I also think it is probably very similar electronics to the HS-2

I wish now I just had another one.

[Tearren]

Hello Mdanner423,

It is essentially a cost vs. benefit decision. Pretty much what you have to consider when purchasing a DMR-HS2 is 3 things.

1) Convenience
2) Quality
3) Long Term storage of media

1) Convience - There is a technical hurdle to get over when you first purchase the HS2. But, the MMI (Man-Machine-Interface) is excellant and it is very intuitive to use. The convenience of making recordings from my digital sat is very nice. While I am glad I learned how to make VCD & SVCD backups of movies, no more of that for me. No more ripping, no more bitrate calculations, no more encoding, no sound sync problems, no more testing to see how the quality is, & no more mulitiple CD's. It is much easier to record a movie from the sat to 1 DVD. Also it is so simple to back up home recordings as well and you can edit them very easily. The program setting is so easy and works well with my satellite program menu. Very easy to set a recording time. Recording to the hard drive I consider to be the best feature and then saving to a DVD if I want to keep it. Which to me, is more convient than recording to a video tape

2) Quality - The quality of the HS2 is superb. At the SP speed recording, I consider it to be near DVD quality. The quality of the movies are far superiour to any VCD or SVCD I have been able to produce (Not to say that others can't achieve this, just that I haven't been able to do so).

3) Long term storage of media - This essentially pertains to VCR tapes. (I realize VCD's or SVCD disks will probably last as long as a DVD) Recording a home movie from a VCD to a DVD is both easy and will perserve the content for a very very long time.

The JPEG viewer is kinda neat, but for me has no real practical purpose. If you think it does for you all the better.

What you should know....

1) You can record to DVD-RAM (expensive media) at 4x but to a DVD-R at only 1x. Which means when you burn to a DVD-R you have to let it sit and the whole movie play until it is finished.
2) You can't record audio in 5.1 surround sound
3) When you record a TV broadcast it can't record it w/o the commercials (not that I know of at least but my sales rep told me it could). You can edit them out though.
4) You can't copy a DVD-R disk back to the Hard Drive. You can however copy a DVD-RAM disk back to the Hard Drive.

I bought the HS2 from Circuit City. I paid around $1000 and got the warranty. I didn't spend to much time with the rep, just asked him a few questions. Some of the information he gave me was bad as I mentioned above.

If you are borderline on deciding to buy one, I would suggest going to Circuit City and trying it. You can return it in 30 days for a full refund and not have to pay a restocking fee. And you could still get it cheaper on the net if you wanted. Just check with the sales rep and make sure they are still offering this program. I bought from CC b/c if anything goes wrong with it, I want the convience of taking it back to them and they either fixing or replacing it.

I really like my HS2 and have gotten alot of use out of it.

Tearren

[TuxOmatic]

I have the HS2 and have not experienced audio sync problems, but for some reason different players might. My dad has 3 players. The DVD-R's that I send him won't play on his GO-VIDEO player, has audio sync problems with his Hitachi (about a 2 second delay), and play just fine on his Apex. I have not sent him anything burned on quality media, so that could be part of the problem. I just bought a couple of Panasonic brand DVD-R's to use as compatibility testing, one recorded at SP and one recorded at FR. I plan to take those two disks, along with the same recordings on two cheap media disks, and try them on all of the DVD players of my friends and family. This way I will be sure if a particular player will NOT play anything burned on the HS2.

As far as the JPEG thing goes, I was very disappointed with what Panasonic did . . . or rather, didn't do. I bought the required PCMCIA card before I realized that I couldn't burn my pictures onto a DVD-R, only to DVD-RAM. Since I could look at the pictures on my TV straight from the camera, it didn't seem very functional to use the HS2. This would be a great feature if Panasonic included a way to burn a DVD-R picture disk playable on your average DVD player.

Tux

[Mdanner423]

Hey,

Thanks for all of your responses, I will most likely be buying one next week, from an online merchant. I like the idea of buying it from a retail store, but with a 300 dollar price diffrence, plus tax, 10% here, its just not practical.

Thanks again
Matthew

[pobox518]

Tearren wrote:
"You can't copy a DVD-R disk back to the Hard Drive. You can however copy a DVD-RAM disk back to the Hard Drive."

You can copy a DVD-R disk back to the hard drive if you use another player and record just like you would your VCR tapes. I have done this. The question is, can you then burn a DVD-R disk from the HDD? This, of course, enables you to make copies of your DVD-R's for family, etc. I haven't yet done this but I don't see why it wouldn't work? Anyone had any experience with this?

--Rick

[Tearren]

You are correct Rick, you can copy a DVD-R from another standalone to the hard drive just as you would a VCR tape. And may lose some quality in the process.

He wanted to know what to look out for, so I think it is worth mentioning that you cannot copy a DVD-R back to the hard drive, using the HS2's DVD drive, after you have burnt it to the DVD-R and erased it from the hard drive. I didn't realize this when I purchased the HS2.

To answer your question Rick, yes you can burn to DVD-R after you have copied the content to the hard drive.

Tearren

[pobox518]

Thanx Tearren...as I write this I am burning a DVD-R. All of the files except one are VCR files that were recently loaded to the HDD from a VCR. The one exception is a file that was originally from the VCR, then burned to a DVD-R, then copied back to the HDD (after erasing the first one), and now onto another DVD-R. I will compare the two DVD-R's and let you know about any loss of clarity. Thanx. --Rick

[pobox518]

OK, follow-up. As I said above, I was in the process of making a copy of a DVD-R clip that I had recorded on the HS-32. I did this by putting it back on the HDD via a standalone DVD player and then again burning to another DVD-R. This worked. However, Tearren pointed out that the quality might suffer. I had not really been considering that, although it makes sense. Unfortunately, the clip I used was an 11-year old segment taken in a bar at night. It was impossible to decide if there was significant degradation since the original was so bad. Also hard to do when you can't look at them side by side.

In any event, I know know that if a friend or relative wants a copy of a disk or clip, I can do it. They will have to take it as it is, but I don't think this will be a big problem. People are so interested in seeing themselves and their loved ones many years ago, they're not going to get too hung up about minor technical artifacts. --Rick

[thxkid]

I have the E10 and E20 and would tradeor give up these for nothing best thing to come alongsince the VCR 26 years ago, the Hard drive in the HR2 is a plus, specially if you plan to edit commericals or cut scenes or unwanted parts out of a DVD for kids.
But even though these are great the quailty is not as goos as a direct rip of a DVD to a DVD+R using a burner, I have compared both and my backups on +R's look like exact dups using DVDxCOPY and I get to keep 5.1, menu's and Multi audio.
Now for Dishnet and VHS, HI8mm and SVHS tapes the panasonic's DVD recorders win hands down to anything else, some VHS tapes actually look better on DVD-R's in the XP speed than the original tapes the TBC and high grade filters help in this matter in the panasonics.
But the warranty is a plus, my brother on his 2nd HR2 after having Hard Drive problems with his 1st one, another friend has his E30 in the shop - did not buy an extended warranty - for -R discs not reading in his machine, new technology better have something extran added to cover you.

[arealgijoe]

:P

I have both a HS-2 and E-30, like them both.

I have my E-30 connected to my HDTV tunner right now, seems to be working fine. Making DVD's of HDTV programs via S-video input.

Anyone have or try D-VHS yet?

JD

[mazinz]

the hs2 has no sync issues for the following two reasons and one of the main reasons why i picked one up

1. very nice built in time base corrector. This alone can wipe out virtually 100% of all sync problems regardless of whatever shit quilty video you are running in

2. the machine records on the fly.

[You_Are_Alive]

I've seen output from a recording with D-VHS on several occasions at high-end electronic stores and the quality was excellent. It is unsurpassed! It recored off an HDTV tuner, and literally, quality did not suffer. Way, way better then movie DVDs too, no joke. My nose was up against the huge screen, watching the Olympics, it was great. Can't wait to get a HDTV with a D-VHS recorder. Very small market for these it seems, truly for the video-philes out there and those who only want the best and latest. Funny thing is that there are a number of these already out there that can be had for little money. Check epinions.com for older models, but the one I want is the pretty new one from JVC, but not gonna do it until I can get a HDTV too.


Anyway, if you are capturing from such a high quality source and recording onto s-vhs, then excellent results too. I bet some of the stuff you get off the air is actually still better looking then some movie DVDs that are encoded out there. You are watching the s-vhs copy off a true s-vhs player connected with s-video cable output, right? Hopefully not in quasi-mode, you'd be defeating the whole purpose then.

Go see a demo for yourself, its always fun to see the new stuff thats out there anyway.