panasonic e100 vs. sony

[petro]

every post I've read regarding these 2 models points towards the sony having a better picture quality, but I really like all the panasonic features
including the hard drive and 4x dvd-r recording.

does anyone have experience with both models regarding picture quality, I
also have a sony dv camcorder so an wondering if I should stick with sony
products, the panasonic does have a dv input a well. If I knew the picture quality on the panasonic would be identical to the sony I would already have purchased the panny.

does anyone have any info on when sony will be coming out with a hard drive model, I've read somewhere they were coming out with one in japan, but it has a playstation on it as well and it will not play cd-r's or mp3's.

also does the panasinoc have a jpeg picture viewer? I have a cd-r of 2,800 jpeg photos that I would like to view or store on the hard drive to use like a screensaver I use on my pc.

I have an rca scenium that lets me put a cd-r of jpegs in and it automatically scrools through each picture every 7 seconds.

any help would be greatly appreciated.

I also seen the panasonic at walmart.com for $872..seems like a pretty good price.

[spiderman2k1]

Take a look at these two posting's

https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=188549

https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=145999

[thoots]

Petro,

Let me give you my perspective on things. First of all, let's have a look at the two links spiderman2k1 gave you:

The first thread discusses how some inexpensive DVD players (namely Apex and Daewoo) have problems with discs recorded on the Panasonic machines. My perspective on this would be "would you base your decision on what $700 - $900 DVD recorder to buy upon how well the recorded discs play back in a $39 DVD player?" I put my Panasonic E50 and E80H discs into a couple of Sony 300-disc mega-changers, and they play back beautifully.

The second thread talks about an on-screen "Play" button at the bottom of the menus the Panasonic players make. Gosh, y'know, this doesn't work on my Sony 300-disc changers, either -- it's like a "Stop" button instead of a "Play" button. On the other hand, I have neither tried using this on-screen button before, or even thought about using this on-screen button before, since just hitting the remote control's "Enter" button or its "Play" button will play the disc, whereas you have to "cursor down" to the on-screen "Play" button and then hit the "Enter" button to use it. My perspective on this would be "man, you've really got to have a beef against the Panasonic units in order to decide against one because of this total non-issue."

Now, let's have a look at picture quality. First of all, how important is picture quality to you, really? All of the comparisons of picture quality I've seen have been based upon the "SP" quality setting -- the "two hour per DVD" mode. I'm really, really, really into getting the best picture quality, so I use the best, "one hour per DVD" XP quality mode virtually all the time. I haven't seen any comparisons of "XP" quality recordings, but I can tell you that I'm absolutely, totally satisfied with the XP picture quality from my two Panasonic machines. My perspective on this would be, from what I can tell, "the picture quality differences at the "SP" mode are very minor -- you've got to look very closely to see them, and the "SP" mode isn't what you'd be using if you really wanted to get the very best picture quality, anyway. For your recordings where ultimate picture quality isn't the foremost objective, I'd sure think that the "SP" mode would be fine enough from either the Panasonic or the Sony machine -- it would still beat the pants off of any tape format."

The Panasonic E100H will indeed display JPEG pictures in a slideshow, with duration increments you can set in seconds from 1 to 30 seconds. It appears that the only way to get such pictures onto the machine is via some kind of "memory card" -- either an "SD" card in its dedicated slot, or any other card that you could plug into a PC Card (PCMCIA) adapter, in its PC Card slot. I'm not sure if it comes with a PC Card adapter or not, but those can be found easily. Once you get those into the machine via one of these cards, you can "copy" them to the E100H's hard drive, and then view them with that slideshow feature.

And, yes, $872 is a great price for an E100H -- with its picture thumbnail menus, 4x burner, and other advanced options, it's an amazing machine for that kind of price. Now, just guess how much more any Sony machine with a hard drive some day down the road might cost.....

I hope this helps -- good luck!

thoots

[spiderman2k1]

"thoots" do not get me wrong I like Panasonic I have 900 dollar VCR from them about five year's old one of the best VCR you can get. But this post I read

https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=145999

member "mazinz"

yeah that play button has failed in my pioneer decks, apex, ps2, a sony, rca, and a jvc

Is just making me feel not safe. I have a JVC and Sony APEX and PS2. But for watching DVD's. to tell you the truth I just use Sony and Pioneer most of the time. My APEX is really for playing back SVCD. That I capture with my Dazzle 2.

A friend of mine has the Panasonic E30 with the 20gig hard drive. And None of the DVD's that it made would play in his Toshiba lap top's. I was thinking of buy a Toshiba lap top for my self but did not. A lap top for me is just a toy.

"thoots" Do not get me wrong I really think your a great member of this site. But I just feel there a bug in the DVD authorizing that should be fixed.

And to tell you the truth I'm still think of buying a Panasonic DMR-E80H. Some time's I like to bring DVD's over friend's house and my grand mother's house. And the DVD player she has is my DVD player a PS2 I just put it there to have some thing to do when I have to stay there. When I bought the PS2 I really did not care how good the PS2 was as a DVD player. It was going to be hook up to a 19inch GE TV set. I want to buy a new 27inch TV set but she did not want it. My Aunt just said let it go. My graqnd mother is very old and has a hard time learning some thing new

Also I feel if my Pioneer AO4 can burn DVD-R that can be played on all these DVD player's the Panasonic should do the same.

If I had to add up all the good and bad of ever recorder there is. Panasonic is still at the top of my list. And the only other DVD recorder witha 80gig hard drive is Pioneer and from what I read the SP recording mode is not that great. Some people say's it's the same as Panasonic other people say it not.

http://www.6ave.com/main.jsp has the Panasonic DMRE100HS for $811.00 UPS ground shipping $10.42 two day air shipping $26.70 and next day shipping $45.25

[petro]

thoots


thanks for the info on the panny, I've read quite a few of your posts in this forum and am really impressed with your knowledge in this area. I went ahead and ordered it online from walmart for $872 after reading the review of the new sony it seems they left a lot of the important stuff out of these new players and concentrated more on the play station aspect of it rather than the dvd recorder.

Picture quality means a lot to me and that was my reasoning for holding back on the panny and thinking of the sony, but if the 1 hour mode is no different than I will record everything that way. It would be nice to have more on a disc as an hour goes by fast when your watching precious mini dv recordings, but i'll get over it.

My only concern is I have a cd-r of over 2,400 jpeg's and the disk is almost 700mb. Can I just insert the cd-r in the panny and store them on the hard drive from the cd-r? If not, I have no other means to transfer them as my smartmedia card only holds 125mb and I would have to transfer them from my computer to the smartmedia card to the panny hard drive, them erase the smartmedia card and repeat this process 6 times. I really want to use the machine as a screensaver type photo display on the tv so this is an important issue for me.

I know others just say create a vcd picture show, but most of them only display 100 photos and you have to manually click from photo to photo.


I would think the panny would let you transfer the photos from a cd-r to the hard drive.

thanks for the post,

Petro

[donpedro]

Sorry for stupid comment.... But using DVD Recorder as an Screen Saver ??? Quite expensive one... How long are you planning to keep it ?

[thoots]

"thoots" Do not get me wrong but I just feel there a bug in the DVD authorizing that should be fixed.

Yes, not to deny that these "problems" exist, but I feel I simply put them in proper perspective -- the Apex and Daewoo machines that have problems with the Panny DVD's are among the cheapest of all DVD players, and the "onscreen play button" is just absolutely, totally a non-issue. Nobody will ever "scroll down" to use it, except just to try it once.

Sure, Panasonic should (hopefully) change things, but I don't think this adds up to much of a deterrent to buy a Panny machine. A DVD-R recorded on one will still play perfectly fine on 95% +/- of all the DVD players "out there."

thoots

[thoots]

I went ahead and ordered it online from walmart for $872 after reading the review of the new sony it seems they left a lot of the important stuff out of these new players and concentrated more on the play station aspect of it rather than the dvd recorder.

Yes, Sony just doesn't seem to "get it" with the DVD recorder stuff yet. That's what I like about the Panasonic machines -- they are leading the industry in the right direction. Pioneer ought to be perfectly fine, but I don't think that "Tivo" you can't burn to DVD-R is the right direction...

Picture quality means a lot to me and that was my reasoning for holding back on the panny and thinking of the sony, but if the 1 hour mode is no different than I will record everything that way. It would be nice to have more on a disc as an hour goes by fast when your watching precious mini dv recordings, but i'll get over it.

My impression is that the differences in picture quality among these machines is rather small. Like in that "you can tell the difference, if you really really really look close for tiny details." And, that's talking about the differences in the "lesser" quality settings -- all machines should truly be excellent in their best-quality mode. And, the "longer" modes don't sound all that worthy to me -- quality not worth spending a buck on a DVD-R for. So, that kind of leaves the two-hour "SP" mode as the only thing worth really considering beyond the one-hour "XP" mode.

And, as for mini-dv recordings, I think one hour sounds about right. If you're talking about "family recordings" and such, are you really going to sit there for two hours a shot watching that stuff? I mean, look at "television programs" -- other than "movies," virtually nothing is longer than one hour. So, I'm happy with my one-hour DVD-R's -- that's a reasonable "chunk of time" to spend watching one of the things, and might as well get that "best" picture quality while I'm at it!

My only concern is I have a cd-r of over 2,400 jpeg's and the disk is almost 700mb. Can I just insert the cd-r in the panny and store them on the hard drive from the cd-r? If not, I have no other means to transfer them as my smartmedia card only holds 125mb and I would have to transfer them from my computer to the smartmedia card to the panny hard drive, them erase the smartmedia card and repeat this process 6 times. I really want to use the machine as a screensaver type photo display on the tv so this is an important issue for me.

I know others just say create a vcd picture show, but most of them only display 100 photos and you have to manually click from photo to photo.

I would think the panny would let you transfer the photos from a cd-r to the hard drive.

Well, looking at the manual, I don't see anything that looks like that, but who knows for sure until you try it? Actually, though, the "transferring" you'd need to do sounds like about a half-hour's worth of work -- that's certainly not a show-stopper. Spend a half hour -- maybe an hour, tops -- one time, and you'll have your pictures on the hard drive. No big deal!

And, actually, I've had excellent results from the like of Ulead DVD PictureShow making VCD's -- you can set it up to go through the images automatically, and it will let you show far more than 100 pictures -- I routinely make VCD's with about six slideshows, which you can choose from the main menu, of about 200 pictures apiece. And, I'm definitely not using the full capacity of a disk with just that much. And, this program as well as a few others will let you make VCD's with "high resolution" pictures, so they come out looking just as good as they do on the computer screen. That's what I do, and that's what I use my trusty, cheapo Apex AD-5131 for -- it does an excellent job with those VCD's, and even lets me "zoom in" on the pictures if I so desire.

At any rate, I hope this helps -- good luck!

thoots

[the phantom]

i purchased my Panasonic DMR-E80 based on the alot of the posts i saw on this forum, especially those made by THOOTS (his visual aide is just fantastic). i could see no "real" difference between the sony and panasonic picture quality. my dvd-r's work wonderfully in both my players (JVC and, yes, an APEX) as well as all of my friends players, so i am more than satisfied with the quality the panasonic gives me.

[spiderman2k1]

Some one said the PS2 has problem's with the Panasonic DMR-E80. Has any had good luck on the PS2? Thanks

[handyguy]

Why don' t you just read left column where it says: dvdwriters & recorders & click on that, all the user comments on these are there. I don' t know how your 'eye' sees things but the Panasonics are nice.

[bnbhoha]

I bought mine in October and still have no regrets. In fact, I'm glad I never bought the Pioneer 510H. Awesome recorder & I'm happy Walmart is carrying them althrough I bought mine from 6th ave electronics.


update: sorry, I bought the E100

[donpedro]

I bought mine in October and still have no regrets. In fact, I'm glad I never bought the Pioneer 510H. Awesome recorder & I'm happy Walmart is carrying them althrough I bought mine from 6th ave electronics.

Funny... but I don't see which one did you bought ? Sony or Panasonic ? 80 or 100 ? Hmm...

[zanos]

every post I've read regarding these 2 models points towards the sony having a better picture quality, but I really like all the panasonic features
including the hard drive and 4x dvd-r recording.

does anyone have experience with both models regarding picture quality, I
also have a sony dv camcorder so an wondering if I should stick with sony
products, the panasonic does have a dv input a well. If I knew the picture quality on the panasonic would be identical to the sony I would already have purchased the panny.

does anyone have any info on when sony will be coming out with a hard drive model, I've read somewhere they were coming out with one in japan, but it has a playstation on it as well and it will not play cd-r's or mp3's.

also does the panasinoc have a jpeg picture viewer? I have a cd-r of 2,800 jpeg photos that I would like to view or store on the hard drive to use like a screensaver I use on my pc.

I have an rca scenium that lets me put a cd-r of jpegs in and it automatically scrools through each picture every 7 seconds.

any help would be greatly appreciated.

I also seen the panasonic at walmart.com for $872..seems like a pretty good price.

I think the difference in quality is only noticeable in a side by side test otherwise you'd never notice the difference. Anyway with so many additional features on the panasonic it shouldn't matter. It's extremely inconvenient to constantly record things on dvd+rw discs. Plus the panny has an FR recording mode as well as a better tbc to handle additional errors on bad vhs recordings. The only bad thing about the Panasonic is the stupid dvdram format and recordings often stutter on m apex 1500 but fine on my ps2. Never had a problem with sony recorded discs which for whatever reason has a higher than standard bitrate at the highest setting. This creates an out of standard dvd but apparently it's still playable on alot of players.