Panny E80 Owners

[chole]

Panny E80 Owners

What do you guys think of your Panny E80, would you recommend it for the price of $360, how hard is it to learn to use, is the picture quality (SP 2 hour mode) good when played back on other dvd players.

What is the difference beteen the E80 and E85
What are the Pros and cons of the unit.

Thanks

[richdvd]

I agree with Lordsmurf on his analysis regarding Panasonics.
Anything under 2 1/2 hours...results in great quality.
Anything over that tends to be very "blocky".
I never go over 2 1/2 hours, so it's great for me.

[Alzarius]

I love both my E-80 and E-85.


I got the E-80 during clearance for $270 (open box) last April at Best Buy. I use it primarily for archiving TV shows, and transferring a lot of VHS tapes to DVD. It does the job very well, and I like how it also cleans up some fuzz from the old VHS tapes too. The editing function is pretty easy to use too.

Some small dislikes: very few menu backgrounds to choose from when you record to a DVD-R, and the backgrounds are pretty generic. It only records to DVD-R at 1x.

Those are very small grips, and I did use the E-80 for a good 8-9 months before I plunked down the cash for an E-85. I liked the E-80 so much that I would have bought another one (just so I could record more shows at the same time) if the E-85 hadn't dropped in price to $399 before tax or shipping.


Good stuff about the E-85 over the E-80: records to DVD-R at 4x. Editing functions are more convenient too. For example, if you have 30 different shows stored on the hard drive, and want to delete 20 of them: you have to do it one by one on the E-80 (i.e. select one, delete, confirm delete, select another, etc). But onthe E-85, you can select all the different shows individually first, then press delete once, and it will erase all the selected shows for you. Same thing for deleting commercial breaks (shortening segment function).... the E-85 lets you select individual chapters to delete so when I edit a sports recording, for example, I can break up the program into little chapters (with commercials being their own chapter), then select all the commercial chapters, hit delete once.... and they're all gone at the same time. Very handy. If you have a cable box also, the E-85 has an infrared device that helps you change your cable box's channel so if you need to change cable box channels for programmed recordings, it will do it for you too.

The E-85 overall has the better features. I'm not too excited by the TV-Guide thing, just because I don't use it that often. I got mine for $420 after tax and shipping, online (just search on pricegrabber), new.... and if I were to compare that to the $360 you mentioned for the E-80.... it's a no brainer for me.


Still, both units are very good.

Hope that helps.

[handyguy]

Id probably just get a e55 from Walmart for $150.

$360 is too much, a Pioneer with an 80 gig hd, was $250 at Costco.