A couple of people had me wondering if the E55 was an inferior DVD recorder to the prior year model, the E50. It seemed to me that the E55 is basically an E50 with a couple of cosmetic and operational improvements. I had an E50 for several months before I got the JVC DR-M10, so I thought I would have noticed any problem with the two E55's I recently tested.

So, I got hold of another E50 just to see if there was a significant difference in performance from the newer E55. I did the same type of test as usual... I provided a 7.5 IRE black level s-video NTSC video signal from my Panasonic A320 DVD player (known to be an excellent non-interlaced player) and simply recorded some of the THX Optimizer test patterns that I ripped from the Ice Age DVD. I recorded in XP mode to maximize the image quality. The Panasonic recorders were both in the factory default "darker" input black level setting, which is intended to compensate for 7.5 IRE sources (so that the recorded disc will be at 0 IRE ). I grabbed the frames from the THX test disc and the recorded discs with PowerDVD and resized to 640x480 (4:3 aspect ratio) and saved to JPG with Irfanview.

Here's what I got:

THX luma (contrast) test pattern, original test disc



Panasonic E55 recording, input "darker" and NR "off":


Panasonic E50 recording, input "darker" (E50 has no input NR):



Next pattern...


THX black level (brightness) pattern from the test disc:


Panasonic E55 recording, input "darker" and NR "off":


Panasonic E50 recording, input "darker":



Next...

THX multi-purpose test pattern from the test disc:


Panasonic E55 recording, input "darker" and NR "off":


Panasonic E50 recording, input "darker":



Last frame...

Ice Age clip from the original THX DVD test disc:


Panasonic E55 recording, input "darker" and NR "off":


Panasonic E50 recording, input "darker":



Well, no obvious differences that I can see. The E55 recordings look virtually identical to the E50 recordings as far as I can tell. The E50 copies may have slightly more luma. As always, YMMV