Panasonic DMR-E85H problems can someone offer advice?

[fvnesscafe]

Okay, I've had my dmr-e85h for several months now and I can honestly say I hate this stupid thing. Aside from the fact that the menus show 8 boxes even if you only have 1 item to record and the tiny thumbnails the recording quality is awful. I don't understand it. I had an HS2 that died on me and was replaced w/ this thing and if I recorded tv programs in XP mode on my hard drive w/ the HS2 they always looked wonderful. For the first several months all the recordings on the DMR-E85H were fine too, but now all the sudden there is obvious pixilation. I hate it and I don't know how to fix it or even what is suddenly causing this probelm.

I found an interesting article someone posted online that talked about how to initialize all parameters to factory defaults and how to go into service mode, but both commands call for pressing the "open/close" and I don't know where dude got his remote, but the remote that came w/ my recorder (bought new from Circuit City) doesn't have an "open/close". Does anyone know why my recorder is suddenly recording like crap or how to fix it? All help is appreciated.

Ness,

P.S. I have checked and it's in the XP mode and I have the hybrid vbr on fixed.

[handyguy]

You could try recording to a disk instead of the hd just for testing. How about trying another recording speed, like SP?