Pansonic DMR E80H no longer plays commercial DVDs

[gmanharris]

I purchased this unit on Jan. 1, 2004. It worked like a charm. A few months ago I noticed that some purchased and rented commercial DVDs would no longer playback on this machine. Yesterday, I was getting ready to copy a home movie from the HDD to a DVD-R. Now the unit will not recognize the DVD-R. I have contacted Panasonic about 5 times. They say the disk is incompatible. I do not believe this. Recently purchased commercial DVDs have some kind of copy protection. I think this is part of the problem. I thought it was RCE, and in some cases it was. I can rip and burn and then play the "new" DVD in this player.

I do not want to rip and burn. It's illegal, but once I spend the money on the DVD, I want to watch it. I have read the manual, searched this forum and the Internet. I can't find a resolution. I know this player should play commercially produced DVDs and read blank DVD-Rs. Other functions work fine. Does anyone out there have any ideas as to how I can proceed?

Thanks.

[Captain Satellite]

I have used my E80H daily w/o any problems. I recently got a disc stuck but that was my doing. Of course you should be able to play commercial discs. This machine IS picky about media so Panasonic is right there. I use TY discs. Was using MIJ Maxells for a while. I suggest trying different media. There is a problem with the deck if it won't pay commercial DVDs.

[rallen]

Have you played a lot of rental discs in it? Sometimes you'll get those with residue on them that will get on the lens. You might have to get it cleaned.

[tdan]

Have you played a lot of rental discs in it? Sometimes you'll get those with residue on them that will get on the lens. You might have to get it cleaned.

Fascinating. Could you please explain how this is physically possible?

[doorman]

im sure its copy protection on rentals
i hired one this week and tried to play it on my toshiba dvd player.its scarted through my jvc hsd1 hard drive and svhs unit which happened to be set in hd position.a warning appeared on the tv saying copying wasnt allowed and to reset to svhs.
this i did and the dvd played.now i was not trying to copy the dvd i dont have a dvd recorder in my home setup and it would be a bit of a backward step to copy it to svhs.
lots of thinking-- try it on my computer setup--- it would not play in either of my dvd writer drives in fact it froze the computer any number of times and i needed to reboot to try again.im thinking if the dvd sees or in some way senses a hard drive the protection kicks in.
to cut a long story short i was able to play the dvd on my computer after downloading a nice little program from this site. the dvd then became readable on the computer.
this wont solve the problem if you try to play on a dvd writer with hard drive as most are now!!!

cheers doorman

[gmanharris]

Thanks for the insights. I thing my machine is in need of repair. I'll post something once that gets done. Great forum.

[gmanharris]

As promised, here is what happened to me and my DMR E80H. I took it to a shop for repair. They told me the DVD drive needed replacement. I received an estimate of $834 !! I paid less than this amount 2 years ago. The Panasonic site lists the replacement RAM Drive at $434.

At this point, I do not know what to do. My machine is being sent back to me. I did not accept the quote. I can buy another machine, but I hate to throw this 2-year old beauty out the door. It looks brand new. Any ideas?

[tomwil]

Any ideas?

I had a Panasonic DMR-E20 that started experiencing the same problems as you have. And was told the same thing .... the drive needed replacing at great expense. As the machine was now nearly worthless, I attempted to repair the unit myself, thinking what did I have to lose?

First, I got the service manual for my unit. In the manual, it gives the service menus for adjusting many things, such as laser strength and other tracking adjustments. Through a little trial and error, and doing very tiny adjustments, I got the unit working again. I believe the laser was getting a little weak through use, and by adjusting its strength, I gave it a little more useful life. Also, I made sure the lens was clean ... dust does seem to collect on it.

I believe the service menus and how to get to them, are available on the net without buying a service manual.

[Captain Satellite]

Those absurd repair prices are Panasonic's way of trying to disuade you from having it repaired and purchasing a new unit. The damn recorder didn't even cost you that much!

[Rosco]

Any ideas?

I had the same problem (bad ram-drive after about 3 years, I wore it out I think, many, many hundreds of hours of recording)..

poke around eBay or even a WalMart and see if you can find an E50/E60 floating about, should be able to get one for around $100-120.... it uses the SAME RAM DRIVE as the E80.

A simple transplant and you're back up and running.

[RDS1955]

As promised, here is what happened to me and my DMR E80H. I took it to a shop for repair. They told me the DVD drive needed replacement. I received an estimate of $834 !! I paid less than this amount 2 years ago. The Panasonic site lists the replacement RAM Drive at $434.

At this point, I do not know what to do. My machine is being sent back to me. I did not accept the quote. I can buy another machine, but I hate to throw this 2-year old beauty out the door. It looks brand new. Any ideas?

The Ram Drive is expensive as is the mother/circuit board. Mine went up on me (Disc got stuck in it..) and I took it to a repair shop where they did a repair on it cost me $80.00... Told me the circuit board was about to go bad and it cost around $400, not including labor..

Couple of options..

I'd see if I could get another repair shop to give a second opinion on it, if you don't feel comfortable playing with the innards of the machine..
You could follow the advice of those previously posted and try doing a self repair after scoping out parts and prices from various places...
Or you could see if you could find a used model for sale on Ebay or some other reseller, use it, and then you'll have the original one for parts if ever needed..
and Finally, you could just get a new one.....Mine still works but I'm going to be buying a new one soon, like around Xmas time or soon thereafter, once all the Hi-def formats war dust settles..

[lordsmurf]

The Panasonic isn't very good to begin with. Use it as a TIVO unit (hard drive only), and then get a better DVD recorder that uses more modern technology. Panasonic is stuck in the past. Those units have so many problems, I'm surprised it's lasted you this long.

Grab yourself a JVC, Toshiba or Pioneer, and move on with life. It'll be cheaper, and far less stressful.

[gmanharris]

All great advice. I am bidding on an E-60 now. It does indeed use the same RAM Drive. If I can build my own PC, I can fix this thing. I just do not want to let go ... at least not yet. Thanks for all great posts on my topic. I will let you all know how this turns out.

[ktnwin]

I own a Pan E85H myself, I used it mainly as TIVO unit and to burn TV shows to DVD-R. Occasionally, I also capture VHS tapes or video from camcorders to HDD then burn to DVD-R.
For this, I am quite happy with Panasonic. BUT....
I avoid using it to play commercial DVDs or even the DVDs I burn. Panasonic recorders are so picky about the disc it plays. A few time, by mistake, I put in bad DVD disc (failed to burn on PC) and I struggled so hard to eject it out. Its damn fimware keep trying to read the bad disc and say it's BAD, but if I hit the eject (OPEN/CLOSE) button, the whole thing reboots for more than a minute then realizing there is a disc in there, it tries to read again and this vicious cycle repeats........ Unplug the unit did not help either.
Any cheap DVD player can do better than that.
I am so surprised at this kind of Japanese quality level. It's not that hard to release a firmware upgrade to address these issues but Panasonic simply does not want to.

[MakawaoCowboy]

As promised, here is what happened to me and my DMR E80H. I took it to a shop for repair. They told me the DVD drive needed replacement. I received an estimate of $834 !! I paid less than this amount 2 years ago. The Panasonic site lists the replacement RAM Drive at $434.

At this point, I do not know what to do. My machine is being sent back to me. I did not accept the quote. I can buy another machine, but I hate to throw this 2-year old beauty out the door. It looks brand new. Any ideas?

That repair price is way to high. After 2 1/2 years my E-80 starting acting up. Could not read any dvds, dvd-rams and finally dvd-r. I took my E-80 to a local authorized Panny repair shop. The good thing I had a extended warranty from Panasonic. I was told it would of cost me $359 if I had not had the extended warranty. It was a bad dvd-ram drive. Yes the cost on Panny's site is over $400 for the drive. Actually when the place sends in your old dvd-ram drive they get a $200 credit from Panasonic. It's what they call a core charge. So upfront they pay tghe $434 put will be credited back $200 once Panasonic receives the old drive. So the service shop should take that $200 credit in account when billing you. I am glad I brought the extended warranty.

[ktnwin]

834$ to repair something that cost a lot less then 500$ (I got my E85 for 350$) !!!
Did you ask them (the repair folks) whether they are insane ?
If it was me, I would use it only to record shows and burn the one I like to DVD-R. And buy a much cheaper DVD player (50$) to play DVDs.