possible? increase dvd recording from 4.00GB to 4.35GB?

[texas1]

my old workhorse Panasonic DMR ES10 burned out after more than 3 years of relentless service and I tried an ES20 with poor results and recently got another ES10.

The original ES10 recorded magnificently and to 4.35GB on a blank which IMO makes for an almost 8% better picture. The ES20 went to 4.00GB and surprisingly the new (used from ebay) ES10 also does 4.00GB.

anyone here have a unit that does 4.35GB? Also, is there a way to use the whole disk?

thanks!

[lordsmurf]

No, nothing you can do.
Panasonic dosn't make very good machines, many quality quirks/flaws.

[texas1]

I receive a lot of dvds from people and they have other than Panny's also only 4.00 GB for the full disk. I was very happy with my panny which made outstanding quality recordings. The later models actually became inferioir as they tried to reduce size and cut costs. Few models give you true FR capability and a remote with a open/close button.

[lordsmurf]

You may have been satisfied, but Panasonic is bottom barrel of image quality, with a lot of blocks and noise in most encodes. Toshiba, JVC, Pioneer, Philips, RCA and several others look much better (depends on model, however). Panasonic is an "all models suck" sort of situation.

Consider another brand. Otherwise, you're pretty much stuck with what you have. What you see is what you're going to get (4GB passable quality encodes).

I believe it's just DVD-Video mode that does this (on a DVD-R), not VR mode which has it's own share of issues (on a DVD-RAM).

[oldfart13]

If you are using RAM discs you do know about erasing them in a computer with programs like Panasonic DVD Movie Album? This increases the record time from 2:00 to 2:07. Using the erase/format in the unit itself sets it to 2:00. It might come in handy especially for timer recordings....

[jjeff]

Interesting oldfart, when I tried a new RAM disc it said 2:07 min SP. After using it, then reformatting it on my Panny it now only says 2:00! I liked that extra 7 min. It would come in handy for recording say a 2hr program that might run a little long, without having to resort to FR.

[oldfart13]

There were several other programs that did this. I just like to use the native Panny software as it's convenient. The copy tool also allows me to transfer individual programs from the RAM disc without any problems. That makes it easy to author multisession discs. You might try other programs to see if they have RAM erasing possible. The Panasonic software came with my computer drive long ago but you can still buy it directly from Panasonic or get it from a Panasonic service center. The trick to get the other few minutes back on a disc is to erase it, not format it.