Panasonic E50 - Was Hoping For Better!

[MicoMan]

I got my E50 this week and have only just had chance to have a good play with it this weekend.

This is my 4th DVD player so I have had quite a bit of experience with DVD. I have ripped DVD's too VCD on my PC with good results so was expecting far better quality with a DVD recorder.

My current setup is not the best with only a Hitachi 25" TV, 2 nicam VCR's (one being replaced by the E50) and a Kiiro DVD player which is region/macro free.

I bought the E50 too replace a VCR and too back-up some Hi8 tapes that are getting a bit old. I would have preferred the HS2 but could not afford to spend double the price of the E50 for one.

I had read good reviews of the recorder and was impressed with the quality in XP mode. SP is good but I was expecting better from the lower quality settings.
I do like the ram features of the recorder especially Time-Slip. I have had it less than a week and have used this feature already.

What I have found so far. If I'm wrong please correct me.

Good

Time-slip
XP mode
Ram discs in caddy should last years. ( 12 hours on 9.4GB)


Not so good

SP and lower quality settings - ( blocky on TV with RGB and I'm used too VCD!)
DVD-R - Not being able to chapter a disc where I want after recording.
Not being able to split a recording
Teletext - I was hoping it would record the teletext signal like a SVHS VCR but I cant even get teletext to work when watching a channel on it??
DVD Copy - I did a test copying a DVD from my Kiiro with RGB onto a Ram disc and it was very blocky even in SP mode?
25" TV - If it looks bad on my TV what does it look like on a 32" Widescreen?

The DVD-R I made and finalised does not play on my Kiiro DVD player?? The menu comes up but the player just freezes when I press play. ( I had a friend make me a DVD-R with a E20 some time ago and it did the same? Wont work on PC DVD drive or mates Dansai. My Kiiro does play DVD-R as I have a copy of a film on one which works fine. Looks like it does not like the menu! Both discs play fine on the E50.

If anyone can give me some pointers to help me get the best from my E50 please feel free.

Or have I got a bad one?

[ejai]

I agree about the quality issue, I expected better at SP settings (too much blockiness). As for compatibility I noticed that discs created with the Panasonic machines have problems playing on some players.

I believe the problem has to do with the file structure, I noticed that the Panasonic leaves out the AUDIO_TS folder. If you notice on most dvds the VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS folders are present. I am not sure if this is the problem but it does seem to be out of the ordinary.

What I do is create the video using the E-50 and transfer the video to my computer using a dvd ram/r writer I own from panasonic. This only takes about 15-20 minutes, then I author it using Ulead's DVD Workshop and burn it to a dvd-r. Now the disk has both folders (Audio/Video) and works fine on the players that would not play them before.

Panasonic is not living up to the quality and compatibility selling point that it uses to describe it's dvd recordable devices. As more companies start to produce devices we will find other brands that may be closer to what we are looking for.

Or it could be human nature and we are never reallly satisfied.

[piano632]

If you're using PCM audio, try recording with Dolby Digital 2.0 instead for anything over 90 minutes. This will sacrifice the audio quality slightly but give a higher bitrate to the video. It seems 90 min. is about the limit for good quality video using PCM audio, even on a computer.