Panasonic E 80 compared to E 100

[gsd]

I am about to buy my first dvd recorder and mainly through this forum am leaning toward Panasonic. I want to record movies from tv; vcr tapes; transfer photos from the computer to the panasonic to edit. When I talked to Panasonic I was told that the 80 does not support the jpeg format like the 100 does. Does that mean that there is no way to transfer still photos from the computer to the 80 since it does not support that format? Would it be better to edit the photos on the computer and burn from it?
Any opinions as to which machine to get?

thanks

[thoots]

I am about to buy my first dvd recorder and mainly through this forum am leaning toward Panasonic. I want to record movies from tv; vcr tapes; transfer photos from the computer to the panasonic to edit. When I talked to Panasonic I was told that the 80 does not support the jpeg format like the 100 does. Does that mean that there is no way to transfer still photos from the computer to the 80 since it does not support that format? Would it be better to edit the photos on the computer and burn from it? Any opinions as to which machine to get?

gsd,

Well, I wouldn't try to talk you out of the 100 -- more is better when it comes to hard drive space, at the very least. However, from reading the manual, it appears that the 100's "support" of still images might well be less than what you might be looking for. Bottom line, you can put them onto an SD card, or on some other kind of card fed via a PCMCIA adapter, and get your images "into" the 100. So then, what can you do with them? Looks like you can transfer them to the hard drive, or to a DVD-RAM. The manual doesn't say anything about recording still images to a DVD-R disc. So, I think it's safe to say that it can't be done. And, my bet would be that this might be what you might want to do with your images. At any rate, you can download the DMR-E100H manual here:

http://www.panasonic.ca/english/sandd/SoftwareQuery.asp

Just search for DMRE, and you'll get a list of all the DVD recorder manuals they've got.

So, if you want to put images onto a DVD-R in order to make slideshows for friends and families, I don't think this is gonna get the job done for you. So, time to look on the computer side of things -- there have to be at least a dozen computer programs that'll make such a disc for you. In fact, you can usually make either a VCD or a DVD, and I've had excellent results with either kind of disc. I've used Ulead's DVD PictureShow, and I'm very happy with that. But, again, there are lots of others. In fact, I think some of the full-blown "image suites" are even building this kind of thing into their suites now.

Otherwise, heck yeah -- go for the 100 over the 80, anyday!! If you can drop that much more cash on one of those things (there's a BIG price difference!), then go for the 100. On the other hand, the 80 will do a fine job, too!

Hope this helps -- good luck!

thoots