Panasonic DMR-ES20 Any Good?

[cbehr91]

Again looking at used DVDRs. I let an DMR-ES10 slip through my fingers because the listing ended in the middle of the night my time. It went for $77 plus shipping.

I'm watching a DMR-ES20 whose price is still dirt cheap because the unit is just the machine and a power cord (no A/V cables or remote, but I have plenty of spares). What are some of your opinions of this DVDR?

[jjeff]

I purchased a ES-20 new back in '06 and promptly returned it because of it's poor feature set. It was the first model to have LSI silicon and it was poorly implemented. Personally I'd stay away from the ES-20 as well as it's brother the EZ-40v(with VHS) not to mention any of the EZ models. Panasonic has made some nice models but not the ones I mentioned.
I've never used a ES-10 but I've been told is does well for filtering poor quality VHS tapes, I believe it's a '05 model year.

[lowellriggsiam]

I have an ES40V. It went in for repair twords the end of it's warranty, but have no real issues since.

[cbehr91]

Thanks for the feedback. I think I'll pass though. I'm looking more at JVC and Toshiba models now. Even though a majority of JVC's are combo units, they're still highly rated.

[samijubal]

All Toshiba recorders made since 2007 are Funai. The last real Toshiba recorders were the D-R5 and the XS-35. Some models before the D-R4, XS-34 had black level problems. I had an XS-32 that definitely had a black level problem. Although I've seen people say the KX-50 had a black level problem, I never saw it on my recordings. Weird part is the XS-32 and the KX-50 were the same year recorders.

The Toshibas were the best but they get harder to come by every day.