New Recordable DVD Players

[carcher]

Does anyone know of any good reviews for Panasonics new DMR-E20 recordable DVD Player?

Thanks.

[Wayne Moule]

http://www.whatvideotv.com/testbench/VideoRecorders/Panasonic/PanasonicDMR-E20.shtml

[Philc]

Rated 4/5 in What Hi-fi but beware. The test crew tried playing some of the recorded material on other DVD players and not one of them actually played it. This is something to bear in mind if you are going to be using it for business use. I think the current price tag of £1000 (£600 here) is a bit steep in anyones books and capacity is limited to 4.7GB (Per Side). This will not allow a full movie. Apparently in the low quality setting it is almost unwatchable and the high quality setting is very god almost identical to the source (apart from some colour wash). I was going to get one but decided against it when I read their review. I'll wait for next years new and improved model which will hopefully handly a larger capacity disc.

[Steviey]

I bought one of these at the weekend. A 4.7 Gb disc will hold 120mins of data in the SP mode which is near-identical to the original. For a film longer than 120min you can adjust the recording mode so it can accomodate the remaining time. Whilst the next mode down from SP,(LP) has noticeable degradation I certainly don't think it becomes unwatchable. The highest compression mode EP (which holds 6 hours) is quite poor but again not unwatchable. On the whole, I am very pleased with it.

As for Phil C comments, is it possible to increase the capacity.? Wouldn't this mean a single sided/dual layer disc. Could this be recorded on a home DVD recorder ??