Panasonic DMR-EZ48VK

Pros: When it is working it does have a nice picture.

Cons: ROYAL PITA T0 USE / FREQUENTLY FREEZES

Ever so slow, manual is a nitemare. Not at all user friendly.

Summary: Wow what a dissapointment! This is my 2nd from Abt (which is a fantastic Company) These uints are extremely slow, I have found if you hit eject while a movie is playing the unit will eject the disc and freeze up. Any normal dvd/cd player you can do this w/o a problem. Change channels too fast it will freeze up, hit the wrong button Direct navagator instead of Return the unit will freeze up and more!

I also tried the Toshiba combo units that were even worse. These seem to be the only ones available and all I can say for the money that they get for them they are both boat anchors.

Panasonics customer service is basically useless. Bottom line these companies have been making DVD and VHS players for many years that I have used and all were all great and very user friendly , these new combo units are a disgrace.

The operators manual for the Panasonic is nuts! On the positive side the Panny does have a great picture quality as well as plays back most discs. but make a home movie using Nero in DVD format and trying to put it to a VHS tape forget about it so I would only say the only enjoyment that the VHS player will give you is to play your old VHS tapes. You can not record DTV onto VHS either what they do not tell you is that you can only record analog TV to VHS. Big deal as there is no more analog TV in the USA........... I am going to keep the unit, BUT basically this is the best of the worst that is available on the market. Eventually techonology will catch up and they will either come out with a decent firmware upgrade or better units will be made. But I need to have somthing that can record TV shows.

Bottom line if you get one of these make sure to leave ball point pen on top of the player as you will need it to hit the reset button as this thing freezes up for any number of reasons, at least you will get a lot or excersize getting up all the time to re-set it.

PANNY YOU REALLY DROPPED THE BALL ON THIS!

Owned 3 months now and get more dissapointed everytime I use it. For the money Panasonic ask for it you would expect it to work correctly. It does not period.

Personally I wish that I could get by w/o a recorder but at this time this is one of the "BEST OF THE WORST" units on the market. If you can get by w/o one wait till a manufacture comes up with one that actually works out of the box and is user friendly.