Panasonic DMR-ES30VS DVD Recorder / VCR Combo - Excellent and Inexpensive
Written: Jun 30 '05 (Updated Sep 01 '05)
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Pros: Build quality, performance, features, ease of use, price
Cons: No FireWire input
The Bottom Line: The Panasonic DMR-ES30VS is a very impressive DVD/VCR recorder. I like its high feature content, build quality, excellent performance...
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| dkozin's Full Review: Panasonic DMR-ES30VS DVD Recorder / VCR Combo |
Do you want both DVD recorder and a VCR for less than $300? The Panasonic DMR-ES30VS is one of them. In addition to recording to DVD-RAM discs, it also records to DVD-R, DVD-RW and DVD+R. And you can get it for less than $290, shipping and taxes included. A good deal, yes. But is ES30VS a good DVD/VCR recorder and player?
Solid Build
You can see the pictures of the recorder and its remote control at the address below (you can copy and paste it into your browser's address area):
http://www.review-shop.com/Panasonic_DMR_ES30VS/Panasonic_DMR_ES30VS_1.html
The recorder is pretty heavy and is not compact either, which was a pleasant surprise. I find the heft reassuring and being a testament to solid build and durability. This is not to say that Panasonic DVD player that I have had for quite a while is not durable. It is light and relatively compact, but proved to be durable as well.
The recorder has a disc tray, which accepts caddy-encased or caddy-less (regular) DVDs. The remote control looks stylish and nice. Both the remote and the recorder look well assembled.
Features
The ES30VS is a combination DVD recorder and VCR. Its DVD sections can record to DVD-RAM, DVD-R, DVD+R and DVD-RW. It cannot record to DVD+RW, but it plays all formats.
The recorder comes in silver color. In addition to all recordable DVD formats, the recorder can play store-bought movies on DVD-Video as well as Video CD, DVD-Audio (stereo only), Audio CD, Audio CD-R, Audio CD-RW, MP3 CD-R and MP3 CD-RW as well as CDs with JPEG pictures.
The recorder can be used for progressive (if you have and HDTV or EDTV television) or "standard" interlaced playback. It has a remote control that can also control different brands of TVs.
The 4-head Hi-Fi VCR section features quasi-SVHS playback (more of it later), fast Jet Rewind and VCR Plus+. The VCR Plus+ is also featured on the DVD section.
The ES30VS has a built-in 125-channel NTSC tuner, VCR Plus+, timer recording and manual recording. The DVD section has more speeds/modes than the VCR, and much better picture quality in top quality modes. The available modes for DVD are: XP, SP, LP, EP-6H, EP-8H and flexible mode.
As a DVD/CD player, the ES30VS does what other DVD payers do and has things like parental control, angle select, soundtrack select, subtitle select, still, slow and fast motion, resume, virtual surround sound, zoom, etc. It also has dialogue enhancer and dynamic range compression for night viewing, black level control, slide show for JPEG images, zoom and rotation of images.
The ES30VS features easy copying of DVD discs to VHS and vice versa, provided there is no copy protection in the source.
Connectivity
The ES30VS has two sets of A/V outs (composite video out and an analog stereo out), one optical digital audio out and component video out, S-Video out. The component video out can be switched between interlaced and progressive scan mode.
There is an RF input and an RF out for antenna or analog cable. The VCR or DVD signal can be output through it as well.
There are 2 sets of A/V inputs, one of which is on the front panel (composite video, analog stereo audio and S-Video). The front inputs are located in the lower left of the front panel and are covered by a lid.
There is no digital audio input or FireWire (i.Link) digital audio/video connection for direct recording from camcorders.
The lack of digital inputs is not a big problem for me. It would be nice to be able to record digital sound directly from my DirecTiVo box using an optical digital connection, but it is not a big issue. And I can (and do) use my computer for editing my occasional camcorder footage before burning it onto a DVD. Overall, I find the connectivity quite satisfactory, especially at this price point.
VCR Section
As I mentioned before, the VCR section can play SVHS tapes, albeit at the reduced resolution. I tried a couple of SVHS recordings made a while back using a JVC SVHS VCR. They played well, but the image was soft, comparing to DVD recordings or SVHS playback from my JVC SVHS VCR. Still, they were comparable to regular VHS playback quality and it is nice to know that you can play an SVHS tape if you need to.
The recording quality was as good as you can expect from VHS. Although the image was noticeably softer than DVD recording, it was not worse than your regular VHS recording. The stereo Hi-Fi sound was recorded with near-CD quality. Overall, if you need to make a VHS copy of your DVD footage or vice versa (provided the material being copied is not copy-protected), the VCR section is more than up for the task. I wish it was Super VHS, however.
The VCR section was responsive (although not as responsive as DVD section) and Jet Rewind proved to be fast.
More on DVD Recording Modes
The DVD section features several recording modes with varying quality and capacity. The XP mode lets you fit about 1 hour on one single-sided disc at standard DVD resolution of about 540x480. The SP fits 2 hours with very similar image quality (more on this later). The LP fits 4 hours and, unlike most other DVD recorders, it preserves the horizontal resolution of over 500 lines (about 540x480). The tradeoff is encoding artifacts.
The EP modes fit 6 and 8 hours respectively and feature reduced resolution of 260x240 (as they do in other DVD recorders). The sound quality is about the same in all modes. The audio is recorded in 2-channel (stereo) Dolby Digital AC-3.
The flexible recording more adjusts the recording parameters (bit rate) so that the program fits on the disc at the best possible quality. Obviously, the longer the program that fits on the disc, the worse the quality gets.
In Operation
The DVD recorder seems to be very responsive in operation (both recording and playback) and faster than a VCR. Even ignoring the fact that you do not need to rewind the tape.
Based on my experience with the ES10 model, I was able to use the ES30VS without opening the manual. In fact, the ES10 was also so easy to use and I only had to open its manual for about 2 minutes.
Keep in mind that you do not have to go through the tuner setup if you are only using digital cable or satellite TV. I was prompted what language I wanted to use and then prompted to attach the antenna or a cable. Then the recorder tried to auto-set the clock and channels. Since I have not connected my antenna to it, it failed repeatedly until I hit [Return] on the remote control, thereby canceling the auto setup process.
Do not try to use [channel down] and [channel down] buttons if you don’t have the tuner set up as the recorder will try to rescan the channels. Instead, you have to use the [Input Select] button located just below the power button on the remote control. This way you can get to the IN1 or IN2 input.
The DVD recorder section is just a little more difficult to use at first that a VCR, mostly because of its added functionality. For example, you can start recording a program onto a DVD-RAM disc by pressing [Rec] button and then later start watching the same program from the beginning while still recording the rest of it by pressing [Play]. In order to stop the playback of the program you press [Stop] once, and if you want to stop recording this program, you can press [Stop] again, 2 or more seconds after you pressed it the first time to stop the playback.
There is a specific step that you have to perform after the DVD recording that is absent in VHS world. The DVD-R/RW/+R discs have to be finalized before you can play them in other/standard DVD players. DVD-RAM discs do not have to be finalized but can only be played in DVD players that support them - mostly relatively recent Panasonic DVD players. But the power DVD-RAM format is its flexibility when used for re-recording. They work faster and Panasonic claims high durability in re-recording. This is a claim I have no time or desire to evaluate as I am not going to try to re-record the same disc a thousand times, but DVD-RAM discs seem to work well and provide features that other formats cannot provide (e.g. chasing playback).
I have tried both the Panasonic DVD-RAM and (to test the recorder’s ability to work with less than ideal media) 2.4x Philips DVD+R made by CMC Magnetics - a company not known for making the best DVD media. Even the CMC disc worked well and played in other DVD players and DVD-ROM drives after finalization.
I mostly tried the manual recording. You basically select the recording mode (XP, SP, LP or EP) and hit [Rec]. You can pause and restart recording at any time by hitting [Pause]. You stop the recording by hitting [Stop]. With DVD-RAM, there is no waiting after the recording is stopped. With other discs, you might have to wait while the recorder finishes the recording of the current segment - just several seconds.
When using pause during recording, the recorder was very responsive and there were no delays in either stopping recording or restarting it. The recorder was very responsive overall reacting to commands (record, pause, stop, etc.). When you record several programs on one disc, it creates titles for each one (T1, T2, etc.) automatically, so there is no need to look for empty space. You can specify different recording modes/speeds for different titles by pressing the [Rec Mode] button. If you change the recording mode while in Rec Pause state, a new title will be created.
At any time you can see the remaining free space in hours and minutes for the currently selected recording mode by pressing the [Status] button twice. I could combine several programs recorded in LP and SP mode on once disc with no problems and the disc played in my standalone DVD player well too.
The [Rec Mode] button cycles through XP, SP, LP and EP mode. EP mode can be selected between 6-hour and 8-hour mode in the setup menu ([Function] button).
At any time (while not recording) you can hit [Direct Navigator] button to get to the screen which lists thumbnails (video) and descriptions of the titles recorded. From there, you can select a title and play it or select it and edit title or other information by hitting the [Submenu] button.
The title editing is slightly cumbersome as you have to select letters, digits and numbers from the onscreen selection. But it works.
Non-erasable formats can have commercials removed if you watch the program while recording and use the [Pause] button to stop and restart the recording. The re-recordable formats let you erase commercials after the recording. I normally don’t bother.
I discovered that the titles have chapters created automatically at intervals of about 3.5-4 minutes.
Non-DVD-RAM discs have to be finalized before you can play them in a standard DVD player. The process is accessed through the [Function] button -> Disc Management menu. You can specify if playback will start from the first title or from the menu/list of titles.
The finalization of my DVD+R disc took less than 3 minutes and I could play it in my Panasonic S35 DVD player. The menu with thumbnails and descriptions of the programs appeared and I could select the program I wanted to see.
Picture Quality
The picture quality in the XP mode is outstanding and is virtually indistinguishable from the original. The edges of objects are sharp, there is no video noise and there are no problems with fast moving objects. Since only 1 hour fits on the disc in the XP mode, I would mostly use SP mode for high-quality recordings. In the SP mode, the picture quality is almost as good as in the XP mode.
I have used more economical LP and EP modes and found them decent, especially the LP mode. The EP modes are mostly suitable for either video programs with mostly static content or programs where sound matters more than the video.
The LP mode has the same resolution as the SP/XP, but its lower bit rate makes for encoding artifacts, especially in scenes with a lot of motion. The ES10 and DVD players that have MPEG noise reduction fight artifacts pretty well, but the details get lost and the softness appears.
The EP modes have lower resolution and artifacts. If you look closely, the LP mode adds some artifacts/digital noise at the edges of objects whereas the EP makes the picture less detailed, softer overall and features some artifacts even in solid surfaces (as usual, I tested the recording modes with a scene in K-19 where the camera moves above the ocean towards the submarine and then pans around the submarine itself).
Sound Quality
The sound is indistinguishable from the original in all recording modes. As far as sound playback, be it Audio CD or DVD-Video, the ES30VS produces excellent sound through its analog audio outs. You can also use its optical digital audio out to have your receiver do decoding, in which case the sound quality will depend on the receiver and speakers.
Bottom Line
The Panasonic DMR-ES30VS is a very impressive DVD/VCR recorder. I like its high feature content, build quality, excellent performance, format versatility, connectivity and low price. Aside from the fact that it has no digital audio (but other DVD recorders don’t have it either) or digital A/V inputs.
If you have to have an i.Link (FireWire) input and/or a hard drive, you might want to look elsewhere. I am usually using my computer for video editing and to burn archival Video DVDs and as such have no pressing need in FireWire input. Also, DVD-RAM flexibility reduces the need for the hard drive as well.
If you don't plan to copy your footage from a digital camcorder frequently or are OK with having to use its S-Video and analog stereo audio connection for archiving digital camcorder footage, this model is a great choice. Ditto if you have VHS or VHS-C tapes that you want to easily convert into DVD video recordings. Highly recommended.
Other Panasonic DVD Recorders
Panasonic DMR-ES30VS
Panasonic DMR-ES10
Panasonic DMR-E55
Panasonic DMR-E75V
Panasonic DMR-E100
Panasonic DMR-E80
Panasonic DMR-E60
Panasonic DMR-E50
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 290
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Epinions.com ID:
dkozin
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Location: California
Reviews written: 838
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About Me:
I love to push buttons on electronic (audio and video) equipment. It makes me happy.
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