Panasonic Multiformat DVD-R/-RW/+R/+RW/RAM Recorder/VCR Combo with ATSC Tuner - Black

...

find yourself looking at channel 3. An impatient channel surfer like my wife may never know that there are channels above the second HD channel, and will spend almost the whole night looking at a blank screen.

3) It hung and require a power off restart playing it's first DVD movie.

4) If there is a DVD in the drive on power up it will start playing it, and if the menu's on that DVD do not allow button pressing you are stuck watching the anti-piracy message and the like. Pressing the eject button at this time led to an "internal error" that required the unit to restart with it's lengthy error checking mode (roughly 5 minutes of zero's across the screen).

Going on seems a bit of overkill - and I did not have the chance to try out all the functions... The picture was phenominal though - this was my first try at HD TV, but as CNN recently pointed out the HD broadcast channels tend to broadcast black sidebars when they as usual broadcast 4:3 content over their widescreen HD electronics, and this box does not know that the black should not be displayed, leaving a tiny 4:3 image in a sea of black screen. The zoom is useful, but it is well hidden in a submenu and has only one setting, on or off. The single zoom ratio appears to turn 16:9 into 4:3 with the sides cropped off - the picture quality appears to suffer.

When and if Panasonic provides a firmware upgrade and adds a more useful zoom feature, perhaps one that remembers it's setting for each channel as some of the $49 set-top boxes do this may become a fine product. I am not sure there are any great alternatives out there. My receiver does not have HDMI switching, so I need a box that outputs all the TV signals over the HDMI output, which is not guaranteed in today's offerings from other companies.

One curious fact is that this item is no longer stocked or carried on the website of my favorite electronics chain (I think it was a few weeks back). On the Panasonic website it is listed as being available in June.

Panasonic Multiformat DVD-R/-RW/+R/+RW/RAM Recorder/VCR Combo with ATSC Tuner - Black

...

find yourself looking at channel 3. An impatient channel surfer like my wife may never know that there are channels above the second HD channel, and will spend almost the whole night looking at a blank screen.



3) It hung and require a power off restart playing it's first DVD movie.



4) If there is a DVD in the drive on power up it will start playing it, and if the menu's on that DVD do not allow button pressing you are stuck watching the anti-piracy message and the like. Pressing the eject button at this time led to an "internal error" that required the unit to restart with it's lengthy error checking mode (roughly 5 minutes of zero's across the screen).



Going on seems a bit of overkill - and I did not have the chance to try out all the functions... The picture was phenominal though - this was my first try at HD TV, but as CNN recently pointed out the HD broadcast channels tend to broadcast black sidebars when they as usual broadcast 4:3 content over their widescreen HD electronics, and this box does not know that the black should not be displayed, leaving a tiny 4:3 image in a sea of black screen. The zoom is useful, but it is well hidden in a submenu and has only one setting, on or off. The single zoom ratio appears to turn 16:9 into 4:3 with the sides cropped off - the picture quality appears to suffer.



When and if Panasonic provides a firmware upgrade and adds a more useful zoom feature, perhaps one that remembers it's setting for each channel as some of the $49 set-top boxes do this may become a fine product. I am not sure there are any great alternatives out there. My receiver does not have HDMI switching, so I need a box that outputs all the TV signals over the HDMI output, which is not guaranteed in today's offerings from other companies.



One curious fact is that this item is no longer stocked or carried on the website of my favorite electronics chain (I think it was a few weeks back). On the Panasonic website it is listed as being available in June.

Panasonic Multiformat DVD-R/-RW/+R/+RW/RAM Recorder/VCR Combo with ATSC Tuner - Black

...

If anyone knows please advise.

Follow up will come soon after more usage.