panasonic e85 questions

stephen19

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Hello,

I am thinking of buying the e85 as it seems to be the best thing out there... or am I wrong?

I don't have prog scan yet but it would be nice to have pal and ntsc prog scan player ready for when I do. I understand not all recorders have rbg in and out which seems to me to defeat the purpose of having a dvd recorder! I believe the e85 meets all these requirements.

Do people find that the use their recorders to play other discs or do you keep another player for that; I'm wondering if it is worth getting the multiregion version or not?

I plan to record to the hd and archive shows I want to keep to dvdr. So since disc space should not be an issue I would record in the highest quality. What is the qulaity like is it good?

What is this variable bit rate. Is this when you record direct to dvdr? Is it like a vcr that records in standard play but switches to extended play if it realises the tape will run out? If I record to hd would this become irrelevant?

Thanks for your help.
 
I am thinking of buying the e85 as it seems to be the best thing out there... or am I wrong?
The Panasonic E85 is an excellent HDD/DVDR combo. However the Toshiba RX3 is just becoming available now. This model looks very impressive on paper: 80GB HDD (same as the E85), RGB in/Progressive output etc. Significantly though it has more 'authoring options' than the E85, i.e. you'll be able to specify background images for the menus etc. In short it is a total DVD authoring package as opposed to a HDD/DVDR combo. Also, if Toshiba follow their previous trend, playback of commercial DVDs on the machine will be excellent.

The downside is that, like the RX1 over the HS2/E100, it will be a much more complex machine than the E85. Thus if you want easy to use go for the Panny, otherwise why not wait to see what a few of the early adopters have to say about the Toshiba?

I plan to record to the hd and archive shows I want to keep to dvdr. So since disc space should not be an issue I would record in the highest quality. What is the qulaity like is it good?
Quality on all DVD recorders is excellent at high bitrates. On a HDD/DVDR combo it isn't worth recording anything in low bitrates IMHO.

What is this variable bit rate.
Variable bitrate is a process of MPEG2 encoding (as well as other codecs). It is where the encoder attempts to give each frame the optimum amount of data (to avoid digital artifacts) whilst still meeting set constraints such as the overall length of the recording and the maximum data rate (10.8MBits/S for DVD-Video).

Frankly though it's not something you really need to worry about unless your interested. If so explainations can be found all over the internet but the Digital Digest forums are a good place to start:
http://forum.digital-digest.com/

Note that VBR is not to be confused with Flexibe Bitrate which is a 'fit to disk' option enabling you to dub a large recording on your HDD to a DVD-R using all 4.7GBs of space. For example you recording a 2hr 15min programme in XP quality on the HDD (1hr worth of recording in XP is approx 4.7GB). You use Flexible Record to dub to DVD-R and, once complete, the disk is full to capacity.
 
Thanks for the fast reply. I think I was thinking of "Flexibe Bitrate".
 
I'm not sure if the new Tosh can be made multiregion - certainly its predecessor couldn't. There are various dealers offering a multiregion version of the E-85 online. I've had mine almost two months and have been very pleased with it, both for recording and playback. I've also found its playback of commercial CDs and DVDs to be superior to my old Toshiba player, so that's now retired to the spare room: the E-85 plays everything fine and has proven a genuine multi-tasking marvel.

(One thing with the multiregion thought is that you cannot watch an NSTC disc whilst recording a PAL broadcast: the machine is either one or the other, but cannot perform as both simulatenously. A minor thing and I'm not sure any recorder would be able to do otherwise.)
 
nialli said:
I'm not sure if the new Tosh can be made multiregion - certainly its predecessor couldn't.
Are you sure of that? Certainly a number of dealers advertise a Multi-region Toshiba RDXS30 - looking in the July HCC for example PRC Direct, Sound & Vision for state that a Multi-region model is available.
 
The Tosh was initially available as MR from the usual sources (AV Land, Multiregion Magic etc) but then got withdrawn as there were NSTC playback probs. There's a huge posting on Digital Spy about the Tosh that's worth reading.

I've noticed that some ads promote a MR version of the tosh but never with a price. Hopefully Toshiba have resolved the issue, but I've not read anything on the new model that suggest they have.
 
The Toshiba RX30 seems to have been removed from most sites now (hardly surprising) but the DR1 seems to fully able to be modded to fully multi-region - given it's virtually the same output wise (i.e. NTSC/PAL PS) as well as NTSC/PAL recording - I don't see why the Toshiba RX32 would have a problem. Certainly it is no secret that NO Toshiba models have handset hacks though.

As things stand your quite right though - at the moment no sites that I can see are offering the RX32 multi-region (although I haven't looked very far as I am currently on GRPS). So I suppose if that is a concern then the E85 is, currently, the better option.
 

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