I too have been agonizing for weeks about choosing between the Philips and Panny. I was all set to buy the E30 due to it having a progressive scan output until I found out that that was only on the American model.
So I opted for the 880 due to being multiregion, plays MP3's, more compatible, cheaper rw media, it has better technical test results (for video jitter, signal to noise ratio etc) but mainly because they are being sold at Richers Sounds. They do a price beat and since it was for sale on RGB direct for £373, I got it for £363 from a high street store compared to £398 for the Panny on the net.
I then bumped up the price again by taking their 5 year extended warranty for 60 quid which gives me peace of mind in case it goes wrong and if it doesn't I get my money back at the end of the 5 years! This swung it for me. If Richers stocked the Panny, I'd probably have gone for that one.
It was a lot of hassle trying to get it at that price as I had to argue for ages with the manager about the interpretation of their price beat policy. But it was worth it in the end to save the money.
I must admit I didn't know that deleted parts of the disc could not be recovered - I thought that was DVD-RAM. I'm really disappointed with that. I thought it would work more like Mini Disc.
And I really would love to have the chasing playback and recording and playback at the same time as well as the FR mode.
Just bought it yesterday so haven't used it much but must say that the SP mode looks almost indistinguishable to watching telly live and EP mode is like watching the best VCR with best tape ever. CD music also sounds pretty much as good as my 10 year old Philips CD player, picking up all the subtleties, especially compared to the Sony 305 DVD player I used to have which was poor in this respect.
Cheers,
Calscot