Panasonic DMR-EZ485VK DVD/VCR Combo (New)

This is a great product, It does more than I expected and is very easy to setup and use. I was told that with my cable connection being attached directly to the DVD recorder (no cable box) it must have a tuner. I found most lower price unit do not have tuners. I was not happy to have to pay a higher price for this unit but it has certainly been worth it.

I have had little trouble with this recorder. I have only one problem and that is with recording old VHS tapes every time your tape switches between recorded segments the recorder will stop and mark a chapter. I called tech support and this feature CANNOT be disabled. Fortunately for me I made master tapes of all my VHS movies and since the master tape was never stopped, it records all the way thru. Other than that I've had no problems.

This duel Panasonic DVD/VHS works great. No problems of any kind. Timed recording is a little technical, but once you've mastered that, it's great! Buy it if you can.

I bought this brand of DVD recorder before and loved it. My daughter borrowed it and kept it so I went to buy another one. Walmart was out of this brand so I bought what I assumed was the equivilant product by Magnavox. It was awful!! Never could get the quality I had with the Panasonic so back to Walmart and got another Panasonic. Works great, picture quality is great when I transfer my VCR tapes to DVD. Easy to operate. Love it!

I bought the older model of this player/recorder a couple of years ago and loved it. It did, however, end up with problems with recording on the DVD. I wanted a similar one and purchased this new model. It worked great except it had no sound when a movie was played. I returned it a week later and found it no longer available and the new model is $30 more. I love this machine with all it's extras and it's easy to program and use. But the one I ended up with had sound problems.

The Panasonic DVD /VCR recorder works good compared to a few others I've tried. However, it is still difficult to maneuver thru the menus at times. I still haven't gotten the name of the disc to show up after it is finalized. But at least it has not missed any timer recordings as of yet. Also it has taken 3 different brands of disks with no problem so far. Next I have to try multi recordings on the same DVD. All in all, this is a good product.

There is more features on this recorder than I would ever know what to do with; I am still mastering some of the basics. The instruction manual is very detailed and very helpful though I am still blundering around on functions like an understandable fast forward on home-recorded DVDs. The remote needs a button to open and close the trays for the video tapes and DVDs. The quality of the recordings is great, and scheduling a recording is easy with a little practice on the remote. I really like that I don't need a converter box for this unit!

This machine was not easy to work with... you never know if it's going or not when it's not hooked up to a TV. It's definetly not a simple one button recording.

Unit lasted 7 months then froze-up. I sent it in for repairs. They sent out a recondition one. It lasted 3 months. I return that one. Its has taken over 2 months of calling to get this one on warranty. Two units gone bad in one year. If you decide to buy get a extended warranty.

Almost from the first month this piece of equipment did not work properly. At more than $300 as the price I paid, it was the biggest ripoff yet. About a month after getting it, it began to freeze up without warning, at times mid-recording. Other times despite having been correctly programmed, it did not record AT ALL though did not indicate any malfunction. I contacted Tech Support at Panasonic and they said it needed to be updated with "firmware" they would send me. I got the firmware, installed it, but it appeared to make no difference. It continued to be increasingly unreliable in recording DVD's. Playback was not a problem with either VCR or DVD but recording was with each passing day. If it rained outside the darned thing 'froze' (the manual, I found out later, does in fact caution about its sensitivity to humidity, but I hadn't realized that rain OUTSIDE when my equipment is INSIDE an apartment and NOT near the window, would so adversely affect this temperamental equipment. Multiple calls to Tech Support initially resolved problems as they arose, but after a few months I stopped calling, as the frequency of problems increased and with two jobs I had little enough time and could not be on the phone daily to Tech Support especially since their suggestion was that it might be defective so I could just "mail it back to them in Texas." And do WHAT in the meantime??? And PAY for shipping??? What a way to INconvenience and waste MORE time for the customer who's already OVERpaid for equipment that is not worth HALF the price. Despite my competency with equipment, this has to be THE most confusing MANUAL I've ever seen - VERY VERY convoluted and makes even a simple issue appear more complicated - even Tech Support admitted that's a frequent comment by users but clearly Panasonic doesn't care and refuses to make it more user-friendly. Before warranty was up the DVD recorder stopped working altogether (could not record from VHS to DVD which was THE reason I bought this model) and it got such that I could not even format ANY DVD's, thus couldn't record ANYTHING. I wasted SO much money buying new DVDs since the screen kept indicating that the DISKS were defective when I realized (after buying new ones several times, from several places, but ALWAYS name brands I'd previously used in THIS machine) that it was this PANASONIC VHS/DVD equipment that was defective. I will NEVER buy ANY Panasonic equipment EVER again. SUCH a waste of time, money, energy, and THE most UNreliable piece of junk I've ever had the misfortune to own. Panasonic refused to make good on it and even had the nerve to ask me if I wanted to PURCHASE a new warranty - when they'd never honored the original warranty and clearly cares little for its customers, once they have your money. DO NOT BUY THIS MODEL - it is a waste of money!