Panasonic DMR-EZ48VP-K 1080p Upconverting VHS DVD Recorder with Built In Tuner (Discontinued in 2012)

I wasn't sure what to expect by ordering a renewed VCR, but am very pleasantly surprised. This Panasonic DMR-EZ48VP-K arrived within a few days of ordering it from Amazon. It was listed as renewed, bur out of the box it looks like new. It was packed very well and came with all new cables and some blank DVD's to record things from the TV. . It was definitely a great choice! Easy to setup, playback is great with both the DVD and VCR and everything is working perfectly. I had an earlier model Panasonic that was very similar to, and it lasted for many years of playing all those old VHS Disney movies for my Grand kids and now this is perfect for the Great Grandkids. Acme Products Customer service responded very fast with a request for a manual to print and to answer my questions before purchase.

I have been in the market for a new dvd recorder since roughly 2005 when my old Philips machine died. so, after lots of research..i decided on this model. It arrived in great condition and i had it set up within minutes. This machine has extra features on it like Front RCA Inputs, SD Card Slot and easy dubbing from VHS/DVD (note you cannot copy commerical bought movies with this machine. Setup is fairly easy for someone with Mediocre Electronics Expertise, but if you are a novice, you may wanna read the entire manual before beginning. The manual is written in such a way that there are lots of pictures to illustrate what will be displayed when you push each button. You can also record to DVD-RAM Discs using this unit, however, don't expect to find them at retail. You will have to order them online if you wanna go this route for recording. you can record to DVD+RW discs and DVD+R discs. however this unit can record to other types of discs as well. Picture quality is VERY good. i even recorded a bunch of stuff on the low quality setting and was quite impressed with the quality. keep in mind though the quality is only going to be as good as your signal from your cable or sattelite provider. Meaning if you have lines through the picture/distortion, its going to show up on your recorded DVDs. I have only had this unit roughly for a week or so..but it's doing GREAT right now..will post update to this review after a while. ***update**** 1/2/2011**** this unit performs beautifully with a HDTV. just grab a HDMI cable and you are all set. Dvd's look beautiful on this, even movies that were once vhs, converted to dvd look perfect. I don't think you can unlock the true performance of this unit until you use a HDMI cable with a hdtv set. granted, its not the BLU Ray experience you are craving, but it's pretty close!

This is the 3rd one of this make and model that I have purchased, the first two having been returned (to Costco) due to the same failure trait. It will function perfectly for some time, then exhibit a flaw as follows: Regardless what TV channel is selected and displayed in its display, the tuner will be stuck on one channel and always output that signal to both of the recording media and to the TV. As this fault was exhibited on my first two units, I returned them to Costco where I had purchased them. On the second unit, I found that rerunning setup would restore normal operation, but after the second occurrence, simply initiating that procedure didn't cure the problem. In reading the comments of other purchasers, I found that if power to the unit is entirely removed, and the unit restarted as if for the first time, the setup procedure would restore normal operation. The only other make of VCR/DVD player I could find locally was Magnavox, sold by both Walmart and Radio Shack. I had prior experience with the Magnavox, very unsatisfactory. Much less user-friendly than the Panasonic, and the VCR failed completely just after the 90 day warranty period from Walmart. One key functional disadvantage was that there was no convenient way to completely delete all items that had been recorded on a DVD; it would allow the deletion of only one item at a time, then move directly into the programming sequence for a new recording. Currently, neither Costco, Walmart or Radio Shack carry the Panasonic, so I checked out Amazon.com. The only other available brand I had not yet tried was Toshiba, which all reviewers rated as very user-unfriendly, accompanied by very difficult-to-understand instructions. Soooo, I purchased my 3rd Panasonic VCR/DVD recorder via Amazon. I've been using it now for some time, and it hasn't yet malfunctioned, but I fully expect to encounter the same failure mode. A significant difficulty is that repeating the setup procedure takes between 20 and 30 minutes, driven by a long interval attempting automatic clock setting, and there seems to be no way to go through the channel setup and not have the clock setting feature also exercised. Automatic clock setting has never succeeded in our case. If the malfunction is first discovered when one is attempting to program a recording session, a significant portion of what you wanted to record will have gone by before you can successfully begin recording again. On the plus side, picture quality and user-friendliness are great.

I bought this dvd/vhs recorder in September of 2008, and it was tossed a little over a year later. Why? Because it stopped reading about 25% of my dvds! BBC dvds were particularly hard to read with this "player". What good is a dvd player that doesn't read DVDs???!!! Of course, that was just the straw that broke the proverbial camel's back--the other annoyances?: 1.) The remote does not have an "open" for the dvd slot. Well, this may sound like a minor thing, but if day after day you have to find a tiny black button on a black machine in a dark room, the annoyance builds up, especially when......see pt.2 2.) It takes at least a FULL minute before the dvd tray would open!! So, you struggle to find the button, then stand around "whistling dixie" (as my mother used to say) waiting for the slot to open, twirling the dvd you want to play around your finger because you have nothing else to do, all the while praying that you don't encounter the problem of....see pt.3 3.) The player locks up! I don't know how many times I have had to unplug and then re-plug in this player, and then all my settings would go away, so I had to reset everything. But okay, you finally reset the machine, then go through my points #1 and #2 again, this time the tray does open, you insert the disc, and then... The D#@$^&n player REFUSES TO READ THE DISC!!! Of course the reason I really bought this was to record, but between the trouble I was having just playing discs, and the intimidating instructions on how to record, I didn't even attempt this. What did I buy instead? A Toshiba DVR670 DVD/VHS Recorder with Built in Tuner. This player/recorder plays all the dvds the Panasonic wouldn't, and even has an "open" function for the dvd tray!! The Toshiba instructions were well written and I have recorded with absolutely no problems. Life is good again.

The Panasonic DVD Recorder/VCR w/digital tuner for the most part, is excellent. It records DVDs without a problem. It plays VHS Tapes without a problem. It even tunes in digital broadcasts with ease and clarity. I love it. Sometimes, though, it gives me a problem every now and then, when I need to use the "RESET" button to get it out of a jam. For example, I played an MP3 CD on it one time, and then, stupid me, I hit the Open/Close button on the DVD side (without first stopping the MP3 CD playing in it), and it froze up on me. So, that's where the "RESET" button comes in handy--it restored the unit to normal functionality once more. The thing with this unit is, you need to press the "STOP" button at least two times before you Open/Close the DVD drive and take out the CD. I didn't know this at first, but I found this out through trial and error. And when you connect a USB device to the unit. You have to press the "STOP" button before you pull out the USB device, otherwise, it will freeze up, and you'll need to use the "RESET" to get it back to normal again. The bottom line is that it is a great unit and has great playback and recording capabilites. I've had this unit for almost a month now, and I am happy with it.

Simplify Clutter My first goal was to get a machine that would eliminate all the clutter. I had 4 boxes on the TV. A VHS Recorder/player, a DVD player, a Digital Tuner for over the air digital TV signal and an RF converter box. All of these had plugs and cables. This machine met that need perfectly. Built In TV Tuner The TV Tuner found my over the air channels just fine. However, channel surfing is quite slow as the unit has a deley betweens stations. Photos It accepted the SD HC cards from my camera. I am able to scroll through the pictures on my card but it is painfully slow and some of the pictures are upside down or sideways. Copy VHS to DVD I have spent the last few weeks copying VHS to DVD. I have recorded 16 hours of DVD from VHS. There was a bit of a learning curve before I could do the copies just the way I wanted to. I had to call Panasonic a couple of times but they helped me figure it out. Now I am very pleased. I wanted to record in SP mode because each of my tapes hold about 2 hours of family videos. Well, at first it was tricky to get it into SP mode. It wanted to default to EP mode which is much lower quality. I discovered, with the help of Panasonic Tech Support, that you must load the DVD first and let the recorder read the format of the disk, change the mode to SP, then load the VHS tape. I discovered this after burning through several DVDs at EP low quality mode. I thought I had figured it all out when, after recording 6 VHS tapes to a standard DVDs, I discovered that in SP mode the recording stops and the DVD is full right at 2 hours. The recordings failed to copy the last 15 to 20 minutes from the end of each tape. Aparantly, many of my VHS tapes had 15 or 20 minutes more that 2 hours. I had to swithch to DVD +R dual layer. They are more money than regular DVD media but at least now I can get up to 3 hrs 40 minutes before the copying stops. I have chosen to waste the extra 1:20 minutes so that I have an even 1:1 copy from VHS to DVD. The DVDs play fine on my coputers and on the DVD player. Many Features The unit is loaded with features and connections on front and back. It came with a remote, an HDMI cable and audio RCA cords. Price I bought the unit refurbished through Amazon for $166 including shipping. After all my research and experience, I have decided this is a good price for this unit. October 2010 Update... I used some advanced features today and recorded some over-the-air programs onto DVD. It worked like a champ. I had the option of erasing the programs after I watched them on DVD or finalizing them to be saved and watched on other devices. I was especially impressed that when I watched the recorded programs and fast forwarded the picture quality continued to be very high. Even at 200X fast forward I could see the recording very clearly with no distortion of picture quality loss. Not that this is a big deal. Usually you fast forward because you don't want to watch that specific part of the recording. Over-all, I must say that I am very happy and will give this product 5 stars.

I bought this unit because I frequently view both VHS tapes and rental DVDs. I do not use many of the other available features such as SD card or USB. The unit works reasonably well, but there are several design features that I find annoying, and I would have paid more (or less) to avoid them, had I known about them in advance: 1. The unit takes about 37 seconds to turn on, and about 15 seconds to turn off. Since I'm hooked up by satellite box to the TV via the unit, this means it takes the better part of a minute for me to get a picture when I "turn on" the TV. I don't like to leave the unit on all the time to avoid this problem, because it also produces a soft audible humming I find annoying when I do so. 2. The unit turns itself off at unpredictable intervals of several hours, which must be some kind of bug. It happens perhaps once every other day. It's annoying in the middle of a show, especially because it takes more than a minute to cycle all the way back on. 3. There is no dedicated button to switch from DVD to VCR. Instead, the remote controller has a "drive select" button, and to switch between modes, you must cycle slowly through all 4 options, waiting a couple of seconds for each switch - it doesn't remember how many pushes you've made, either, so you must actually watch the screen and wait for each mode change in sequence. I never use USB or SD modes, and switch frequently between VHS and DVD, so this is quite annoying. 4. The unit's default is DVD mode, so if you are watching a VHS after a break, you have to wait not only the 37 seconds for the unit to start, but then also slowly press the mode 3 times to return to VHS. I'd much prefer the unit remembered the last mode used, or came with dedicated mode buttons. 5. There is only 2x zoom available, and no ability to move about on the zoomed screen, quite inferior to the options I had with my prior Toshiba unit. Plus, the Toshiba unit had a simple button to toggle between standard view, 2x and 4x modes, and you could then also scroll around the magnified screen using the arrows. Using the inferior 2x-only zoom without scroll option on the Panasonic unit is paradoxically cumbersome and inconvenient: Press the "sub-menu" button; press the "down" arrow twice to select "zoom in"; and press the "OK" button. You have to go through all 3 steps to "un-zoom", again. In summary, while the performance of the unit is adequate, the controls are rather poorly and clumsily designed, for the the way I use it, and I would not recommend it to a friend.

I'd read many reviews on the DMR-EZ48VK before getting my unit about a week ago and was a little skeptical. Some people said the manual is terrible. Others complained about how long it takes to switch input modes. In my opinion the manual is as good as one would expect. Granted, there is a ton of information in it and it takes a little bit of time to digest. The unit's functionality has been flawless. I've use the DVD-RAM to record programs with chasing playback - very handy. I've copied home movies to DVD-R using the one touch VHS-DVD copy button - worked perfect. The scheduling menu is intuitive and easy to use. I can't imagine anyone buying a DVD recorder that doesn't record in RAM. It's the closest thing to recording on tape I can imagine. When I was searching for a VHS-DVD combo unit I was surprised at how few of the brands offered DVD-RAM recording. The digital tuner does a good job even though it's not high def. It picks up all the digital music channels just like my HD TV does. One thing I haven't figured out is how to determine what my firmware version is and if I should download an update. But as long as it is working this well, I'm in no hurry to find out.