Panasonic DMR-BW750 / 500 / 850

Great machine until now but Remote Control has always been an issue – Been a good unit until now, when it got stuck in a continual U61 error loop. Keeps saying problem is fixed but then stops and goes through error loop again. Tried various fixes but nothing works. Look like we have to buy another unit, which will be a Panasonic because I like them. I just wish the remote controls wouldn't stop working before the machine does. Show details ·  1

Excellent – I have the BW500A very good unit, very quiet you can't hear either of the drives run, having a Panasonic TV with "Viera Link" means I don't have to worry about tuning it all the channels are just brought across from the TV automatically, it is just so simple to use. Very easy to use, recording shows is just a breeze I have'nt found anything I don't like about it yet

Excellent quality unit – Very pleased with my purchase of this Blue Ray player/PVR. It's not perfect but nearly as good as my Topfield PVR. However, some features are hard to work out, but overall excellent unit. Reliable, excellent quality picture, never missed taping a show Very slow to start up. some features have very clunky software!

The BW850 - not cheap but feature packed – After my old PVR died, I needed a unit with plenty of hard drive space and a HD tuner. The BW850 is an excellent unit from Panasonic, featuring 500Gb of HDD, twin HD tuners and a DVD / Blu-Ray drive that also records shows including HD recordings onto Blu-Ray disks. The recorder is also internet ready, once you've bought a USB connector /… Read more

wireless dongle.

Picture quality is excellent - the twin HD tuners rival the Samsung 155cm LED TV tuner for sharpness, contrast and overall quality. I strongly recommend connecting this unit to your HD TV via HDMI in order to preserve high definition picture quality.

It does all the basics well, but it does possess somewhat slow and clumsily arranged menu options - they are not intuitive and take some getting used to. That said, there are a lot of features and settings to play with, if you're so inclined.

My only other problem is that you cannot set up any more than 32 recording sessions - and with a family of four, the recording menu soon fills up!

Recording to DVD and/or Blu-Ray disks is easy and you can do it live, or via the Hard Drive. You can record a show, edit out the ads and then record ad free content on to a disk for future use. It also has a smart record feature that adjusts the recording quality to ensure that the show will fit on to the destination disk if disk space is limited. Operates quietly and looks good. High quality picture and sound. Clunky menu, on/off button and eject button in the wrong places and the pause function is slow to react when viewing live TV

Good – This review is from someone who has previously used a PVR - albeit a different brand. I found the panasonic unit very easy to use. Menu makes sense and the neat feature of selecting a program from the on screen TV guide makes recording of specific programs pretty good - much easier than the manual method of selecting TV station - time start -… Read more

time end etc.

A feature on my much older DVD PVR [Philips unit] of automatically allowing time lapse when playing live TV is one thing I miss from this unit. Sure - I can set it up - but i think it should be the default setting, as should be a predetermined alowance to only record say 30 min or 1 hr when manually pressing the record button.

On the whole - a very good product that also allows me to interface my ipod, SD cards etc and archive onto DVD or [when I get round to it] BluRay discs. interfaces well with Panasonic TV. OK to use. TV guide selection for recording is a good feature press record [manually] - it records until you choose to stop it - would be good if each press was 30 min or 1 hr.

Would be great if when on - you could pause - forward etc live TV rather than having to select this option

OK – It is quite good because it is a recently model of video player. Keep up to new technology is always good. But I truly want it will be speeded up in the next model. It can properly read many types of discs, such as: Blu-ray discs, dvd discs, cd discs. With this blu-ray player at home, I can run to any Civic Video stores without concern that my dvd… Read more

player can not play the video that I like. It takes a lot of time to start-up, shut down, open, close and load a disc. The remote control is a bit confused me when I used it to turn on/off the blu-ray player. Most of the time I turned on/off my Panasonic TV instead of blu-ray player.

Excellent – If you want a simple to use Blue ray recorder, this machine is the one to buy. Simply fantastic. Appears to be a great quality component. Very easy to use. Has all the features that I could want (eg can watch AVCHD movies taken with my Panasonic camera) and fantastic picuture quality when using recording on DR setting. Nothing so far.