Customer Reviews
panasonic dvr 
2007-12-29
I purchased one of the first panasonic dvr with the lifetime membership. When the HD went out and replaced, it was a expensive repair. The second one quit. My son replaced the HD and opening the unit found the HD encased with foam. Overheating????? yes! Programing soon became a problem. Panasonic support is terrible. I would never buy a panasonic product again.
Had a comcast dvr, not a good product. Called Comcast regarding using TiVo with the cards that need to be installed and they said I had to upgrade my services. Called TIVO, you do not need to upgrade and they will do a 3way call with comcast when you set up your unit for the cards. MJS
The Pansonic POS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 2007-04-26
This thing sucks. there is little else to say other than there is a class action lawsuit somewhere here. PANASONIC this is FRAUD!!!!! Or outright robbery. No support. Does NOT work. I say anyone who has had success with this unit is probably lying or a plant from panasonic. Errors all the time and never loads the TV Guide BS. Just a giant waste of money!!! If there were an option for no stars I would have used that. Amazon should not even be selling this. It is not fair to loyal customers.
Can't believe it! 2007-03-12
If the description here is correct, this set is completely crippled compared to other Panazonic models. It is said it will only read DVD -R written on other Panasonic recorders (!!!) and that it can only write to and read DVD -R. Panasonic used to make recorders limited to writing DVD -R, but since then has produced sets that can write to DVD -R DVD + R and DVD -RW. Why the jump backwards? I've never heard of any model that can only read DVD -R produced by recorders only of the same brand. This is absurd!
The price listed is also about double wha it should be.
Add all this to the other complaints and it's avoid at all costs.
I incidentally own a Panasonic with a 80 GB hard disk and have recorded many hundreds of hours to the HD and made hundreds of DVDs without a problem.
Anyway, I wouldn't buy ANY DVD recorder now unless it has an ATSC tuner included. Otherwise it becomes obsolete in two years when analogue TV is supposed to disappear.
Manufacturers, including Panasonic, are making sets with the digital tuners for the European market. Why not in the USA?
Repeated problems with DMR-E95H 2006-11-24
I love the concept of this product but the Panasonic implemetation is WEAK! I originally purchased a DMR-E80 and it worked very well long enough to get past the one year warrenty then failed. I was told that the logic card needed to be replaced for $300 parts plus labor. A little shopping around on the net abnd I found the DME-E95H (twice the disk space) could be had for $360 from Beach Camera.
The E95 didn't make it out of warrenty before failing. The unit was mailed to a service center and it was repaired. I have had the unit for about two months since the repair and it has started to exhibit the same symptoms as before.
Symptom: at power-up the unit displays "Please Wait" for about 15 seconds and then displays "self Check" for about 30 seconds. The unit then appears to function normally for about 60 seconds and then fails to respond to commands from the remote. Shortly afterwards the unit shuts itself off (displayes "bye"). The disk or cable output from the unit continues for a short period (even though the unit appears to be shutdown) and then stops.
Fortunately, Panasonic offered me an extended warrenty (what were they thinking?) that I took advantage of. I will continue to return this unit to the panasonic service center as my way of extracting revenge.
I strongly recommend that you avoid Panasonic DVR products. My experience with two models has been extremely disappointing.
Great unit, but VERY unreliable. 
2006-08-18
I have owned this model since March 2005. Almost all of the time the TV Guide hasn't worked (I have heard this might be a ploy by my cable company to push people to their DVDRs). At any rate I gave up on this feature.
For the first year the unit had a tendency to go to "SELF TEST" whenever I changed disks, either DVD-R or DVD-RAM. After "SELF TEST" it almost always burned a good disk. This would have been OK excepte for wasting 15-30 minutes every time this happened. I stuck to major brand disks. Panasonic will tell you to use their disks but they are not easy to find in stores and don't come in large muffins so they tend to be expensive.
Surprisingly, at the 1-year point the unit started working perfectly. I went from March 2006 to August without a "SELF TEST". Today it refused to recognise the same disks it had been burning for weeks. So I will have to take it in on the extended warranty.
Panasonic customer service is terrible. Don't waste your time phoning. You will be on hold forever. About a year ago I wrote Panasonic and received a call eventually (still in the warranty period). They won't acknowledge that there is a systematic problem with this unit. They try to blame it on the disks. They also would not make any adjustment other than offer to sell me another unit at a discount.
I like most things about the user interface. It allows very precise editing. When it works it produces great disks. The hard disk holds a lot.
Forget about the lousy TV Guide feature!
Works great 
2006-04-03
free TV Guide® On Screen 8-day program guide (listings for local broadcast and cable TV) * built-in 160GB hard drive for recording/playback * digital video (IEEE 1394) input for use with compatible camcorders * records to DVD-RAM and DVD-R * plays DVD-Video, DVD-RAM, DVD-R, Video CD, DVD-Audio (stereo only), CD, audio CD-R & CD-RW, and MP3 CD-R & CD-RW *
My Panasonic DMR-E95H is a winner! 
2006-01-30
Recordings on DVD seemed like a smart step forward from my trusty but tired JVC Editing deck, which still works fine after some 5 years of daily use. Panasonic E95H looked great with plenty space on the hard disc and loads of features. I studied user reviews(mostly horror stories users were experiencing)but I took a chance when venders were selling for less than half price. (Paid $399. delivered, from J&R.) WOW! WHAT A MACHINE! All that I try works great. I have copied about 50 tapes to DVD-R, even copied a few high rated rental movies, put three TV movie broadway shows on a single DVD-R disc (over 6 hours!), about 100 TV great movies, even FM Stereo broadcasts. No problems ever. I pray that I stay lucky. Hours of back and forth with the manual, but I had the same problem when I first got my editing VCR. I have not tried all the features available on this machine, but everyting I tried so far works fine (with the help of the not so great manual which infernally bounces one from page to page, inasmuch as this piece has tremendous brains and capability.) A close lightening hit "crashed" it once but it just rebooted and continued what it was doing without losing anything in memory or the hard disc. In over half a century of buying high end gear, this has been the best deal & the most fun and satisfying. Great pictures & decent digital sound. WOW! WHAT A MACHINE!
No Problems Here 2005-12-02
Well I have had this unit now for almost a year and I love it! I did have some problems with the TV guide for a while but it has been working great lately. The HDD stores many hours of programs and burns them onto DVD -R and DVD- RAM discs that turn out great. I burn a lot of material for my classes to show in school. Yes you do have to study the manual for a while to learn all the features but once you get it its pretty easy. Lets face it, any new device these days take a while to figure out. So far I have not had any of the problems faced by other reviewers, so I'll keep my fingers crossed and keep enjoying this unit.
Panasonic's big loser 2005-11-30
I've had my DMR-E95H since March and it continues to have problems. I have spent hours on the phone with Panasonics tech support (what a waste of time that is), and even had to send the unit in for repair. I was getting the dreaded U99 error. Well, I got the unit back about two weeks ago and now I get absolutely no TV guide listings and every hour or so while I am watching something, the unit just shuts itself off. Panasonic really needs to rethink it's engineering of this product and should apologize to all the folks that already wasted good money on this piece of crap. Don't buy this one, look at the other manufacturers.
the panasonic dmr-e95h is useless 2005-11-29
The panasonic dmr-e95h is useless.So is the tech support from Panasonic.
I will NEVER buy ANY panasonic product again.
Tech cannot supply answers.
To any questions.
At all.
They are at best barely fuctioning dopes without the slightest interest in helping.
This is after waiting 45 minutes.
The firmware updates do not work.
The item does not work as described.
It has more bugs than a swamp in Floridia.
It is more sensitive than a movie stars ego.
There should be a website devoted to how useless all of these panasonic dvd recorders.
What a waste of money WATCH OUT!!!!!
