Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This is the latest generation (in summer of '06 anyway) of the new DVD recorders / players that upcode to attain near HD quality. (You will need a HD TV for that). It also has a VCR/VHS built in. If you need all that, you can't do better for the price. If you don't expect to connect to an HD TV (now or in the next year) go for a simpler model (eg., a progressive player w/o upcoding or a product w/o the VCR). This product has lots of bells and whistles: - it connects to your DV camcorder, - you can pop your SD camera cards right in, - it handles all kinds of DVDs (DVD+R and DVD-R, CDs,and Panasonic's unique DVD-RAM), - has all the latest connectors (HDMI, optical sound, component video) - you can record on a DVD-RAM while you are watching that same DVD -- how did they do that??). If you have piles of old VHS tapes that you want to transfer to DVD, this machine will do it nicely without having to bother with your old VCR machine. It has one-button recording that did the trick for me on the first try. Also, picture quality when upcoding a regular (non-HD) DVD on my HD TV definitely improved the picture (beyond that of my previous progressive DVD player). (You will need to connect to your TV via the HDMI or an HDMI to DVI cable by the way. No need to get the hugely expensive cables, go for the generic ones you'll find on the Amazon site). For some DVDs the upcoding improvement was modest, but in other cases it was real noticeable (though not full HD). I guess we'll have to wait till the HD DVD format war (and price point) settles down over the next few years. This machine is well engineered for humans and has a very complete and readable (if you are patient)users' manual. However, a warning for those who haven't done DVD recording before; this machine -- and all others as far as I can tell-- are not for the faint-hearted. While you can use the "one touch" keys to do the basics, as you will read for just about any DVD recorder review on the Amazon web page, there can potentially be all kinds of compatibility problems between discs, players and PCs. I haven't encountered any yet, and this machine seems to read and write just about any kind of disc. Also, I can tell you that doing anything fancy is somewhat complicated. So be prepared to do some homework and you may have to settle for a bad or incompatible disc from time to time. All in all, so far (I have had it for 3 weeks) I give this a thumbs up and I would certainly would recommend the Panasonic DMR-ES45VS for those needing its features.