Rating: 
Summary: DON"T WASTE YOUR TIME
Review: I bought a dmr-e30 on 4/15/03 and initially I could not have
been more pleased. I was copying years of video tape onto DVD
and everything was right in my world. But on the evening of
5/03/03 I started to record and realized I was on the wrong
channel and hit stop within 1 minute, THAT dmr-e30 never worked
again. I hit stop, the unit basically powered itself off and when
I turned it back on it displayed "RECOVER" and after a few moments displayed the normal screen. I pressed the open button and the unit powered itself back off again... the "RECOVER"
sequence started again when I powered back on. I called Panasonic
support and I think in the overall scheme of things I am dumber
than I was before I called. I was not able to
find anyone who could tell me what "RECOVER" meant? Wha... it's
a message programmed to display on a product you sell???
Anyway in my diminished state I took the unit back on
5/04/03 and recieved a shiny new dmr-e30 to replace the broken
one I had. This unit worked until tonight... Again I started a
recording but stopped it within 1 minute. Now I'm in the same
HELL I was previously, I can't eject the disc, I can't do anything with this unit. I have ZERO faith in the dmr-e30, it's
failed on me twice within 45 days. I only hope that I can return
this and get a credit so I can buy a DVD recorder from another manufacturer.
Rating:
Summary: Awfull product
Review: I have my Panasonic burner for about a year. Now it locks up everytime I want to erase a dvd-ram disk. Also, this unit is not compatible with most dvd-r disks!!! I had to throw away several packages of dvd-r's.
Don't buy this thing, choose for Sony instead!
Be warned...
Rating: 
Summary: A great machine
Review: I just bought this DVD recorder a week ago and am very pleased. I use Tivo with Direct TV and was filling up the Tivo with shows I wanted to save. With this I have already copied most of them onto DVD and freed up most of the space on the Tivo. It was easy to setup and very easy to use. The documentation looks a little daunting but once you just start doing it it is as easy as a VCR.
Rating:
Summary: Very Pleased
Review: I just bought this DVD recorder a week ago and am very pleased. I use Tivo with Direct TV and was filling up the Tivo with shows I wanted to save. With this I have already copied most of them onto DVD and freed up most of the space on the Tivo. It was easy to setup and very easy to use. The documentation looks a little daunting but once you just start doing it it is as easy as a VCR.
Rating: 
Summary: Great product
Review: I love my DMR-E30 Panasonic DVD recorder. I would have liked to buy one with built-in hard drive, but was cost prohibitive. Good buy for those who don't want to put out the extra money for the hard drive.
Rating:
Summary: Awesome product
Review: I love this recorder. I have made hundreds of DVDs on it and I am extremely pleased with the results. The quality is excellent. I thoroughly recommend buying this product.
Rating:
Summary: [aweful]
Review: I was so excited to get this DVD recorder ... It took me several days to figure out how to hook it up right through an RF modulator, but I got the hang of it. It plays DVDs fine, but that's not what I wanted it so badly for. I wanted it for its ability to record to DVD-R and DVD-RAM disks. All seemed fine for the first couple weeks, then it quit recording to Memorex DVD-RAM disks I had bought. When I put this DVD-RAM disk in, I also got that "recover" message on the DVD recorder display, like someone else mentioned. Then the unit would shut itself off... The timer recording was working maybe 75% of the time, and that was even when I was using the Panasonic DVD-RAM disk that came with the unit. I put up with that problem for a while for some reason, before I had to send it to a Panasonic factory service center for repairs. It worked good for all of 3 weeks after I got it back, before the timer recording started malfunctioning again, and I started to get that "recover" message on the unit, then it shut itself off. I am so frustrated with this product, I don't think I would ever buy another Panasonic product. I don't recommend this product at all.
Rating:
Summary: Learn from my pain
Review: If you're wondering what it feels like to repackage your brand new DVD Recorder without ever seeing one pixel of video and your first ever blank DVD-R disk trapped inside then, boy, is the DMR-E30K for you. This machine promply ate the first writable disk I put into it and refused to eject it. Only after several hours of trial and error did I discover the MAGICAL SEQUENCE of unplugging, powering up/down, and ejection button pushes to free my disk. If Panasonic is interested I will sell them the SEQUENCE so they can include it in their user manual. Small price to pay to save untold customers a similar ordeal, I would think.When I did finally get DMR-E30K to burn a disk the video became garbled half way through when played back on my other DVD player. Eventually it locked up my standard DVD player altogether (a Pioneer DV-333--well known for their ability to playback almost anything). I sacrificed three disks to this fun little experiment just to make sure the Panasonic DMR-E30K was truly disfunctional. These disks ranged from inexpensive compUSA brands to high end Memorex's. I can report that the DMR-E30K does not discriminate when it comes to disappointing across multiple brands. But don't worry, if you don't know the MAGICAL SEQUENCE you'll never get to the point of having to worry about this... Beware!
Rating:
Summary: QUIRKY BUT GREAT ONCE YOU GET THE HANG OF IT
Review: These other reviewers who "BASH" this machine didnt take the time to find out what "works" with this machine. Many DVD-R'S wont work with this machine..Thats a fact. However I buy RITEK DVD-R'S by the case (500 Blanks) at a time and they work fine almost all of the time. Once in awhile you will get a "U11" error after recording less than 1 minute and the machine will go into "Recover" mode...Once this happens simply hit the OPEN button once and wait for the disc to be ejected..This takes about 20 seconds. SImply re-insert the Blank DVD-R and the problem will go away. Sure it's a pain...once in awhile but I have burned over 1500 DVD'S with AMAZING results and I can deal with the quirkiness. In this day of technology many things are Incompatible with one another much Like PC Software was in the 80's to Mid 1990's...You cant expect to buy something thats "Cutting edge" anymore and have it work with anything you feed it..Sometimes you have to do some homework on your own....
Rating:
Summary: A great machine
Review: While I suspect there are those who could hook this up and start recording moments after removing the unit from the box, it took me a better part of two evenings. Having survived the steep learning curve, I can say that I'm extremely happy with this unit. Now that I know what's going on, recording is easy and painless. Creating titles for individual tracks and for the DVD itself is also easy (though it can be tedious -- you have to navigate around an on-screen menu of capital letters, small letters, numbers, and punctuation signs). Right after I recorded my first set of shows to dvd (I used DVD-R), I took the disk to four other different dvd-players and all worked great. I have not tried the DVD-RAM format, for while it appears to have the ability to create image menues (like you'll find on many professional dvds), it is reportedly much less compatible. I've only had the until 3 weeks, so there's more testing and trails to go; but, thus far I feel it was worth every c-note.
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