I'm considering buying one of these recorders, and am wondering if anyone has any comments. (I have not yet bought an HD TV, but want to do so before the rise in VAT).

I imagine my questions could be answered by the manual, but I haven't been able to download it from Panasonic's site. Does anyone have a PDF available? By the way, I already have a DMR-EX85 recorder, so I'm familiar with Panasonic's awful manuals for such complex gadgets!

My questions relate mainly to copying programmes to discs, be it DVD or BD. The EX-85 is imperfect, but it does at least let me record to all the SD DVD formats, and I'm hoping that the 880 is the same: -R, +R, -RW, +RW, and RAM, plus of course the various Blu Ray formats.

When copying programmes to disc, I understand that they need to be converted to one of the several quality modes on offer. Does the conversion create a copy of the programme on HDD, or does it replace the original recording?

Leading on from that, I understand that HD content can be copy protected, sometimes allowing just a 'copy once' and I'm wondering how this works in practice. If I get a bad disc, but the copy-once flag is tripped, is that it, no more chances to copy?

My existing recorder has a 250GB HDD, and it's usually 80% full, so copying programmes to disc is a vital feature, as I rarely actually sit down and watch things!

I therefore do a lot of editing - cutting out adverts and the padding before and after timed recordings that I always add. I understand that the previous 30-second skip button now does 60secs, but is a bit slow in operation. Comments? And can you still jump 10 or a user-defined amount of minutes with a Time Slip button?

I've found the frame accuracy on my EX85 to be quite good, and hope that this is unchanged on the 880. Also, the Freeview tuner is good; there is very rarely any sort of interference in transmission, like skipping or blocking.

Well, that's my initial questions done with, thanks in advance for any answers or comments.

Well, I've managed to get a manual from the Australian Panasonic site; I know this is a different DVD region and doesn't get Freeview, but it should suffice for the bulk of my queries. I'd still prefer the UK version if anyone has one!

I have a manual as a 20Mb pdf. If you want to PM me with your email address I'll send it. To be honest I found the manual only useful as a reference after I had played with the m/c (780).

Your point about copy protection, it seems to be only ITV and C4 that have this flag, BBC doesn't show as copy protected, but I haven't tried to copy programmes more than once, so it may be there as a flag??

If the programme is copy protected it replaces the existing recording with the converted version, if it is a non copy protected then you can produce a copy and keep the original. Again I haven't tried to convert programmes more than once.

Once you have got used to having to convert before copying to disc (a bit of a pain at first but I now leave it overnight to convert) then the images are excellent and well worth even what I paid for it 4 months ago.

I would suggest that you dont fall into the trap (I did) of copying in DR mode to a blu-ray, it is very quick and you get about 7 hours on a 25GB disc (as opposed to 4 hours in highest quality) but the discs are sometimes not read by other blu-ray units.

Thanks for your reply; I would buy a cheap Blu-Ray player for watching discs, so your point about the copy mode was interesting. Is there a 'most compatible' mode that you've found?

The player I'm thinking of getting is a Philips, as they are easy to hacked for the DVD region - I have a few R1 discs. The manual for this model - BDP3000 - doesn't mention playing back BR RE discs, though online reviews suggest that it does.

PM sent for email address.

Cheers,
Mark.

I normally convert to HG mode, the highest quality for blu-ray archiving. I can't see the difference between DR and HG (but that may be my eyes!) These discs have played on all (5 different players)

SD mode I normally convert to SP which allows 2 hours on a DVD blank.

However for high speed copying to blu-ray, if you have a SD quality programme recorded then you must convert it to HG, HX etc or else the box won't copy it at high speed. It will copy at normal speed SD to blu-ray provided you can leave it to play out in real time.

Playback of a blu-ray disc (or DVD) is possible even when you are recording 2 programmes, so you may not need another player? (but to be fair I also have a Philips player hacked for playing R1 DVDs)

Hope the manual gets through to you.

Hope this helps.

Does this recorder records programmes from Sky Movies, Sky Sports at least on HDD ? Thank you very much for your answer.

The recorder has inputs and should record stuff in SD from SKY, RGB in or composite.
I don't know of ANY recorder with a HDMI in - so no HD