I was wondering whether the differences between an ES20 and the EH60 were more than just the fitment of a hard drive.

Been digging a bit, and it seems that the ES10 and the EH50 use the same firmware upgrade disk, I don't think any firmware upgrade disks have been spotted for the ES20 or EH60 yet, but it would seem possible that they may use the same firmware too.

So, has anyone opened up an ES20 to see if there's an IDE cable and molex plug hanging loose inside?

Now, I'm not an owner of the correct machine to answer this really, and my observations do of course only relate to UK market ones, but: I haven't opened up my EH60D, I'm afraid (to!). It would seem logical that it would be physically similar inside to the EH50, and the ES20D to the ES10, apart from the obvious differences in spec.

However, don't forget that Panasonic likely intend to make firmware updates available for the EH60D and ES20D by broadcasting them via Freeview - the machines certainly have the interface to receive these as there are options in the menu about it. And the presence of Freeview probably makes for significant differences in the firmware. For example, my EH60D is capable of putting itself into timer mode when it is powered up and not doing anything other than displaying a broadcast, 1 minute from the start of a timer recording. I suspect that the EH50 doesn't do this, and that would be indicative of further differences in the firmware (as is the presence of a DV in socket which the UK EH50 lacks). The ES10 and ES20D might be more similar as they don't have the DV-in difference nor the question of different capacity HDDs, but I still feel Freeview probably makes a significant difference. Though I am only guessing of course! It also indicates that firmware could be significantly different between different country models of the EH60, for example, since Freeview is UK-market only.

Thanks for the reply, I think my posting may have been a little ambiguous about a few things.

A single firmware update file is used to update both the ES10 and EH60 recorders, which may mean that they run the same firmware. Of course, they could be loading different firmware from a single file, but I would have expected it to be simpler to have different firmwares in different files.

The ES20 and EH60 will definitely have different firmware from the ES10 and EH50, but due to the similarity to the ES10/EH50 pair, it is likely that they will run the same firmware as each other.

What I'm wondering is whether the ES20 and EH60 are pretty much the same electronics, and whether it may be possible to install a hard disk in the ES20.

Unfortunately, like you, I'm not yet ready to take the casing off to find out whats under the lid.

Finally gave in and took the lid off - sadly theres no obvious IDE pin headers, or 12v connectors to attach a hard disk to.

I'll post some piccies if I get round to it.

Hi Guys and Gals, this is a bit off topic but does anyone know how to unlock the region codes on an ES20D
Thanks
Tubluv