Has anyone come across this before? I've had the ES20 for a while now,and,except for the occasional breakup and freeze of the picture when recording,everthing has been fine. Lately though,the breakups and blockiness have been a lot more frequent and the freezing of the picture has become laughable; on the last two recordings every two minutes or so. Not only that,what I thought were other channels breaking into the channel being recorded turn out to be (after a lot of pausing and extremely slow searching) bits of previously recorded programs. Obviously it's not overwriting the discs properly. Could this be a problem with the disks themselves (they're Panasonic ram discs,the cheap ones from Amazon.I bought a load so I haven't tried anything else) or is it more likely to be a problem with the machine. It plays commercially produced stuff fine,dvds,cds etc, and cds,mp3 cds that I've recorded myself. Any help appreciated. Thanks.

Yes, I noticed this too on one of my recordings on a Panasonic RAM disc, however, I really didn't worry about it and simply reformatted the disc and do not appear to have suffered from the problem since...

I have had exactly the same problem with Verbatim DVD-RAM discs on an ES20. Two have become unusable after only a couple of months. I thought they were supposed to be good for years. Reformatting used to fix them but even that fails now.

So far DVD-RW have lasted longer.

I'm a little concerned about all the home movies I archived onto DVD-RAM last year. What is the expected life of these things?

From what I understand, the ram discs are supposed to last for 10,000 re-writes but the ones I've been using have only been re-written about 9 times so should have a long way to go. I've tried reformatting the discs but it doesn't seem to make any difference. I'm hoping it's the discs and not some fault with the machine. When I got it I bought two packs of discs from Amazon because they were going cheap but discs from either pack seem to be the same. No wonder they were cheap . I'll have to get some dvd-rw and see if it happens on them or another make of ram. Anyone know if it would it make a difference if they were in caddies?

My Verbatim discs that went faulty were in cartridges so I don't think it makes a difference. Also got them from Amazon....

We're they the Panasonic Ram discs from Amazon? As I have found problems with them too but not the same as yours.

Mine will write to them, then I copy off the vid on to my pc, but then my DMR-E95H fails to erase the disc. It causes the unit to do a system check all the time until I do an emergency eject. The discs I bought from ebay have been fine and never caused this problem.

I have found if I format the disc before I use it for the first time everything is fine.

Yes they were the Panasonic discs. I see they're not selling them directly now. I did format them before I used them and also re-formatted before re-recording, It doesn't seem to make any difference.Thanks for all the replies anyway, I'm glad to see it probably isn't the recorder.Can anyone recommend a make of ram disc that they've never had any problems with or are there problems with all makes?

I've only had mine a couple of months, but so far have had no problems with Memorex DVD-RAM from 7dayshop.com. A couple of them have been selectively erased/rewritten (& probably fragmented) a few times now.

According to this Wikipedia article, DVD-RAM's have a 30 year expected life, and should be good for 100,000+ rewrites. Whatever the real truth is, it's a lot longer than some of you are experiencing.

I'm probably asking the blindingly obvious, but you do store the discs properly, I assume? I.e. in a cool, dark environment, away from direct sunlight etc, etc.? Protect them in cases and keep nasty thumbprints off them. That sort of thing.

One thing I didn't realise until recently is that leaving writable CDs or DVDs in sunlight can trash them in remarkably short periods of time. Sometimes as little as a few hours. (Sorry I've lost the reference).

Yes i store all my dvd-rams in the cases they came in on a shelf well away from the window.

I was wondering whether it is possible my machine doesn't like the preformatting on the batch of discs. As i now format them before use and don't seem to have any trouble with them.

Though it could be my recorder, as this has now developed an intermitant fault...

Well, I must admit, I've had flaky results with "pre-formatted" media all the way back to floppy disks....... I've often had to resort to formatting in the target machine.

But if you know you've some other intermittent fault, then it could be a hardware issue, I suppose.

My intermitant fault appears to be a startup issue with the dvd drive.

It will get stuck doing self check for ages then comes up with either:-

1. An error has occured please press enter. (at which point it reboots and starts doing a self check again)

2. Please change the disc. (even when there is no disc in the machine)

I can eventually get it to boot up by unplugging it for a while.

So as the problem seems to be related to the dvd drive section i've put my dvd-ram problems partly towards that.

At the moment it seems to be working ok.... Fingers crossed.

This self check issue seems to have come up a few times in various threads. So far I've not seen it in real life...

How long have you had the machine? You've not considered a warranty repair/replacement?

Many people seem to say upgrading the firmware has fixed self check problems on a DMR-E85.

Mines a DMR-E95H, unfortunately it's out of warranty, i've had it since sept 2003 and has been fine until a couple of months ago.

I'm not sure whether to just replace it or try and get it repaired when it totally goes...

Oh I thought you had a 20D.

You know you want the nice features on a new shiny one.......... You just know (or at least can convince yourself) that a repair's not economic.

Been there, done that, got the teeshirt.