I currently have a Panasonic television and a Panasonic EX77 Recorder. If I decided to go for the new Freesat service would I be able to record ordinary and HD tv using my EX77.

Using A scart out from the freesat box to the panasonic ex77 you will be able to record standard def freesat. Not sure about whether you will be able to record the hidef content but if you were it would downscale it to standard def anyway.

I'm recording freesat from a Foxsat HD box into an EX77 via RGB scart. It records at SD resolution only, but the far superior bitrate of the HD broadcasts still show through in better colours and less artefacts: HD stuff looks as good as standard DVD when recorded in XP mode (and even, at a push, in SP mode). This is very noticeable when you are upscaling back onto a full HD display: the downscaled HD stuff scales back up better than the "always" SD stuff.

Example: the KD Lang concert on BBC HD at the weekend: the copy on my hard disk is as good quality as any DVD I've seen.

HTH

Hi

i have no problems recording from my foxsat hd box to my ex 77 via scart - the quality is excellent even though it is scaled down to sd.

However when my foxsat is on the viera link to my panny 37lzd70 stops working - giving an error message to check hdmi connections. when the foxsat is in standby the viera link works fine. i have emailed humax but not got a reply yet though i suspect it is a similar issue as with sky hd and pin 13 on the hdmi cable.

other than that issue the whole set up is excellent, I have the foxsat set to output everything at 1080i, the picture quality is superb!