Hi, I recently replaced my faulty Sony RDR HXD710 with the Panasonic DMR EX-78.

Hooked up the Panasonic in the same way (via Scart to 32 inch Samsung TV and Virgin Media V+ box). However with the Panasonic I was also able to connect to the TV with HDMI lead.

First thing I noticed, in comparison to the old Sony, was the picture quality. When viewing Freeview TV via the Panasonic, or playing DVDs, the picture is not that good, ie I see "pixelation" especially when there is movement.

Reported it to the vendor who kindly replaced the unit with another one, but I have exactly the same issue.

Have meddled around with all the picture and connection settings but to no avail. I had done some research and thought that Sony and Panny were pretty much equal - surely the Panny cannot be this bad?

Anyone else had any similar issues with this model?

Thanks

Try a different HDMI lead as some leads are found to cause such problems.

If you are connected by HDMI when you were not before then you are not comparing like with like.

HDMI upscaling incurs a processing penalty and it may be the effects of this you are finding unpleasant. There are also a great many options in the HDMI settings that will make a difference to this.

It is also TV dependent. There is no point in upscaling if your TV rescales it back down.

Try with scart only into an RGB capable socket on the set and you will probably get very satisfactory results.

Thanks all for the comments.

Have tried 3 different HDMI leads, all the same.

I have also unplugged HDMI altogether and use just Scart, and in fact the pixelation and poor quality is still apparent, its just the same.

This is when viewing TV, or playing DVD, connection via HDMI or Scart. Whichever combination I choose the quality is always as poor (on both the original and replacement units).

Have also tried every combination and permutation of setting changes in the menus, nothing improves it one bit.

When I watch TV thru my old Sony PVR, or through the Samsung TV tuner itself, or through Virgin box, it's all perfect, only when I use the Panny for TV or DVD viewing it is just nowhere near as good.

Shame, otherwise it seems to be a good little unit.

(Apart from when wanting to watch Region 1 DVDs, I have to manually switch to NTSC output, whereas the Sonys just deal with it without the need to change settings manually).

Cheers

Ah I see. The problem has been identified.

Yet again ... like is not being compared with like.

This problem that you are seeing afflicts ALL DVD recorders.

When you compare , say the TV tuner pictures with those coming from the DVDR's tuner, the difference is that the signals from the DVDR are being passed through an MPEG encoder...which causes unpleasant artefacts.

PVR's do not require encoders [ They record the raw data stream ] and so do not suffer from this problem.

You just have to live with it I'm afraid. Just part of the awful thing that is MPEG compression.

One good thing... In that pass through mode the encoder should not actually be having to 'do' anything but its presence does make a difference.
My repeated impression is that once the encoder has actually been called upon to do what is required of it [ i.e. record something], the effect of it is much less worse.


On the point of switching to NTSC... this machine will do it automatically too... provided you do not have timers programmed ... as this locks the machine in to the video mode in which the machine expects to make those recordings [ PAL]

On such occasions you have to switch manually.

There is a shorcut:
In STOP mode, press and hold STOP and OPEN/CLOSE on the unit for more
than 5 seconds.
This switches the unit from PAL to NTSC or vice versa.

Brilliant comments Gavtech, thanks a lot for all this.

Interesting about the mpeg encoding.

Also very interesting re the PAL/NTSC switching, in that the reason it does not do it automatically is due to timer programmes being present.

Great stuff to know, thanks.

May I just ask another quick 2 questions as you do seem to be immensely knowledgable about this unit:

a) my previous unit used to present recorded HDD titles in reverse time order (ie most recent recordings at top of the list). This seems most logical to me, but the Panny seems to sort the other way round (oldest first). I found a way of sorting by "column" but cannot seem to do it by reverse date/time. Do you know if you can set it in this way?

b) My old unit would "remember" where you were up to on all recorded titles on the HDD. Example, you have 20 recordings and are half-way through watching all of them. Next week you call up recording no.15 and press play, it will play from half-way through (unless you selected 'play from start'). Panny seems to do this but when you watch something else or switch off the unit, it forgets all the points and starts all titles from the beginning again. Particularly annoying as neither does it seem to create chapter marks on recorded TV.

Many thanks for all the guidance.

Hi Mj, although I don't have your unit I have two other panasonic dvd recorders, my answer to the 2nd part of your question is on the hand set there is a yellow button marked create chapter, press this then a screen shot should appear asking you to press enter. This creates a chapter point. To return to that point, start the program and press the forward skip/index button. Long winded I know but it works.
Dave