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A "fully loaded with features" piece of electronic equipment, I found the Panasonic VHS/DVD/Digital Tuner combo still easy to setup and program. I'm definately not a techno-wizard-buff so easy setup was important.

I bought the Panasonic DMR-EZ48V Recorder unit for several reasons.

First, it seemed like a good value for the price and I have had good luck with the reliability of Panasonic electronics. I have only had it a couple of months but look forward to a long history with it.

Second, an older VCR had crashed so I needed a way to play the tapes. I like the way this handles the older tapes and that I can easily transfer them over to a recordable DVD. I have dozen of family tapes, recorded TV programs, and older movie tapes that are being transferred to recordable DVD.

Third, I like the fact that the Panasonic talks nicely to my Sony Bravia XBR LCD HDTV when playing both tapes and DVD's.

Lastly, if my Comcast's digital signal ever goes on vacation (would that ever happen? Heheh!) I can easily switch over to the antenna and receive a digital signal.

I'm sure there are other VHS/DVD Recorder/Digital Receive combo units from other manufacturers that are as good or maybe even better than this one. But, it does everything I wanted it to do.

I've got a great new 1080p HD TV, a decent surround stereo set-up, and an HD cable box with DVR. But the DVR was running out of space, and I wanted to save some of the shows and movies I recorded. So, basically I wanted a unit that could record from my cable box/DVR, but I also wanted a unit that could upconvert DVDs to 1080p to take advantage of the new TV -- and convert old VCR tapes to DVD. After a lot of reading and research, I bought this one.

First, the unit has an HDMI out, which is great. However, for some reason, Panasonic recommends that if you connect the unit to a TV (or stereo) using the HDMI, you also connect component cables, which sort of defeats the point of getting rid of cable clutter. Well, you don't need to; the playback works as supposed to without it. (And contrary to what the first tech rep told me, the VCR WILL playback over the HDMI cable if that's your only output.)

Depending on your stereo, you may find the lack of a digital coax audio out a bit frustrating; since my stereo has only digital coax for DVD input, and the unit has only digital optical, I need to run the audio through the HDMI to the TV, then run a digital cable from the TV to the stereo, so there's a slight time lag between sound and picture. If you output sound through the TV speakers this won't be a problem. (You could also hook up the digital optical to another input you're not using, like TAPE input, but then you don't get full audio features, at least on my stereo.)

A much bigger problem is the video input. There is no component input (let alone HDMI input). So, if you have Tivo'ed or DVR'ed an HD show, the best you can do is send it via S-video to the Panasonic recorder (then you need separate L/R analog audio cables as well). (If you don't have s-video, you can use the composite or RF, which is what..1970s technology?) I know DVD recorders can't record HD, but still, there's no reason to make us downgrade the signal that much. (I recorded to DVD+RW; they're cheaper then VCR tapes and much better, so why record to VCR?!)

That brings me to the DVD recording. Once you figure out the menus and system, it's pretty easy. BUT, after 1/2 hour on the phone with Panasonic tech support, even they couldn't explain why it was converting full-screen recordings (on my DVR) to letterbox format on the DVD. Turns out it just does this with HD channels; if you're recording digital (non-HD) then it doesn't do the letterbox trick. But that annoyance is making me look for a new unit.

That being said, it records double layer (DL) DVDs, which buys a lot of extra recording time without sacrificing quality. And the (nearly) one-touch VCR-DVD dubbing is nice (though I think all brands now have this). Unfortunately, so far the EZ48 does a lousy job of upconverting pre-recorded DVDs. It's 1080p upconversion of DVDs does not approach the quality or resolution of similar programming on native HD channels (in lower resolutions of 720p and 1080i).

I tried dubbing one VHS tape to DVD. It produced a horrible scratching sound, not present when I play the tape in my old Sony VHS machine. If you're going to buy a unit to convert VHS to DVD, it should play VHS tapes in better quality (the Sonys have 4-head units).

Finally, when I went to turn the unit off, it did -- then turned right back on. After 5 minutes of turning it off, watching it say "BYE" then watching it turn on again, I just unplugged the damn thing. Happened again today. Tech support was not particularly helpful with this one. (Then again, tech support also insisted the first time I called that the 4:3 TV settings were important, even though I have my unit outputting via HDMI to a 16:9 TV. At least today's tech support acknoweldged the woman yesterday was wrong.)

This unit definitely has some problems. So far, I haven't seen that it's worth the money to do what its competitors can do (most for less money) -- although few others can record to DL DVDs. So, looks like I'm biding time until someone comes out with a Blue-ray that records DVDs, has HDMI input for Tivos and DVRs and both digital optical and coax outputs, and turns off and stays off....

Pansonic introduced this DVD recorder a year after its predecessor, the EZ47VK. The EZ47VK had almost the same feature set, but suffered from overheating problems. So Panasnic added a cooling fan with the EZ48VK.

I bought this recorder to transfer VHS tapes to DVD and to record programs off cable TV. In both these respects this player works just perfect, with one flaw which I will touch on below.

The auto-tune feature tuned all the standard (non-pay and non-premium) channels from my cable company and even set the clock time based on the local PBS station. The ATSC tuner picks up over-the-air HDTV and DTV programs. I am using this player with an Antennas Direct DB2 Multi Directional HDTV Antenna. It picked up local HD channels and some from as far as 40 miles away. A minor annoyance is that when you switch between antenna and cable (I use an external A/B switch) you need to auto tune the channels all over again.

Transferring VHS to DVD is a cinch. The resulting DVD is often better than the source VHS tape due to the noise reduction. I've also had excellent results recording my favorite TV programs (particularly movies from AMC and TCM). In the two months I've had this player, I've recorded just over 40 movies for personal use.

As others have suggested, DVD-RAM disks are a must-have for this player, particularly for recording TV programs you want to later delete. DVD-RAM disks give you a Tivo-like experience, and you can pause and rewind the program while the rest of the program is being recorded. And DVD-RAM disks allow you record over and over thousands of times.

Caution about dual-layer DVD+R disks:
The only problem I had with this player is with dual-layer DVD+R disks. When recording multiple programs in sequence, the player can get "confused" with the layer change in the dual layer disk. It corrupted two disks, making them unreadable. And it required me to power off and power on in order to eject the corrupted disks.

Anyway, I found that that recording dual layer DVD+R disks works perfectly when I recorded a single long program that spans both layers.

Overall, I have high praise for this player!

Upconversion is fine, individual functions are good. Not suitable for integration into a universal remote or control system due to non-discrete commands for sources (4 types) it is a toggle that sequences between VHS, DVD, Memory Card, and USB. There is currently no way to select one of the four, you have to cycle through. Hopefully they will come out with a firmware upgrade for this.

When it works, it is beautiful. The picture is great, the colors are very true, the tuner is extremely good, and it has a really nice zoom feature which will expand a letter-box screen to full-size without distortion.

If this machine were more reliable, it would be a hands-down keeper. Unfortunately, it is so prone to completely locking up that I lost all faith in in and returned it. The only way to recover from a lock-up is to unplug it and re-plug it back in and allow it to power back up. I missed too many scheduled recordings and so, sadly, gave it back. The lock-up problem seems to be an issue across all of Panasonic's latest recorders. I returned a DMR-EZ47 for the same reason. I had hoped the 48 would have fixed some of the problems, but no.

So now I have bought the Philip 3576 HD/DVD recorder which is simpler and much, much more reliable. Unfortunately, its colors are not as good and the various disk activities for DVD are maddeningly slow. But, it's probably about as good as there is right now.