Info and forum posts by 'Disintegration'

RE: LoveFilm - Utterly Abysmal - Decent DVD Rental Company Reccomendations

Having read about the problems with Lovefilms, I signed up for the free 3 week trial intending to cancel at the end. Over the 3 weeks their service was pretty good I got about 16 discs.

I rang to cancel and was offered 3 months for the price of 1 month & based on my experience with the trial I accepted the offer. Big Mistake

Since taking the money from my credit card 9 days ago for the 3 disc unlimted account they haven`t sent me a single DVD. Zero, zilch, nada.

All my trials disc are shown as returned, I have over 30 DVD on my list yet not one single disc has been selected to be posted out. Nine days and they haven`t managed to send one disc from my list.

I`ve emailed them and they say there are technical problems with the auto dispatch system and have frozen billing my account till discs are sent out. I don`t believe them, they should be putting a message on their website to let customer know if there is a computer problem causing delays.

Definitely be cancelling once the three months is up and will not be dealing with them again.

RE: Panasonic DVD Recorder w/80gb HDD

Hi

While I haven`t tried many brands of discs but my E85 will play movies copied on DVD +RW from Imitation & Verbatim just fine.

You can copies movies from non-copy protected DVD`s but not the menus or chapters i.e. the DVD plays the movie & the Hard Drive copies in real time. You can add chapters to the copy on the Hard Drive after you`ve made the copy & if you copy high speed back to DVD the chapters will be on the DVD.

I don`t bother with RAM discs, I usually record & watch from the hard drive & then delete. If it is a program I want to keep then I just use DVD -r to make copies as they are so cheap. A pack of 25 Datasafe DVD-r costs about £4.00 which is 16p a disc while RAM discs are about £1.50 each. Doesn`t make sense to me to use RAM discs if you`ve got a Hard Drive.

If friends or family ask me to record a program, I just record to the hard drive, edit out the adverts & make a copy to DVD-r which that they can keep or throw away.

RE: Panasonic DMRE85 Anyone?

Hi Flip Martian

I bought one last week from Digital Point. Ordered Wednesday and was delivered next day but, paid £499 for mine. I guess I should have waited.

The machine works perfectly, touch wood, no bugs or crashes noticed yet.

It`s quiet, I can`t hear it except when finalizing DVD`s when there is some disc drive noise. And even that is not that loud.

Picture quality to my eyes is good, copying from Sky in XP & SP mode I cannot tell the difference from the original. In LP mode the picture is still better than a VHS video tape and EP is about the same as a VHS tape.

I have it set up to TV link with my Sky box. This means you can select the programs you want to record using the auto view on Sky TV guide, set the Sky box on standby and press the TV link botton on the DMRE85. It will then automatically record the programs you have selected. Much easier than having to program the timer. Downside is that you can`t use the RGB setting for the input if you do this but the convenience is worth the very slight reduction in picture quality.

Editing from the Hard Drive is a piece of cake, adverts are easily erased. You can easily create chapter points and even select a thumbnail picture which displays on the menu.

Copying from the Hard Drive to a DVD is easy. Copying to DVD-R can be done at high speed if you don`t change the recording quality. i.e. if you copy a film from the Hard Drive which in SP quality you can fit 2 hours max on a DVD-R and it will copy it in about 15 mins. If it`s more than 2 hours then you have to lower the quality to fit on the DVD-R, while it is easy to do, when it copying it does it at playing speed. i.e. if the film is 3 hours long it will take 3 hours to copy. Just remember to finalize the disc if you want it to play in any machine, this takes about 2 mins.

Things I`m not happy with.

No DVD-Ram disc or DVD-R disc comes in the box. No biggie but it would have been nice to have one of each included.

The remote is a little tacky. It works fine but is in my opinion not a patch on the Sky remote or as good the Panasonic remote of my 4 year old TV.

The DVD player side of the machine is a little sparse in the function department. I can`t find a zoom option, no random button for an MP3 music disc etc.

Overall, I`m very pleased with it and don`t regret buying it.

Disintegration

This item was edited on Monday, 26th April 2004, 19:06