Early Adopters Pick: July 2003. This DVD recorder features the industry's largest included hard drive--120 GB. The Panasonic DMR-E100HS not only records DVDs and holds more than 100 hours of audio/video programming in its built-in memory--it also boasts a built-in SD card slot for reading and writing MPEG2 and MPEG4 video. Now you can copy TV shows or archived video footage to portable media that will play in a laptop, camera, or other device. And guess what? This technological wonder is also a progressive-scan DVD player that's equipped to handle DVDs, CDs, and MP3-encoded discs.
The DMR-E100HS's 120 GB hard drive (HDD) provides up to 150 hours of recording time, plus you can write up to 6 hours of programming to removable 4.7 GB DVD-RAM discs (in Extended Play mode in each case), thanks to Panasonic's original Hybrid VBR (variable bit rate) technology. This puppy would seem to have written the book on flexibility, letting you play back recorded programs--from DVD-RAM or HDD--while watching another program on DVD-RAM or HDD (when, for instance, you wish to view and archive footage to tape at the same time), and you can play files from the hard drive while recording to another part of it (even at high bit rates). You get high-speed transfers (22 Mbps) to and from HDD to DVD-RAM, and a quick-record function that rapidly locates a blank section of disc to begin writing to.
In addition to recording new video content, the DMR-E100HS lets you transfer favorite VHS recordings to durable, space-saving discs. Personal movie libraries and family videos can be archived, preserved, and easily cataloged and accessed. Picture-enhancing technologies include 3D noise reduction, block noise reduction, and mosquito noise reduction. You can even perform simple non-linear video editing, such as rearranging the order of scenes, skipping over unwanted scenes, and creating custom playlists of favorite scenes on a disc.
DVD-RAM is perfect for instant chapter acc
