Forums Forums Enthusiast Forums A - Z Gadgets & Tech Panasonic DMR-BS850 Blu-ray Recorder

Going to get one of these over the next week or so, as I want a Freesat+ HD recorder and blu-ray player, and this will do both in addition to replacing my DVD recorder and of course offering the blu-ray recorder, as well a fully fledged music, DivX and internet media centre, and all in a single system via a single HDMI running to the TV.

I know they are prohibitively expensive and Panasonic have not sold a great deal of them due to this, but I actually think they are absolutely cracking value-for-money considering they do just about everything you could ever need a set-top-box to do.

However, finding user information on them, even on sites like the AVforums is a pain, presumably because of the cost, but just wondering if anyone on wiki has one/has used one, and knows what they are like, mainly are there any notable bugs, and how is the lip-sync on them?

Thanks

How much are they matt?

Anywhere between £600 and £1000 dependent on model and where ya buying it from.

They only launched in August 09 and were minimum of £1000 at that point. Panasonic are supposedly losing money on them because take-up has been dreadfully slow thanks to the high price and recession and there isn't much awareness of either Freesat or Blu-ray recorders. This is a good thing though, because it means they won't be replaced any time soon, and there isn't likely to be any new units released from any other manufacturer (Sony have already publically stated they don't intend to launch a Blu-ray recorder outside of Japan for the forseeable future).

So with the recent price drops it seems like an amazing product for the money, will also become a HDD music player for my Technics system as well. Oh and it will have the iPlayer.

In one system, you have:

- Freesat HD PVR
- Blu-ray player
- Blu-ray recorder (so you can archive HD recordings or even multiple series of SD TV programmes to a single disc)
- DVD Recorder
- DVD player
- 1080p Upscaler
- External source recording to HDD or disc
- DivX player
- MP3/WMA Storage/Player
- Photograph and video viewer
- Memory card and USB interface for TV (handy for DivX especially)
- IPTV Player
- TV Internet Browser

Got more info at http://www.hdeverything.co.uk/2D/

and a whole host of other features besides. It will essentially make my DVD recorder/upscaler, TUTV Freeview+ PVR and SuperVHS redundant, whilst upgrading the TV to an all-round HD-capable system, and bring the hifi into the 21st century with the music player capabilities.

When one considers a Humax Foxsat HDR is £250 and a decent Blu-ray player (not recorder) is about £130 it suddenly startes to make sense economically.

With my TV being HDMI only, it seems to make perfect sense for me to have a single box solution, however I am trying to find all users opinions of the product because I don't wanna be spending that amount of money and finding annoying bugs etc - but there just seems to be hardly anyone with them.

All am going to say about this is,




they are???????

Lmao, yer they seem to have everything you could ever want (apart from PayTV functionality, but I don't want that anymore) and the reviews all seem to be quite positive with little mention of bugs etc, but there aint been much mention of actually using one in real-life (which is when you tend to find the problems).

As there are a fair few gadget freaks/early adopters on here, wondering if anyone might have one or have actually used (Currys don't sell it instore because they wernt selling, Richer Sounds wont give me a demo of it as they only order in for purchase in Chester and Comet are useless lol).

would one of these be any good hooked up to my 17 inch black and white telly . he he