Great quality picture from HD recording

Bought this a few months back after my Toshiba DVD recorder stopped working. To get the Toshiba fixed it was going to be $30 shipping and $80 fix-it fee. For another $20 I bought this unit.

The Toshiba had a 100 page manual while the Panasonic is long it is much easier to understand. The only feature missing from the Panasonic is the variable bit rate recording. The Panasonic will do variable recording FR mode but you can't schedule the FR mode. The Toshiba had about 5 different variable bit rates that could be programed.***UPDATED 3/3/2006*** Ok after reading the manual a little closer, you can set the scheduled recording to FR mode (flexible recording) and utilize 100% of the disk to get the best quality for the timed recording.

Another feature missing is zoom and alternate angles. The Toshiba had it. Nice to have for viewing DVDs but not completely necessary.

My Panasonic is hooked to my HD receiver and HDTV, when watching the chase play, the quality is almost 100% maybe 95% of what regular HD looks like (this is in SP mode). I haven't tried HD recording on DVd-r or DVD-rw only RAM