Panasonic DMR-EZ47VK

2/10 Panasonic should be ashamed

Mr Tester - 10/23/09

The DMR-EZ47V has so many 'quirks' and Panasonic Customer Service is so awful that I would highly recommend NOT purchasing this unit or any closely related to it. There are lots of reviews out there so why trust me? I have a degree in Computers and am more technical than most. I read manuals for fun. I use more of the obscure features in a (phone/recorder/gizmo) than most and will spend hours experimenting to see exactly how it works. I have put many hours into this machine having owned it for two years and know much more about it than the Customer Service person you will talk to when you call. The manual is awful so you WILL call. So, if you only use this machine to watch TV with it's tuner, play DVDs and occasionally record shows, you won't be TOO sorry, but you won't be happy, either. Did I mention the manual was awful? It is. I've read lots of them. It is long and the information is scattered all over in an unusable way. Mine is filled with my own notes and cross reference pages. The really important information is hard to find and much of it does not even appear in the index. Customer Service usually does answer and they try to help, but many of the people there don't know much and I've been given answers that show some of those people have no idea of what they are talking about in general. Off the top of my head, here are some of the main quirks my unit has? It's 2009 and my cheap digital clock keeps time much better than this unit which loses two seconds A DAY. If I don't manually reset the clock every two weeks, recordings start and stop too early. When you schedule a show, you can enter text connected to the show such as "Friends". This unit will override that at times and put the name of the show itself. If the recording starts too early, it puts the wrong name. A better design would be to not have the machine change this text if the user enters it manually. Or fix the darn clock. While watching DVDs, a box often pops up on the screen as if you pressed the Status button. It goes away after a few seconds, but it shouldn't do this at all. Customer Service has no idea why this happens. Others report this also. Unit freezes frequently. Also reported by others. It often happens that pressing the rewind (<) button to go backwards a few seconds causes it to jump back a full chapter which is usually 8 minutes. Then you have to fast forward to where you were. VERY annoying. This was reported fixed in a firmware upgrade, but I can tell you it was not. Oh, want to be REALLY irritated? If using the digital tuner, it takes several seconds to change channels. Push the next channel button and wait. And wait. Push it again because you think it didn't work. The channel will eventually change. Usually twice. Press it once to go back. And wait some more. I've seen other people mention this problem. They are correct. The other night I set the scheduler to record two shows. The next morning, I noticed the unit was not powered off like it should have done after the recordings. It thought it was still recording and there was no way to convince it otherwise except to force it to power off. To do this, you hold the power button down for about 10 seconds. You had better remember that because you WILL be needing to do this when it locks up on you. And it will. There are more less important annoyances such as putting in an empty disk only to have it tell you it is full. Get out of 'schedule' mode and then go back. It will then correct itself. It only does this at certain times which I can sometimes duplicate. I HAVE seen it several times even though Customer Service tells me I didn't. The tape eject button is right next to the power button and looks the same. See how many times you eject a tape instead of turning the unit off or on. The digital tuner went bad about a week after the warranty was up. Customer Service tried to convince me I wasn't getting ANY channels because the digital signals were too weak even though I told her my other TV was working just fine. I know broken when I see it. A decent company wouldn't quibble about being out of warranty for a week. Panasonic's Customer Service people did. I had to elevate it to their Corporate Office where I was finally told they would happily take care of it. They did, but it wasn't as smooth a process as it could have been. When it works, it works. If you don't do anything complicated, it will usually work. But if you plan to use all it's features or just not be annoyed, I would suggest you NOT get involved with this machine.