my ES10 burned out and I bought an ES20 from Ebay, New In Box. Now I am regretting it for the following reasons.
1. FR mode does not allow pause. This is a critical feature for omitting ads in real time without having to do it on the PC later. You can still pause in the other modes XP, SP, LP....
2. FR mode auto creates chapters about 90 seconds apart!! In XP mode, the chapters are also auto created but the splits are about 4:30 to 5:15 (min:seconds) apart which is normal and customary on Pannys I believe.
3. the worst feature is that on ANY mode, there seems to be copyright protection on any tv show, game etc where you cannot even play the FINALIZED disc on any other dvd player, dvd recorder, or PC drive. THUS I HAD TO extract the vob files using DVD Decrypter and that only in IFO mode (File Mode did not work for extraction). Then I had to reauthor the video then burn it to another disc.
also, Windows or PowerDVD can only see the beginning files and play only about the first 5% of any total video before jumping back to the root menu as if the movie is over. This really seems like some copyright scheme gone terribly wrong. I was just trying to copy the local news to a blank dvd-r in XP mode , after finalizing, it did the same thing, not play in the pc dvd drive, altough shows 4.3gb of data but opening it does not show but the first vob of about 400mb or something.
* just checked, finalized does play ok in standalone Magnavox dvd player, but still not in PC with PowerDVD or WMP. However, VLC media plays it in the PC.
Yes, I too have had many problems with my ES20, the latest, and I'm afraid final, is that the video section has crapped out. (I get a weird double image, side by side on all outputs)
I too experienced the over-sensitive issue with copywrite protection BIG TIME. God, that was really frustrating. My solution was not to pause during commercials, just record everything. Even then, for no reason, the unit would refuse to start record b/c of copywrite violation occasionally. It also sometimes froze in the middle of finalizing, had to be unplugged, sometimes this screwed up the disc.
I did update the firmware, hoping it might fix the video problem (didn't). So now I am stuck with a pile of discs that were never finalized, do you have any alternative to buying another Panasonic?
About the only positive thing I can say about the unit is that the video quality was great, when it managed to record.
I would hate to buy another Panny, do you know if it is possible to finalize these discs in a PC? Thanks, and good luck.
Oh yeah, I wanted to mention that I used version U3.161 for the firmware upgrade, I think I got it from a Canadian site. It was created in April 2007. Fairly easy to do, you just make a CD-R using the instructions provided. I forget the site, but I can e-mail it, I still have it.
