The DMR-HS2 is one of the first DVD recorders to feature a built in hard disc drive, a home recording playback dream in one box:

Specifications
Plays pre-recorded DVD's & CD's
Records on DVD-RAM & DVD-R Video Blank Media
Will make discs that will play in most existing DVD players (DVD-R only)
Uses VBR (Variable Bit Rate) Technology to maintain high picture quality
Firewire (i-link) DV input
Videoplus+
Playback programs recorded to DVD-RAM or HDD while recording another program on DVD-RAM or HDD
Internal 40GB HD for time shifting
High speed transfer (22 Mbps) to and from HDD to DVD-RAM
When transferring at 1x speed from HDD to DVD-RAM or DVD-R, formats can be re-encoded eg XP mode > EP mode)
Allows non-linear editing to transfer to DVD-RAM and from DVD-RAM to HDD
Playback while recording even at high bit rates (HDD and DVD-RAM)
Uses the single layer 4.7GB DVD-R (once only) system and DVD-RAM 4.7Gb systems
Records in real-time using MPEGII compression-Up to 6 hours per DVD-RAM disc
Quick recording function automatically finds the blank part of the disc
Variable Data rate and variable resolution settings
Disc navigation thumbnail chapter view
PCMCIA PC Card upgrade slot (SD Card reader for JPEG still transfers is one of the possibilities)
Built-in time base corrector that delivers highly stable, natural images
Front A/V input
Full RGB in and out
Flexible recording mode allows you to manually a time for recording and the player will set the best possible bit rate for that time, say 1 hour 15 minutes to fill a disc
Can record and playback NTSC and PAL

Well I liked the specification and now I have hands on lets see if it lives up to my expectations

The recorder is sleeker than the E-20 with a silver grey finish case and the front panel being professional mirror finished plastic.

The accessories that come with it are:
Remote Control & batteries
Comprehensive Manual
3 x Phono to 3 x Phono AV lead
Coax plug to Socket lead
Mains lead with moulded 13 amp plug
120min DVD-RAM Disc in cartridge
120min DVD-RAM Disc without cartridge
Disc cleaning cloth
Regrettably there was no SCART lead or SVHS lead

The Front Panel
PC card slot which with the appropriate adapter can read JPEG images from various digital camera memory cards

Disc tray which will accept DVD disc with or without a cartridge this is concealed behind a mirror finish drop down flap, the tray is not as deep as the E-20 and more robust

The Main Buttons are Eject, Stop, Pause, Play, Navigation & Enter

The Secondary Buttons are Channel Up/Down, Record, Functions, Time Slip, & Return

Under the Disc tray are the two buttons to select HDD or DVD for playback or record

Under the PC Card slot is the power button and below this is a drop down flap to reveal the front inputs which are the same as the E-20 :-

SVHS, Composite Video Phono, Stereo Audio 2x Phono and DV input.

The right hand drop down flap reveals Chapter Skip/Fast Search buttons, Record Mode, Ext Link and Timer Record buttons


The Rear Panel
Scart Socket 1
Input:- Composite Video + Stereo Audio
Output:- Composite Video/S-Video/RGB + Stereo Audio selectable from the setup menu
Scart Socket 2
Input:- Composite Video/S-Video/RGB + Stereo Stereo Audio selectable from the setup menu
Output:- Composite Video + Stereo Audio
There are the full set of Composite, SVHS & Stereo Audio Phono Inputs and Outputs.
Coaxial aerial input with RF loop through
And power input plug


connecting Up The Unit
I connected the Scart 2 RGB INPUT to a SCART switch box to switch between my SKY digi box & DVD player, both outputs at RGB. I consider this to be the best possible quality for recording. The inclusion of RGB input is a must for quality recording.

I connected Scart 1 output to my TV Scart input

I connected my aerial input and the loop through to my video input daisy chain

The RF loop through includes the selectable RF modulated output that can be selected to any spare channel within the full channel range from 21 to 68, so it is easy to find one that does not cause interference. The output channel selection is accessed by pressing the FUNCTION button for more than 5 seconds this output can also be disabled if not required.

The SVHS and Stereo Audio were connected to the SVHS & Audio inputs to my SVHS Video recorder


Using The Recorder
There are FIVE recording modes corresponding to time and quality inversely

XP approx 1 hour recording on a DVD at the best possible quality

SP approx 2 hours, this is ideal for movies under 2 hours and is on a par or better than SVHS

LP approx 4 hours this is ideal for long movies or fitting 2 movies of up to 4 hours onto the DVD the quality is similar to SVHS

EP approx 6 hours to be used only if you are a skinflint, the quality is comparable with VHS but there is playback compatibility problems with a lot of DVD players due to the low bitrate of the recordings. I personally will not use it but it is ideal for backing up VCD movies if the resultant DVD will play on your particular DVD player.

FR Flexible recording mode. This adjusts the recording quality to fit into the space available on the disc. For example if the total time for the recording is 2 and 1/2 hours it will adjust the recording bit rate to just under the SP quality and the full DVD will be 150 minutes.

The FR mode was available on the DMR-E20 but only in Timer Recording mode

This recorder has all the functions of the DMR-E20 which I have already been reviewed so I will concentrate on the additional features.

Recording to the hard drive gives up to 52 hours on the 40gig drive, the hard drive cannot be replaced by anything larger because the software only recognizes 40 gig.

Recording from off air signals gives in EP mode adequate quality for general viewing of soaps and is ideal if you don't want to miss an episode whilst on holiday.

For recording movies to save I recommend using XP mode which will give up to 8 1/2 hours recording onto the hard drive at the best possible quality for transferring to DVD-R disc in FR mode. I find dubbing 2 movies of up to 4 hours total onto one DVD gives very good quality playback on a 27" TV.

Recording Movies from TV
My terrestrial TV signals are of very poor quality due to my location and the local terrain so I used the output of my Sky Digi box as a signal source.

For my tests I connected my Sky Digi Box RGB output to the RGB SCART 2 input of the recorder. I recorded movies from ITV and Channel 5 out of the Digi Box to check how easy it was to edit out the commercials. Recording was started before the movie began and stopped after the movie finished. Playing back the movie from the hard drive was as good as the original signal. Editing the film can be done two ways, either by creating a play list of the movie & omitting the commercials or deleting the parts not required with the partial erase option, I chose to partial erase to check the accuracy. Playback starts from the beginning of the recording and selecting reverse play button sends the play into reverse, the speed being dependant on how many times it is pressed, upon reaching the start of the recording playback it goes into playback pause mode, pressing the enter button selects the start of the cut point and the playback starts again. The playback can be searched for the end of the cut point and when pause is selected the FF and FR buttons can be used to move the scene at various slow motion speeds until the exact point is required, then press the enter button, and if the selected segment is correct for removal press the enter button again for the NEXT option where you have the option to delete the section or not. The playback will recommence from the cut point and just search up to the next cut point (the commercials) repeat this until you just have the desired film. This method of editing frees up unwanted hard drive space but has the disadvantage that if some wanted footage is deleted it cannot be recovered, whereas with a play list nothing is deleted but just omitted from the final play..

The method of creating a play list is the same as partial erase but selecting the scenes that are required instead of the ones to erase. the play list can be any of the footage on the hard drive in any order thus making it ideal for editing camcorder footage to make a final production.

The final film played back showed the cuts as a slight pause for a fraction of a second at the edit points but was only slight and did not distract from the viewing, the cut points seem to be accurate within 5 or less frames but frame time code is not shown on the edit menu and can only be selected by shuffling the playback back & forth until the desires cut points are visible in the preview window.


Recording Backup Movies From DVD
To record a movie from another DVD for backup purposes needed a DVD player with macro disabled and my Tatung is ideal for this. The Tatung is connected via the SCART lead with RGB output enabled, (this initially gave problems but was sorted out see below). The movie could easily be recorded to DVD-R, DVD-RAM, or HARD DRIVE. I preferred to record to the hard drive in XP mode and edit the recording before dubbing to the DVD-R disc in FR mode.

A separate recording of 5 minutes was recorded to the HARD DRIVE to be used as a dummy for padding the movie when it is transferred to the final DVD-R disc. This 5 minutes is used when dubbing in FR mode to make sure that the edge of the disc (which is most prone to write errors) is not used for playback of the film

Dubbing The Movies
Dubbing is done with the hard drive selected and there is an appropriate disc in the DVD tray, select HD to DVD dubbing and select the the film or play list sequence adding the 5 minutes dummy recording to the end of the sequence.

Selecting FR flexible recording will record onto the DVD using the whole of its capacity for the full length of the recording.

Selecting dubbing comes up with the option to record or not at the desired record mode, the recording continues is real time with each part in separate recordings on the DVD, if the selections were titled the titles are also transferred over to the DVD. Dubbing a Play List creates just one continuous recording.

When the dubbing has finished the DVD-R can be titled and finalised. Before finalising the dummy transfer can be deleted if required so that the outer edge of the DVD-R will not be used. Finalising the DVD-R creates a menu of the contents of the DVD-R and there is a selection for a variety of 9 different menu patterns to choose from, much more pleasant than the DMR_E20 menus, once finalised the disc can no longer be recorded to and it can then be played back in most stand alone DVD players and PC DVD-ROM drives, I have only found one DVD player that will not play back the Panasonic or Philips recordings and it is the APEX 1100WB from ASDA. Once the dubbed video has been checked and is up to spec the original recording can be deleted from the hard drive.

Recordings do not have to be made to the hard drive they can equally be recorded to DVD-R or DVD-RAM disc as with the DMR-E20 but without the flexibility of the hard drive. Dubbing cannot be done from DVD-R to HARD DRIVE only HARD DRIVE to DVD-R, dubbing between HARD DRIVE and DVD-RAM can be done in either direction and if the same record mode is used for transfer then high speed dubbing is possible which will transfer a full disc of 4.7 gig in 1/2 hour

Time Slip
This enables watching of earlier recordings from the HARD DRIVE or DVD-RAM disc whilst still recording and is available with both the HARD DRIVE and DVD-RAM recording but not whilst recording direct to DVD-R discs

RGB Limitations
I found that when connected to some DVD players with the RGB output the image on the screen was magenta in colour lacking green and initially suspected the SCART lead but connecting direct to my TV proved me wrong. On further investigation I discovered that the green component had the sync pulses combined with it and this is not the standard for RGB as the sync signal is outputted on the composite video out pin. The reason for this difference on some players is that the RGB output is doubled up as COMPONENT VIDEO output, enabling it to be used with projection TV's and the like.

I built a diode resistance filter into the SCART lead to remove the unwanted sync pulse and RGB was then be used for recording from these players

An annoying thing with the output from the recorder was that when viewing the output signals whilst monitoring the input there is a noticeable delay between the audio and video giving lip-sync delay, but the playback of the recorded video is synchronized


JPEG Function
An interesting feature of this unit is the ability to read JPEG images from a Type 2 PC Card and can read JPEG images from resolution of 320 x 240 up to 6144 x 4096, it can handle a maximum of 3000 files in a maximum of 300 folders, adequate enough for most

The contents of the PC card can be viewed individually or as a slide show from 1 to 30 second intervals and can be transferred to the hard drive or DVD-RAM for future viewing or editing. Copying the JPEG images to DVD- R is not possible. I do not have access to such a PC card so I am unable to try out these functions.

I found the unit more compatible with media than the DMR-E20 but still fussy about the lower grade medias

Media Records Plays
Traxdata Yes Yes
Datasafe (Ritek) Yes Yes
Bulkpaq (Purple) 90% good Yes
DVD-RW (any) No No
Bulkpaq Gen 4 (Green) No Yes
E-Performance Yes Yes
Datasafe Classic No Yes
Datasafe Budget Yellow No Yes
VCD No Yes
SVCD No Yes
CD Audio No Yes
DVD-R 12 cm Yes Yes
DVD-RAM 8cm Yes Yes
DVD-RAM 12cm Yes Yes

Thanks to Flash for this review - if you have any questions please email Flash

Added:  Wednesday, November 13, 2002
Reviewer:  Flash

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