I purchased this HDD/DVD Freeview recorder a little over a year ago now so I thought it would be a good time to review it as it shows how it performs over time. As a Freeview box it was excellent at first but now I'd call it very good. My reasoning for this change is it isn't a Freeview HD box and that is significant because if you have the auto check for new channels feature on, it will constantly find that there are new channels available but be unable to show them. Therefore I suggest turning that feature off (as I have) because it will want retuning over and over again. 3 times over this past year it has lost all channels. A simple retune fixes ...  Read the complete review

I recently purchased this HDD/DVD recorder and player from John Lewis. I have always wanted to experiment with one of these devices and decided to actually go and buy one for our Panasonic television. The player and the TV are both 'Viera Link' compatible, meaning they link up together extremely easily and makes the user experience much more pleasurable and simplistic. So if you're going to buy this device, I highly recommend using it with a Panasonic television. I love the fact this recorder/player also comes with a USB port and even an SD card reader. So not only can you watch DVDs on the player, you can also listen to music and stream pictures ...  Read the complete review

We bought this with our new TV and so far have not been too impressed with the recording features of the device. So this DVD recorder should be ideal to record your programs either via FreeView using the built-in tuner or via FreeSat through our Panasonic TV. Well alas we still have not managed to get anything to automatically record any TV program. It will record programs via FreeSat or FreeView if you press record and then stop it manually after the program has finished which is a big pain in the arse. I'm sure there must be something we haven't set up properly but we followed everything in the supplied manual. Off the negative points, let's talk ...  Read the complete review

Prior to having our Virgin V plus box, we were in desperate need for a PVR (Personal video recorder) for our main TV in the lounge. We've always had Panasonic products and wanted to stick with this particular brand. The DMR-EX79 sounded like a great buy, albeit a tad over what we wanted to pay, but the one thing that we wanted was a recordable DVD player too, which this model had. The unit looks good in black much or a much-ness when comparing to others of a similar standard. It has the usual inputs and outputs such as an HDMI output which allows the user to upscale video to the TV. But for people who still use the scart cables, it still retains this ...  Read the complete review