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Ongoing Thoughts Twelve:
By William E. Steinman:
Beware of Panasonic:
Recently, I began to realize that neither of our VCR
recorders would work after the big switch to digital broadcasting comes off.
These units work fine now, but they have the old analog tuners that do not even
recognize the digital signals, let alone process them. I have known about this
change for a long time, but for some reason the VCR issue never crossed my
mind. I have already dealt with the TV problem by purchasing high definition
units several months ago. They work just fine. I guess I’m a slow study
because the recording problem just recently came to me. Oh yeah, I said. Mrs.
Gaffer did not rub it in much. She just smiled and got ready for my normal
bluster of trying to explain something I did not understand myself.
After I explained what I thought we needed, we began looking
for recorders. I always check out the offerings at Sam’s Club because
they usually have better prices. A few days ago, I finally saw what I thought I
wanted. However, when I began looking at a DVD recorder with a hard drive, I noticed
Mrs. Gaffer’s eyes getting glassy. Oh, oh I thought! So, instead of
buying it anyway, I began to look at alternatives. That is when I made my big
mistake. I looked at a Panasonic unit that seemed to fit the bill. It had a DVD
recording drive and a VCR drive to pacify Mrs. Gaffer. It was not exactly what
I wanted, but I thought it would fill the bill. I was wrong.
This was supposed to be a state of the art DVD recorder and
player with a VCR player recorder. It had the requisite high definition tuner.
It had it all, so I thought. Therefore, I spent almost three hundred bucks and
brought the thing home with some anticipation.
After I unpacked the unit, it did not take me long to
discover the flaw. I was under the impression that we could record digital
signals to tape if we had the correct unit. When I began to set the unit up to
test the record function, I came to this in the manual:
You cannot record digital signals to VCR tape.
There it was in bold print. I do not know if that is a
technical fact or if it is just a function of their unit. The statement made it
seem like a universal truth, but I must remember this is Panasonic. Either way,
the handwriting was on the wall. VCR would be going the way of the eight-track.
Meanwhile, Panasonic had marketed a unit with features that they knew would
stop working six or seven months after it was purchased.
Let me tell you, I am embarrassed. I don’t know what
possessed me. I have been had by Panasonic before. I have owned two other
Panasonic products that were no good. Panasonic sold me a telephone that did
not work. They also sold me a junky monitor that I put up with for a couple of
years before I bought a ViewSonic. They are on my kaka list. I knew all this. I
wrote about all of it previously, but my mind went on vacation when I was
looking at DVD recorders.
There was only one course of action. I packed this piece of
crap back into its original carton and put it by the door. In the next few
days, I did some research online to learn more about this DVD business. I
looked at a number of sites and companies and finally decided that we really
wanted the unit I had first looked at in Sam’s. It was a Philips HDD
& DVD recorder and player with a digital tuner. That’s a mouthful.
It will play and record high definition DVD disks. I was
disappointed to learn that it will not record double-layer disks. That is not a
big deal. It means I may have to use more than one disk for a particular
recording. You may have noticed that a number of movies come in multi-disk
sets. They still work. A more important issue is that this unit can play
double-layer disks. That is a necessity. This issue of double-layer recording
was complicated after I had bought the unit by an incompetent technician in
Philips customer service. I wanted to be sure my conclusion about the issue was
correct so I sent an email to Philips. I receive an incorrect reply the next
day. Here it is:
Dear Mr. Steinman,
Thank you for your email to Philips Consumer Lifestyle.
We understand that you want to know if the DVD Recorder will
record on double layer discs. We
would like to inform you that the
unit records on DVD+R double layer discs. Please click on the link below to access
the Owner's Manual and go to page 62 to verify
the information.
There is one serious problem with this reply. Page 62 of the
manual he referenced is not about recording. It is about playback. I already
knew the unit would play double-layer because I tried it with a movie I had on
hand. I thought I was back to square one until I found the correct information.
It was on the last page of the Quick Start Guide where I had not looked before.
I found unequivocal evidence right before my eyes. I can playback double-layer,
but I cannot record or edit double-layer. Now I can hope I will not need
customer serviced from Philips. Incompetent customer service is a constant
problem with most companies I have done business with. I guess they save a
little money that way. Who knows how many customers are driven away by that
shortsighted policy.
This unit will record to rewritable disks (DVD RW), but I
will not use that feature. I have found those disks are very unreliable. We do
not want to save something and later find we cannot read the disk.
I made sure this player/recorder has a digital tuner to
receive the antenna signal and it will also work with a cable box. It has an
HDMI output jack for the television to give the highest possible picture
definition. It will also record the digital signals to a hard disk for later
playback or editing. This feature is very helpful. In most cases, we do not
want to keep what we record after we view it. Like Boston Legal, we enjoy it
once and then we don’t need it again. Therefore, it would be wasteful to
cut every program we want to record to a DVD only to throw it away later. Even
at two-bits apiece that is foolish. When we do want to keep a particular
recording, we can edit it and save it to DVD. Finally, for music only this unit
will play audio disks if they are in the standard format.
The next time we went out, we took the Panasonic back to
Sam’s. I had hoped there would be no hassle at Sam’s and pleasantly
enough, there was not. I put the Panasonic in a cart and wheeled it up to the
customer service desk. The young lady asked me why I was returning it and I
told her it did not work. I instantly amended that to say, I could not make it
work. She laughed as though she had had similar experiences with electronic
gear. I fear everyone has.
She opened the package to make sure it was all there. Once
she did that, she opened her cash drawer and handed us cash. There was no
hassle, no check, and no business about issuing a credit. She handed over the
full purchase price of the unit including all taxes. I was very pleasantly
surprised. All businesses should operate like that. We used most of that refund
immediately by purchasing the Philips unit I describe above. Interestingly
enough, the Philips was less expensive that the Panasonic.
The next day, I began checking this new unit out. I am happy
to report there has been no gotcha so far. Everything I checked worked the way
the manual said it would. That is a revelation in itself. As to the manual, I
gave myself a leg up by downloading it from the Philips website. That is how I
knew the unit would do what we wanted it to before we bought it. I should have
done that before I bought the Panasonic. I would have saved some time and some
grief. So far, I am very pleased with what I have found. Checking out the edit
function will take time, but based on what I have found so far, I am confident
that it will work as advertised.
While I was researching DVD player/recorders, I ran across a
term I have heard before, but did not know what it meant. That is Blu-ray
Disc™. I learned it is a new technology from Sony and others, which may
have future applications in this digital revolution. In a follow up work, I
hope to be able to discuss this new technology without bluster. For now, just
getting over the VCR to DVD hurdle was enough of a struggle.
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