Fantastic

I was going to purchase a PS3 but after reading reviews about this player and already owning a games console, I decided to purchase this player. Firstly the delivery from Amazon was fantastic, but was a little upset to find no Batman or Casino Royal in box as stated. This was resolved with a quick phone call to Amazon.

Now onto the Blu-Ray player, it's fantastic I would recommend this player to anyone who was looking into Blu-Ray. I made the Player multi-region for DVD's in about 10 Minutes using a simple hack found on the net using an All4one remote. Unfortunately this hack only works for DVD's but that's fine for me as I had loads of Region 1 DVD's that I still wanted to play. The Picture and sound quality is fantastic with no sign of video juddering like I have seen on other players. 5/5

Better than my previous HDD machine

Excellent!

It could be a bit tricky to set up if you look at the vast array of set ups in the manual but in reality it was fairly easy if you just logicaly follow the various inputs and outputs. Once set up it is easy to use. The EPG is OK and works fine and makes recording programs easy.

My machine is not in the least bit noisy in fact it is much quiter than my previous HDD machine (a Liteon).

Only problem I have is that it rejects DVD+RW discs! Any body else have this problem?

A Panasonic Wonder with Profile 2 and Upscaling

Purchased to match a Panasonic 1080p Television after reading many reviews.
Consider connecting through HDMI not Component Video to utilise all the features. As usual these days a HDML lead is not included. The HDMI lead recommended by Amazon as a package is the one to get as some HDMI leads are wired differently and the Panasonic Viera Link will not work (my original didnt).
Profile 2 means you can connect to the Internet to do Firmware updates as new features are added.
As regarding Upscaling (rendering ordinary DVD to a higher quality if possible) the manual is a bit confusing as the default condition assumes connection by Component Video and you need to find the right menu to change this if using the superior HDMI connection.
The US import version of the BBC Planet Earth I am told is 1080p rather than 1080i if your TV supports the higher format whereas most UK Blu Ray discs are not yet showing the full potential of Blu Ray.
After watching full 1080p for a while and switching back to ordinary Freeview TV really emphasises the quality of this product.

A good inexpensive multi-regional player

If all you want is a very basic dvd player, say for the bedroom, then at the moment, you are really looking at either this Philips or the Toshiba SD280E. They are similarly priced with similar specs. The advantage of the Tosh is that it will play your divx movies whilst the Philips will not. Nevertheless I chose the Philips, purely on the fact that it is silver in colour whilst the Toshiba is black. A minor point really but as my bedroom telly is also silver I wanted it to match.
I see from reading these comments that some have struggled with making the Philips multi-region. If this is you then try again and make sure you follow Kalpesh's instructions to the letter. It does work. It took me less than a minute to complete.

Excellent Value for Money

I recently purchased this home theatre system, mostly based on the many positive reviews on this site, the price, and the high number of connectors (HDMI, optical audio input). I am very impressed with this unit and highly recommend it, especially to owners of Sony televisions with HDMI connectors. The"One Touch" DVD play feature works very smoothly and the audio quality is great. Also works well as a stand-alone CD player. Highly recommended.

built like a battleship

If you have a PVR then this model is ideal to save copies onto DVD.

When you press record the front panel lights up and it counts the minuets so at least you can see its doing something.

It also has a on screen display showing what disk is in and how many minuets are left

It behaves more like a conventional VHS Recorder so you have complete control of everything.

its well worth the £ 80

It has a analogue tuner but I have already hooked it up to one of my spare Freeview units although it would be highly unusual if I watched anything though it as I own three PVR's.

Its built like a battleship and it has every conceivable input/output you would ever need .

The remote control is a delight to use.

My Sony RDRGX350B DVD Recorder was Multiregion straight out the box.

I did consider for a few seconds buying a combined PVR and DVD Recorder
but quality ones are very expensive far better buying a separate PVR and this excellent machine.

I had to use a powerful torch as it was impossible to tell if the back fan was working or not - which it was but its so quiet you just cant tell its spinning.

Go on its the best £ 80 you will spend.

A joy to use

I bought this to go with a Panasonic 42" Plasma. The upscaling on DVDs works well and I've no idea how blu-ray could be '4 times better'. The recorder is easy to use and there are significant improvements in this compared with an early model. I particularly like the 'series record' function and the way it saves all the episodes of a series in a group folder with just one click. I had a good experience with the free delivery from Amazon of both items - but had to shop elsewhere for a Cambridge HDMI cable - worth getting from Richer Sounds.

A disappoining purchase

After researching the various models on the market I decided to buy this HDD DVD recorder based largely on the good reviews it has received. I was however very disappointed with what I received. The Electronic program guide is very slow and nowhere near as usable as the one on my Samsung TV. The recording quality on anything other than standard compression is very poor; and the navigation through recorded programs is painfully slow. It groups programs that are recorded weekly together, but does not allow you to manipulate this grouping.

In its favour the device runs very quietly compared to the Sony I used to have.

overall great value, but...

It does all that it promises.

I know nothing of Sky + or whatever, so can't compare its recording function for ease-of-use. I've found it all easy to use so far. It's very quick and simple to set it to record to HDD a program by just choosing it from the daily listings on the Freeview menu.

However, as I think someone has pointed out on a forum here, I'm very surprised there's no way to record (to any format, VHS, HDD or DVD) one channel and watch a different channel at the same time. Yes, while recording TV you can watch an already-recorded medium (on VHS, HDD or DVD), but nothing live. This is especially odd as this machine boasts two TV tuners, one digital, one analogue. So what's the point if you can't use both simultaneously? (Of course while the machine's recording from a TV channel you can primitively switch your TV onto it's own (non-video) channel, but in the case of our old TV that's not good quality... And why should I have to find this poor solution with such a nice new video machine?)

My 2nd slight disappointment is I'm sure not unique to this brand or model, but I guess it's a similar story with any modern DVD recorders. One reason we wanted a VCR player and DVD recorder combi was to transfer a few of our much-loved well-played old video tapes onto DVD. Is this"pirating"?? Perhaps, but so be it; purely for our own personal use, before the (irreplaceable) video tapes finally snap. But even trying to dub from some VHS tapes the machine pipes up"copyright material - though shalt not copy". I dunno, these new-fangled machines are too smart for their own good sometimes...

These gripes aside, this is a super video recorder for a great price, and no qualms at all about choosing it.

Dissapointing

This is truly a great DVD recorder (the best). The problem I have is that I have cable.If you have cable or sky, you watch it all the time. This is not suitable if you have cable or sky. If you want to record from your virgin(ntl) box you have to watch that channel! Worst than that, if records all the things you do, like turn up the volume will show up on screen when you play back. I have had this for ages and all i use it for is to watch DVDs. This is great if you you just watch freeview, and even then you have to make sure your TV has freeview so you can record one channel while watching the other (otherwise you need a set top box!). This should have two freeview tuners to make things easier. The manual is not helpful during setting up. This could truly be great if it worked better with cable and sky. I'm in the process of selling mine. I hope someone will have better use out of it than me. And before any one says," why don't you get the V+ box, or sky+ box? Yes these do exactly all the things I wanted this to do. The only problem is, if you cancel your subscription, you lose all your data! Also I was hoping for a one box solution that would store all my music (great feature by the way) and films as well as being a great DVD player. Very disappointing. This doesn't fit into modern TV. Sky+ and The V+ box are the way forward. Come on Sony catch up!

optical cable

GREAT CABLE,QUICK SERVICE, ARRIVED JUST A COUPLE OF DAYS AFTER ORDERING WOULD USE THE COMPANY AGAIN

Great DVD player at a bargin price

Was looking for a DVD player to replace a nasty cheapo Currys one that refused to play burnt DVD's, ended up buying this Tosh SD270 and i have to say its a great little player.

As i haven't yet succumbed to the"posh telly" influences on the high street the lack of HDMI port didn't affect my decision, it has component connections if and when i do require something to upscale to 720p/1080i (don't worry, i don't really understand that last bit either)

To get this machine to perform as a multi region player simply follow the following instructions

The Hack Procedure:
- Power On
- Open Tray
- Press 9879 0 (0 stands for Multiregion, you may press buttons 1 to 6 to choose a specific region)
- A Message appears stating that"The Reg.No was changed to: [insert whatever region (0-6) you selected here]"

That's all, now you can watch every DVD you please... :)

All in all, for £30Toshiba SD280E - DVD Player ish delivered within 3 days, i refuse to grumble, it looks nice, has played everything i've tried including some DivX stuff burnt straight from my PC, and all in all i'm a very happy bunny

Now if someone could help me find a 32" LCD for around £100 i'll be even happier

good budget machine

having had to return my first player to amazon for a faulty remote i diddnt hold out much hope for this player but ive been pleasantly surprised on my second unit, ive just updated to profile 2.0 which was really easy to do and i must say picture quality is stunning , i played cars and was blown away , indiana jones and iron man were excellent quality also , sure u could play extra for a sony machine but really if this does the job why bother !

Fantastic player

I can confirm that Michael Foskett is correct - this unit does play any DVD from around the world right out of the box without putting in any codes. Picture on my 720p Samsung is stunning.

I recommend increasing the brightness and the contrast in the setup menu of the DVD player itself, and then not doing much to your TV video settings (except increase contrast of course). This will help enhance the blacks on your screen. Again- picture looks amazing. You can also set the upscaling resolution from the setup menu to 720p or 1080p so the picture is optimised for your HDTV.

From my bed about 2 meters away, I'd be hard pressed telling the difference between this and Blu-Ray.

Smart, Small and Stylish

This DVD player is pretty good. I was looking for one just the right size and bought because of a lack of options rather than selective comparison. I couldn't find any 'compact' DVD players worthy of being connected to my Bravia 32" - other than this that is. I have not experienced the line at the bottom of the screen which other reviewers have mentioned and I cannot vouch for the multi-region capability because I have no need for it.

One interesting feature of this player is that when connected via a HDMI cable (I have ont used any other connections so cannot say whether this is true of all cable connections) if you navigate away from your DVD AV channel with the DVD on pause, the player will stop the DVD - saving your position so pressing play will be like doing it from pause - instead of leaving the disc indefinitly spinning until you come back.

Overall this DVD player catered for all my needs. It is small enough to fit on a shelf away from my wall mounted TV - using a longer HDMI cable this will free up more space. The resolution has convinced me to wait until Blue Ray is much cheaper.

I have chosen 4 Stars only becuase I have not pushed it to its full extent; i.e, the multi-region setup or different format support which it claims to have.

Great piece of hardware.

mandy from cornwall

very pleased with the review it helped me make my choice to buy, ths will be very good for my husband as we will be going on 12 hour flight thankyou to everyone.
mandy from cornwall

Another top quality budget DVD recorder from Panasonic - you might want a hard drive as well though

Available in this all black or as silver/black, this is the third Panasonic DVD recorder I have owned. Disappointingly my Panasonic E55 DVD recorder has just packed up after recording a thousand or so DVDs over two years for the family, so I purchased this similar model. Until it packed in, the E55 recorder was incredibly reliable at recording DVDs though. So I bought this Panasonic model as a replacement. This EZ28EB multi-format recorder works with DVD-RAM and DVD -/+ R/RWs and even dual layer [although these are still too expensive to be worthwhile using]. Only DVD-RAM offers full editing and the great time-slip/chase-play [sky+ type] feature - i.e. watch the recording from the beginning while the DVD is still recording the end of the program. The unit can't replay hi-def blue-ray or the now defunct HD format film DVDs. This DVD recorder can upscale standard DVD video to 1080 line HD TV but our TV is 4:3 PAL so we get no benefit. Likewise if you own a compatible Panasonic [HDAVI Control 3] TV, the TV remote can instant record and do other clever stuff via the VIERA link. Our TV is Sony and not VIERA compatible - although the DVD remote can still usefully control this TVs volume and channel number.

The player has a FreeView digital tuner built in, and we can record from a Sky box or another Digibox via the recorders AV1 and AV2 scart inputs as well [we use two nifty Vivanco SBX-94SE scart switching boxes]. The recorder Freeview can display the full FreeView program guide for all channels and the setup does a better job of ordering stations than my old Nokia FreeView box - however the FreeView program guide is nowhere as good as Skys. It does allow one-button auto-setup of the record timer for any selected program though. FreeView picture quality is typically excellent with a decent signal/aerial. There's also a standard analogue-in phono/S-video socket [AV3] on the front for your video or digital camera, and L+R audio-out phonos for the hi-fi [a video/audio three phono lead and RF coax cable is supplied with the recorder]. DVD output to TV is only via scart [or HDMI cable or 'progressive' component-out cables], there's no RF out for the TV via the co-ax aerial cable. There's a 4pin DV-IN port for video cameras - looks like a mini-firewire.

Picture & sound quality is very good at SP, but we always record in LP as this gives 4 rather than 2 hours recording time on a 4Gb DVD. If the source is top quality, LP mode is pretty good although you can detect a slight degradation in signal if you really look for it [but generally you never notice it]. Even EP [at 8 hours per DVD] isn't that bad for sound and image on our hi-black 21" 4:3 screen TV, particularly for the kids cartoons or programs you aren't keeping long on re-recordable DVD-RAM/RWs. There's also flexible record [FR] to fit the recording into the space left on the DVD [if there's room]. Push the front panel record button repeatedly and you can set an instant record time from 30 minutes to 4 hours, plus there's standard timed record for when you are out [up to 8 programs].

The DVD remote [batteries supplied] is a joy to use and you can actually read all the buttons, although I far preferred our older Panasonic remotes black lettering on silver and the addition of FreeView adds to the remotes complexity. In fact it's now a bit of a convoluted pain using the remote to do simple things like view or delete recorded programs from an unfinalised DVD [that used to be a couple of obvious button pushes on my old style remotes]. However recording DVD-Rs is very very reliable, although you can't use the time-slip function or edit the recording if you over-run. Once finalised, the DVD-R can be replayed on any DVD player/PC [some DVD recorders can't even replay their own recorded DVD-Rs - not so with a Panasonic DVD recorder]. To put a bookmark in a DVD-R you have to press stop and then record again, otherwise if you record an entire DVD in one go you will have to use `search' [1x to 32x play] to slowly move forward through the DVD-R. If you record say ten programs separately on a DVD-R, the finalised DVD-R menu will then have ten tracks on the DVD menu to select from [and jump between]. Expensive but very useful re-writable DVD-RAM offers lots more editing options - but you'd probably just record over the program rather than bother using these, particularly as DVD-RAM can only ever replay on a Panasonic DVD recorder [they can't be 'finalised'].

The recorder can replay PC MP3s & jpgs but only from DVD-Rs or CDs. Replay quality from film DVDs is superb [on our 21" screen] although the recorder is strictly region 2 only. However we have a large collection of region 1 NTSC DVDs of American shows [that you simply can't buy in the UK]. Fortunately you can convert this DVD recorder to play region free using a special infra-red command remote - we got one for under £15 from eBay, after which this Panasonic recorder will now replay Region 1 NTSC and Region 2 PAL DVDs - this has no effect on DVD TV recordings [which are in effect region free], just the playback of legal region encoded commercial DVDs. Our deceased Panasonic DVD recorder was region free and I do wonder if that had anything to do with it's demise [this model takes longer to switch off now it's region free] - more likely though the daily use for the kids just wore it out.

The only major downside of this DVD recorder is that it doesn't offer a hard drive for TV recording. We don't need this as we already have a [Region 2] Panasonic DMR-E85H with a 160Gb hard drive attached to the same TV [each Panasonic remote can be programmed to only operate one Panasonic DVD recorder]. We want to be able to record two channels at once or play back a DVD on one while recording on another. A hard drive is well worth having if you don't want to keep recordings, but just record, view and re-record over. Plus the hard drive starts recording almost instantly compared to the 20 second wait you get when sliding in a DVD-R. That said DVD-RAM offers similar capabilities to a hard drive, although with only 4 hours [LP] recording time rather than well over 100 hours with a hard drive. Have a look at the 160Gb hard drive equipped [£220] Panasonic DMR-EX768 if interested, that's identical to this 28EB model but with the 160Gb hard drive recording from 70 [SP], 140 [LP] to 279 [EP] hours of TV - adequate for most people. The hard drive allows you to watch one program while recording another [time-slip]. Another downside is that there's no zoom for letterbox films or DIVx support [the latter comes with more expensive models that also offer larger hard drive sizes]. Plus the DVD top menu colour is always the same blue [our more expensive hard drive model offers different menu colour schemes] and the kids get fed up with the same colour main menu each time on hundreds of DVDs. It is also 10cm deeper than my old models and the new DVD tray is far flimsier than theirs [this tray can take DVD-RAM cartridges]. Otherwise a great, reliable TV DVD recorder going for the price of few commercial DVDs.

Great Bang for the Buck

The DVD and VCR that this replaced (from 6-10 years old) cost four times as much and yet this is superior to them both. I can't beleive that some expected a DVD Recorder was included at this price...give it a few more years at least, however the descriptions for the v6800 do vary depending which site is visited. The VCR definately has 6 heads and not 4. The DVD can become multi-region with the hack descibed by others on Amazon. If like me your TV only accepts Progressive Scan in NTSC format the DVD player won't output a PAL disc in NTSC format. NTSC encoded disks work fine. I didn't have any issue with the remote either although the dubious unbranded batteries could have caused that issue.

wow

i have just bought the tz315r , and put it with my 1080 tv , upscaling is superb, sound is fantastic ( did worry the neighbour , they thought we were having another earthquake ). easy to install and best price around from amazon , currys sell it for 279.99.. recommend it highly..

Multi-region??

So far, I've no complaints with the DVD/Video combo. It's pretty easy to use, and produces decent quality pictures on my 37" HDTV. It does take a painfully long time to change drive from video to DVD and vice-versa, but I can live with that, I guess.

Anyway, does anyone know a multi-region hack for the DVD?? Thanks.