Panasonic DMR-EX78 - Dodgy or bad luck?

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Following some sound advice on this forum I went ahead and bought a Pana TH42PX80B and have been more than happy with it but also got the digtal DVD recorder as well (DMR EX78) due to the VIERA connectivity and the 5 star rating it got.

However when viewing telly through the recorder most channels distorted badly so it went back and was confirmed faulty. There is no problem with the signal I am getting as the TV is fine and an engineer has confirmed this too. So I bought another (from a different website this time) and whilst it is nowhere near as bad, on some channels it does distort.

Is it bad luck that I have had 2 units with this problem? Or something more sinister?

Any thoughts out there?

 

[Anonymous]

Probably not too helpful .... but ..... I have a Panasonic EX77 which produces an incredible Freeview picture in my dodgy Freeview area. The recordings are equally sharp and I have also never had aany problems burning to DVD. I would imagine it is bad luck given my experience. I'm certainly not aware of any other reports along the lines of yours

Regards, P

 

[Anonymous]

I too have the DMR-EX78 and I would say check your aerial.

I have a couple of panny flat screens and they worked fine on the existing aerial. Then I got the DVD recorder and could barely tune a quarter of the channels. some MUX were just not there at all. Others were horribly pixillated. I changed it for another one at Richer Sound with exactly the same problem showing itself on the replacement unit.

I too got an aerial expert out and his first pronouncement was that the signal was fine as his meter said so. I more or less forced him to fit a new wideband aerial and new cable and bingo the DVD player worked fine. It's tuner is, simply put, not as good as the ones in the TV's.

You might find that your TV picture is also affected if you have the DVD player switched on and are using the aerial pass thru on the DVD. I had the aerial engineer check the signal in this configuration and it gave the clue that all was not well. Freeview can be a pain to tune compared to the old analogue signals.