Sony RDR-VX560 1080p Tunerless DVD Recorder/VHS Combo Player Review

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(More customer reviews)Finally, a DVD Recorder and VHS combination unit that allows you to view DVD and your old VHS through your HDMI connection. That's right, you read that correctly. One of the biggest drawbacks of earlier upscaling machines from a variety of manufacturers was that you STILL had to use primitive S or RCA cables to output VHS images onto your HDTV.
Like many folks, I still have a large collection of movies on VHS (for some films, it remains the only version in print), but I was not going to buy another VCR unless I could really view them on my Samsung HDTV. Some VCRs connect with component cables, but cost as much (if not more) than this combo unit, which is so feature laden that I'm glad I waited.
The upconversion is very impressive so far for both DVD and factory VHS releases (lets face it, grainy home recorded VHS copies of TV programs will never look sharp at 1080p, so keep that in mind) and the controls are no more complicated than the average machine (which, may in itself be a problem for some already).
I have yet to fully utilize all the features, including the use of my Sony HD digital camera or camcorder, but those were secondary parts of the purchase. For me, the fact that I can now view my VHS library (and non-Blue Ray DVD library) on my HDTV through HDMI with such impressive image quality is more than enough to satisfy me.
If you are in the market for a combo unit to use with your HDTV, then this may finally be what you and I have been waiting for. Stellar product.
Why 4 stars? Well, I've only had the product a week, so it is too early to throw a 5th star onto the score, but it certainly merits 4 right out of the box.

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Sony's new DVD Recorder/VCR - Just what your cable box ordered. Save your favorite TV shows, archive old VHS tapes, even burn photos and personal video from Sony USB based camcorders and digital cameras The RDR-VX560 brings the ability to record your content to DVD to your living room. Do you have old VHS tapes lying around? Well, now you can save space and make them last by burning them onto a DVD. The RDR-VX560 brings ease of use with One Touch dubbing from VHS to DVD, or even from DVD to VHS. It couldn't be simpler.

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Panasonic DMP-BD50K 1080p Blu-Ray Disc Player Review

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(More customer reviews)OK so I am one of the many who were waiting for this player for one big reason. I have expensive audio components and didn't want to replace them just to get HDMI input for True HD and DTS Master Audio. Now that I own it I can positively confirm that this player decodes both of the Hi-Def audio formats internally and sends them to the analog outputs... and OH MY what a huge difference over AC-3 or DTS!! The most noticeable thing is the ambient sound that is lost in compression. Watched 5th Element last night and the beginning of the movie starts with this echoing reverberation during the credits. In AC3 it sounds like an echo, but in TrueHD it's all filled in with a very deep sound field and detailed ambient sound. The overall impression is sound that is much fuller and balanced. It also has a nice feature called Dialog Enhancer which bumps the volume of dialog in soundtracks so you can hear the dialog when listning at low volume levels (so your spouse can sleep...feelin' me?). In 2 words - Worth it!
Next the features and a bonus for older Mitsu owners. I have a Mitsubishi WD-62628 1080P DLP TV. This unit was one of the first 1080P TV's made. They did not have the video processing capability at the time to take a 1080P input. So it's max input on the main HDMI connector or component video is 1080i and the TV upconverts to 1080P. This has left owners of this family of TV's with a quandary in that they want to see movies from their Blu-Ray player in 1080P not 1080i. There have been rumors that you can use the HDMI-2 input for native 1080P input if you tell the TV that a computer is connected. Well I can confirm that this actually works just fine !! You set the Net Command to enable HDMI-2 and that a PC is what is on that input. Disable the audio part (if you are going to use the analog outputs from the Panny like me) and then tell the blu-ray player to output at 1080P (rather than auto-detect). The TV will momentarily display a message that the video signal is non-standard, but will then display it anyway. So I get HD audio and 1080P video with my older TV and non-HDMI audio processor!! Bonus #2 is that this Panny player also has picture controls for brightness, contrast, gamma, color, and black level so you can tweak the picture if necessary. It also has canned settings (normal, cinema and 2 others). I find that movies look best in Cinema. It deepens the color and seems to provide better color spectrum.
I hope this answers the questions for a bunch of you that are still sitting on the wall. This one finally does it all, A/V wise. I have not hooked it up to the LAN yet for BD-Live functions. That was not a big part of my plan for this but will happen shortly.
Happy viewing!
Post Review Note: One thing I have discovered is that the picture controls on the BD50 don't offer as much adjustment as the controls on a TV. The straight 1080P input is a little on the bright side. I found that the BD50 will not enable 1080i component video and HDMI at the same time, it's one or the other. Once you turn on HDMI, it drops the component video to standard def no matter what you set it on. This means I can't look at upconverted 1080i (via component video) with full picture controls vs 1080p on HDMI-2 with the minimal controls offered by the BD50 without stopping the movie and re-starting it... Jury is still out on this one.

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The DMP-BD50 is Panasonics third generation Blu-ray disc player. Blu-ray media offers a wide range of functions that foster the transition to HD including 1080p image quality, lossless Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio and versatile Picture-in-Picture applications. The DMP-BD50 adds the new BD-Live function, which uses the internet to further enhance your entertainment experience by allowing you to download additional contents and share the information with other BD-Live users. In the future, BD-Live will allow users to connect the DMP-BD50 to the internet to download such data as images and subtitles, and to join in multi-player interactive games that are linked to bonus movie content contained in Blu-ray discs.

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