Panasonic DMR-ES35V does a good job

I used an earlier version of the Panasonic while visiting my parents (30?), and a friend of mine had the same one and got stellar results.

Since I had a stack of tapes I wanted to transfer, I bought the ES35V. Also, I figured that VHS tapes are rapidly going the way of the horse-and-buggy, so being able to record TV to a DVD seemed like a good idea.

It produces good to excellent images (via a RF cable connection - I have not tried the S-Video or component connections) makes glorious copies, and once set, is reasonably easy to use.

It seemed to me to be a bit complex at times - maybe it's just "growing pains" - once you work with the menu's a bit, things get better. It might be a bit much for the tecnho-phobe though.

Pluses:
(1) It will record on just about everything except a warm pancake. It doesn't appear to be picky about media or speed.

(2) It supports DVD-RAM. DVD-RAM is like a DVD-RW, without any of the disadvantages, since once formatted, you can use it repeatedly without the looooong erase cycles that RW media requires. The down-side to DVD-RAM is that they may be difficult to share with your friends, unless their player also supports DVD-RAM.

(3) The recordings, once made, are quite good, even if done in the less-than-stellar resolutions. I had inadvertently done a tape-to-DVD transfer using the "8-hour" DVD mode, and the image was still quite viewable - though it suffered from a bit of pixelation. (which did not surprise me)

Some of the tapes I transferred were not the best recordings possible, however the transfer process appeared to "sharpen" up the image nicely compared to other tape-to-DVD copies I've seen.

(4) If you're primarily interested in the tape-to-DVD (or DVD-to-tape) feature, this is made especially easy via a front-panel control that allows you to pop in the tape and DVD, press a button or two, and you're copying like crazy!

(5) It has a front-panel fire-wire jack (behind a door) to make it easy to copy from your digital cam-corder to more permanent media.

My only objections are:

(1) The EV35 requires the user to "format" +R DVD media prior to use, which previous models did not require.

(2) Despite being able to play and record on just about every media type out there, it *cannot* play back AVI files which is disapointing since many - cheaper by a factor of 3 or 4 - DVD players nowadays can play AVI files natively.

Conclusion:
Overall, a solid player that (once mastered) is reasonably easy to use. It requires the user to format +R/RAM media, and does not support AVI playback. If you seldom use +R media, and if you don't really care about AVI's, this is a hot smokin' weapon!

Since +R media is one of the more popular media types, the extra "format" step required for it might be a bit of a pain.