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Reviews (3)
16 May, 2018
Good depending on your location
1 of 1 found this helpful I have always loved Panasonic and when buying a place in the south of France I thought of no better way to make sure I missed none of my favourite UK programmes than by buying the Freesat version of the Freeview Blu Ray player/recorder I had already.
Well Panasonic stopped making these units back in 2010 because they say "other Freesat recorders have come onto the market". Well no other machine plays Blu Rays and allows you to archive favourite films and programmes onto Blu ray to watch later. This was/is the only one on the market to allow you to do that.
Imagine my disappointment to discover the tuners are pretty weak and find it hard at times to find the HD channels signal. So instead of all the HD channels I can get in the UK, limited I know, but still, in the south of France I can only get BBC1HD and 2HD, C5HD, and sometimes, if I'm lucky, BBC4HD. ITV HD has never tuned in properly, and C4HD has been removed from the Freesat platform, so though I can get the SD versions, when you're an HD lover like me, you don't want to watch things in SD.
The Freesat platform does give me superb quality HD pictures from Russia, Japan and Korea, but I'm really not interested in their programmes!
Fortunately French TV is far ahead of the UK in technical terms and offers 26 HD channels. Even their SD channels look better than those from the UK.
A shame that Panasonic have dropped the ball on this as I'm certain their machine had they updated it would have been unbeatable. As it is it is the only choice for someone like me, and as I love the kind of programmes BBC4HD shows it is frustrating to watch something with the image breaking up or disappearing.
16 Aug, 2017
Old and slow but good
0 of 1 found this helpful it is a great shame Panasonic stopped making these machines as the technology is already quite old, surpassed by the technology they now have on Freeplay Blu Ray recorders that work using an aerial for terrestrial broadcasts.
Everything is slightly different to the terrestrial version, even the position of buttons on the remote, and many things take a long time to kick in. Also frustratingly, there is no automatic chapter marking so one has to do that oneself after the programme is recorded. Of course being satellite it also suffers from sudden loss of picture due to weather conditions, and ITV HD has proved impossible to get where I now live, or rather I can see it but it breaks up an awful lot, or freezes. This is due to the weakness of the tuner compared to other satellite boxes like the Humax, or even Sky + HD, and this is probably a result of the age of the box now. Hopefully it will last for some time, as it is the only machine available now one can use to record and archive UK Freeplay television onto Blu Ray from satellite. I surely cant be the only one wanting to archive programmes onto Blu Ray!
31 Aug, 2016
Engrossing real life drama
1 of 1 found this helpful I saw this in 3D in the cinema and was completely caught up in the drama of the mid sea rescue in a terrible storm of sailors on a tanker. Why Disney has not released it in 3D everywhere is ridiculous, as it is very well done, taking you right onto the tiny vessel sent into the storm to perform a miracle. While the romantic aspect is a bit sugary Chris Pine carries it off. Visually stunning, and an exciting narrative make it well worth it.