DVD Recorder - Is Panasonic good or not ?
 

Why, Panasonic is not good?
To register in CBR?

Panasonic DVD recorders are riddled with quality problems. These have included:

Early age models (2002-2004):

• AC3 files that go out of sync when edited in many MPEG editors. (Not fully compliant?)
• Half D1 encodes are very blocky, for no reason other than the encoder chipset sucked. (Based on equally crappy Panasonic software encoder of the time?)
• Luma is off, sometimes giving you a muddy green-tinted images.
• The black level is not correct. The earliest models had awful over-brightness issues, in addition to IRE issues.
• Even in SP mode, the video quality is noisy, with mosquito noise (pre-blocking artifacts)
• XP mode bitrate spikes exceed DVD-Video specs, discs refuse to play in some players.

Mid age models (2005-2006):

• There is not enough bitrate past SP mode, models stupidly insist on 720x480 recording, giving you noisy and blocky encodes
• Even in SP mode, the video quality is noisy, with mosquito noise (pre-blocking artifacts)

Late age models (2007-2010):

• Same issues as mid-age models, plus some build quality issues.

All current DVD recorders use either CVBR or VBR -- mostly VBR.

Some early off-brand models (Centrios, Cyberhome) used CBR, but that was ages ago. Most of those machines have long since died and disappeared. I seem to recall a model of Pioneer being CBR, too -- but that was 5+ years ago. (It would have been discussed in a thread in this forum, if my memory is correct.)