I almost didn't but this unit because of bad reviews and that it is more expensive that most recorders. Fortunately, I was able to get the unit for $179 at a local retailer who was willing to match Amazon's price. The bad reviews caused me to buy several units, bring them home and test them. I bought the Toshiba D-R560 and the Philips HDD Recorder. I didn't try the Sony because I couldn't find one with the Divx feature. I didn't try any with VHS features because those where more expensive and I don't own any VHS tapes. The Toshiba's recording function was nice. It was quick to respond and easy to use. Unfortunately, I could never get the Toshiba unit to find channels with the digital tuner over my basic Comcast service. It found zero digital channels. This was disappointing because I looked forward to using the Toshiba's QAM tuner to find clear cable channels.

The one thing that I wanted that was missing on the Toshiba was a USB port. The Philips HDD recorder has a USB... Read more

I got the Panasonic DMR-EZ28K for two main purposes: to watch standard DVDs, and to record Digital Over-the-air broadcasts. As would be expected, the EZ28 does a fine job of playing DVDs, so I won't say any more about that.

As a recorder for OTA broadcasts, 3 things seem to matter: How good is the ATSC tuner? How reliable/easy are recordings? What is the quality of the recordings?

As far as the tuner goes, I couldn't be more pleased. The EZ28 easily has the best tuner of any device I own. I have a 5 year old Panasonic Plasma TV, a 4 year old Sony HD DVR, a 2 year old Viewsonic LCD TV, and a 1 year old Panasonic EZ17 DVD recorder. Only the EZ28 can reliably lock the one fairly low power, distant station that I get off the *back* side of my antenna. The EZ28 also reliably locks a very low power "oldies" station from the correct direction that none of the other devices will lock. Clearly, the EZ28 has a superior tuner, even compared to last year's EZ17. (I... Read more

The DMR-EZ28K is my second DVD recorder from Panasonic. My other DVD recorder is a DMR-E55 that my wife and I have used on a daily basis for over four years without experiencing any problems. We bought this second recorder to use with the television set in our bedroom. When I read some of the reviews on the DMR-EZ28K I was concerned about the freezing problem. I read reviews about other recorders and they all seemed to suffer from some type of problem, so I decided to go with the Panasonic since I was familiar with how to use it and I had no problems with our other Panasonic recorder. Well, the first week after I purchased the DMR-EZ28K I began to experience the freezing problem when using RAM discs. I had no problems with any other types of discs. The problem was so bad that I considered returning the machine. But before returning it I decided to try reformatting the RAM discs using the new DVD recorder. After I reformatted the RAM discs using the new recorder I have not had... Read more