The Panasonic DMR-XW300 is a DVD recorder with an integrated 250GB hard drive and dual HD tuners. While it is somewhat versatile and has a robust range of features, it also suffers from a handful of frustrating limitations.
To use the unit effectively, very specific criteria must be met with respect to the recording media, recording mode and even how you connect the unit to the television. DVD playback showed a few image quality flaws as well, but nothing too severe.
Made of glossy black plastic, the front is certainly attractive but at the same time looks much like any other DVD player on the market. The rear has RF in and out as well as HDMI and Component connections. There are also two Composite and two S-Video ports as well as digital audio and SCART connectors (for European televisions). The front of the unit has SD card and USB ports for media playback and additional Composite, S-Video and firewire inputs for copying video to the Hard Drive from a video camera or supported device.
We ran a slew of tests, recording HD and SD television and copying to various media types. We also looked at the quality of DVD playback after recording as well as playback of retail DVD movies. On the whole, it performed quite well, with a few caveats.
In order to display HD television, the unit is limited to a HDMI connection. Even though Component should have the bandwidth to display 1080i broadcasts, on the DMR-XW300, it is limited to a maximum of 576i.While we can understand Composite and S-Video not supporting HDTV, the fact that Component can’t is very odd. Simply put, if you don’t have HDMI and you want to watch HDTV, this is not the unit for you.
The 250GB hard drive can hold about 36 hours of HD television or 66 hours in SD but there are also compressed file types that can extend that to over 440 hours of TV, albeit with reduced image quality and with stereo sound. Only HDTV can be recorded with original audio intact.
