Having grown weary of dragging my home video collection (which is very important to me) all over the place, and knowing that my wife and I both enjoy making films, we decided that we'd like to get a DVD recorder. The first one that we got was a piece of junk from Samsung (I normally like Samsung, but not this time) which I got rid of immediatly, and replaced with this one from Panasonic. I was not at all disappointed.

The DMR-ES15S is a fantastic, very easy to use DVD recorder. It is extremely versatile as far as what kind of media it will accept: DVD-RAM, DVD-R/RW and DVD+R/RW as well as other types of media. Most of the menus and functions are very self-explanatory, but if you do need the instruction manual it's laid our very nicely. The S-Video and DV inputs in the front of this unit (as well as the standard AV inputs) are very convinient and make this unit very user-friendly.

In the month or so that we've had the unit I've already recorded about 30 DVDs,... Read more

...after scouring several online audio/video discussion boards like AVS Forum, I chose this player for its acclaimed reliability, ease of use, and compatibility. Almost a year later and over 200 recorded DVDs later, I am happy to say that it has not disappointed me in the least.

I have had zero problems with playback on dozens of other people's DVD players and computers, and a grand total of 2 coasters (only with the cheapie Phillips brand DVDs, none with the Taiyo Yuden blank DVDs which were also an online-discussion-board word-of-mouth selection).

Three caveats:

1. Panasonic is known for making outstanding bang-for-the-buck mass products, but their user manuals have never been very well written as say, Sony's manuals (if only Sony's price/performance ratio were anywhere as good, unfortunately). So read and reread it as you go along, many things are not very clearly explained but quickly become clear after a little trial and error. For instance,... Read more

After weeks of research I purchased the Panasonic DMR-ES15S DVD Recorder last February, but came very close to throwing it into the trash shortly afterwards. This compact machine is full of fantastic features and I was extremely pleased with it for awhile. I even bought a Panasonic DVD-S52S DVD Player to use in another room with the DVD disks I hoped to make with the recorder. I was committed to moving from the old VHS tape recording technology to the more contemporary DVD equipment.

I used the proprietary DVD-RAM disks to schedule/record TV shows from my cable service for their versatility and advantages over the more common DVD-RW and DVD+RW disks for recording. This was a "no brainer" choice of recording media since the Panasonic DVD system offers so many advantages when using DVD-RAM disks and they can be used over and over thousands of times. I bought a dozen of them even though the recorder can handle a wide variety of other disk formats.

Eventually I... Read more