Panasonic DMR-PWT550EB Blu-Ray Player and HDD Recorder with Freeview Play, Black

Product Information

There’s also RF in and RF out terminals to connect your Digital TV aerial and for taking the signal to other devices, respectively; the PWT550 is also dual-band Wi-Fi capable. The twin TV receivers mean that one TV channel can be watched while another is being recorded or tow channels can be recorded.

The recordings to the Hard Drive are really good, and the upscaling can be seen on my UHD TV with super clear video picture. In the unlikely event that you should run out of space then a separate USB-equipped hard drive can be connected up by USB and data transferred from one to the other.The DMR-PWT550 is a terrific machine in many ways, particularly its generous feature list, solid Freeview/Blu-ray picture quality and foolproof operation. As per the PWT655EB, Demand 5 is also missing from the roster of catch-up apps when it is available on Panasonic’s dedicated PVR boxes. With Protect Plus for your blu-ray player, you'll get 2 years of protection against accidental damage alongside your guarantee. We reserve the right to refuse installation should our engineers think that the existing electrical or plumbing points are unsafe and in need of maintenance or if they are unable to install to existing furniture.

Panasonic has been using this design for a while and it’s admittedly easy to follow – but hardly screams “cutting-edge”.To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. The DMR-PWT550 is styled mostly in black metal but the drop-down, frosted flap at the front is plastic and conceals a tray disc-loading mechanism and is transparent where the display panel resides.

You are also unable to change any settings while a recording is taking place and using the EPG when watching a previously recorded event sees you placed back in to live TV upon exit; it’s sometimes useful to be able to see what’s coming on later or schedule another recording while watching one so we’d like to see this addressed also. There are some nice new technical features, iPlayer, connecting to other devices etc but the implementation of the user interface is terrible. Barring some of the cheap ‘n’ nasty TVs that might employ low quality scalers, we don’t think this particular feature of the PWT550 will bring all that much benefit to users.No deposit required up front, pay the balance in full before the end of the 6-month period and there is no interest to pay whatsoever. Blu-ray discs load quickly and the Quick Start mode means you don’t have to wait long for the deck to boot up. In addition to upscaling Blu-ray data to 4K, whose image resolution is four times that of the usual HD format with much more detail, texture, clarity and depth, it lets you record 4K content* onto its built-in HDD and view 4K video by USB connection. Also, seeing as the new TVs use the Firefox OS why did they not implement that into these devices or even give as a proper software upgrade to use the new Firefox OS.

You can’t jump pages either – to scroll through the EPG quickly, you have to hold down the direction pad keys, which isn’t only inaccurate but also takes ages to reach the HD channels. Some items may have minor marks (there will be no marks on Laptops/TV's/Monitor screens), consistent with light usage and handling. You can also use the DMR-PWT550 to stream media from other DLNA devices, including MPEG, MP4, AVCHD, XviD, MKV, JPEG, AAC, FLAC, LPCM, MP3, OGG, WMA and WAV files.What's more, with a 500GB built-in hard drive you can record up to 258 hours of programmes in SD or 129 hours of HD TV. Shadow detail and contrast are right on the money, giving the movie the epic, filmic quality it deserves. You receive these TV/radio signals from your aerial via equipment that has the Freeview digital tuners built inside like TVs and set-top boxes.