Posted by Clem Dye on 04/10/06 18:30

I've recently purchased a Panasonic DMR-ES20D Freeview DVD recorder. For
a cheapie (it's just been discontinued) I'm quite impressed with it for
the price that I paid, perhaps not at the original asking price. Anyway,
there seems to be a 'funny' if I listen to DVDs (pre-recorded or made on
the recorder) if I listen via the optical out connection from the
player. As soon as I hit the play button there's a very pronounced
digital 'pop' through my amplifier's speakers. It doesn't occur once the
disc is playing though.

It's a bit painful - if you watch something you've recorded from a
commercial channel you hear the damned pop once you hit play after
skipping forward; on pre-recorded DVDs you get a series of pops whilst
the player navigates through the menu selections and so forth.

I can get round the problem 99% of the time by using my amplifier's
remote to mute the sound, but it's a bit hit'n'miss. The problem doesn't
occur at all if I listen to stuff via scart through my TV or if I use
the player's analogue audio out sockets. Unfortunately, that doesn't
help if you want to listen to something with 5.1 audio - you have to use
the optical connection - there's no co-ax socket on the player that I
could try instead.

I know that the optical cable is fine - I've used it before, but I
suppose it could just as easily be my amp's single optical input as much
as the optical out from the recorder.

Has anyone who has one of these players experienced anything similar? If
it's a design issue I can live with it, but if it's duff then I need to
get it swapped-out for something that works, or a refund.

I'm limited by virtue of the fact that my amplifier has only one optical
input, and the recorder is the only device that I have that has optical
out, so testing is somewhat difficult.

Any help/ideas/suggestions would be greatly appreciated.


Clem

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