David Ranada

Some readers shy away from the "in the lab" boxes in our test reports, probably because it's hard to judge what represents desirable performance if you don't have a lot of experience with the kinds of figures we publish.

At a glance, you'd probably think that Panasonic's $1,000 DMR-HS2 looks pretty much like every other DVD recorder out there-including the Panasonic DMR-E30 that I reviewed just last month. But the DMR-HS2's chassis carries clues that something more is going on here.

Wouldn't it be great if you could just go out and buy the surround sound music titles you're interested in without having to worry about whether they're on DVD-Audio or Super Audio CD (SACD)?

The players are in position, and the pieces are now on the board. But this is not a chess game, and the stakes are even higher than in the richest of Grand Master tournaments. This is the beginning of another video-recorder format war, but unlike the VHS vs. Beta conflict of the late 1970s and early '80s, there are three competing formats.