Toshiba DR420 DVD, Perfect replacement for a..
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Perfect replacement for a VCR (plus good upconverting DVD player)
This unit is really great! We recently got a 40″ HD TV and needed a replacement for the VCR — we wanted to record shows (and On-Demand movies) at a good enough quality for HD viewing.
One option was DVR from Comcast for $10/month (which might or might not allow recording of On-Demand movies and transfer to computer for disc-burning). Another option was using a computer with a video acquisition device and record to hard drive. The third option was this unit for $110, delivered, from Amazon — hands down the most practical choice.
Though this unit doesn’t record in true HD resolution, the quality is about the same (in 2 hour mode, 16×9) as regular 16×9 enhanced DVDs. At first I was worried the recorded discs might not play on other DVD players; but they did, no problem at all on any of our equipment (that is, after the recording is finalized). The recording time for a DVD-R disc (on high quality mode) was 2 hours and 8 minutes. (On lower quality modes, it’s 4+ hours and 8+ hours.)
Navigating the menu system is easy enough, and each recorded disk is given a simple menu with the various recordings available to choose from (which by default have the date & time of recording as the title, but can be renamed).
Upconversion of commercial DVDs is quite good (enough so that we’re not that motivated to get a Blu-Ray player yet ;-).
Our only complaints (which are very minor) are that the tray-eject is a little slow & noisy and that there isn’t component video inputs (just composite video & S-Video inputs). But it was easy enough to hook up to our cable box (or TV) to record from their outputs.
This will be a great unit to have until Blu-Ray recorders become less expensive.
Update (2/9/2012): This item is currently on sale here for the lowest price I’ve seen. I also found some auctions for this item here.
The featured review for this product, Toshiba DR420 DVD Recorder, Black Electronics, was written by DEREK MCCARTHY.
The average rating for this item is out of 5 stars, according to 3 reviews.
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Tags: 1080p, 480, component, defect, dvd burner, dvd recorder, dvd recorders, dvr recorder, electronics, hdmi, toshiba recorder, tuner, tunerless dvd recorder, upconverting dvd player, vcr replacement, vhs to dvd
Posted on: April 2, 2010
Filed under: Reviews
Reviews (3)
Michael A. Mccormick
February 25th, 2010 at 12:45 am
Great price and performance
I bought this unit after reveiwing other brands on the Amazon web pages. I wanted to copy from Tivi to DVD.Nice owners guide and physical looks. The tray opens just like other players with a little noise, no big deal! It does take awhile to finallize your dvd copys but, no big deal. Component out only,no cable terninals,no tuner. the recording light on the front is real tiny.On screen menu is good. For my use this recorder is perfect.
DEREK MCCARTHY
March 9th, 2010 at 1:32 pm
Perfect replacement for a VCR (plus good upconverting DVD player)
Rated 5 stars.
Ulf Axmacher
March 21st, 2010 at 11:05 am
Works perfectly
I bought this unit to transfer videotapes to DVD, and to save TV shows on DVD from my cable DVR. For that purpose, it works perfectly. The setup is simple, and the controls are very easy to use. The manual is very clear, with nice big pictures to show you where the relevant buttons are. I had it set up and dubbing within 15 minutes.
I only use DVD-R format discs (due to their universal compatibility), so I cannot comment on how the recorder works with other formats. But when I played back my recorded DVD-R on other machines, I had no compatibility issues, they played perfectly, and the picture was sharp and clear.
DVD-R discs have to be “finalized” before they can be played in other machines. This unit finalized a 3/4 full DVD in just a couple minutes- much faster than other DVD recorders I have used in the past.
The recorder only offers Composite and S-video inputs. It would have been nice to have Component or HDMI inputs as well for higher quality. However, I used the S-Video input and the playback quality was still excellent.
The recorder does offer Composite, S-Video, Component, and HDMI outputs, which gives you lots of options for connecting to your display. I went with the HDMI connection because it is simple (just 1 cable for both audio and video) and provides the highest quality.
As a bonus, this unit is also a very good upscaling DVD player. With the HDMI connection to my display, I was very impressed with the quality of the 1080p upscaled image.
For the very reasonable price ([...]), this is a nice piece of equipment which performs as advertised.
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