Toshiba D-VR3 DVD Recorder/VCR Combination

Rating:
Summary: Awesome !
Review: Have owned this unit for a week now and have copied several VHS tapes to DVD format using the Fuji DVD-R 4.7 GB discs. Very impressed with this machine. It is very easy to use. Just put your tape in the VCR side and your blank disc in the other and push one button and your off !! Bought for $313.00 at another web merchant so check prices before ordering. This unit can be had for less !!! The unit autmatically adjusts the tape tracking to copy the best image over to the DVD. THe discs come out very very good. I won't repeat what the other reviewer said about the units functionality as I agree with those statements. Overall a great machine for the money.

Rating:
Summary: A Good DVD Recorder with One Little Flaw!
Review: I got this Toshiba DVD recorder for a birthday present and it is a DVD player/recorder/VCR combo and I like that I can take our old homemade family video tapes and copy them to DVD and I have also copied some old made for television movies and Christmas specials from video to DVD and I have gotten quality recordings each time I have made a copy to DVD disc and I'm happy about that but for some reason you can only pause a recording if you are recording a TV show or movie directly from the channel to DVD but when you are making a Dubbing copy of a video to DVD or DVD to video you can't edit it or pause the recording so I have to take a point off for that but all in all I'm pretty satisfied. This Toshiba model uses 3 types of discs, DVD-Ram which is nice and lets you rerecord over it but unfortunately this doesn't work on alot of DVD players and I have found that they will not play on or Samsung and Go.Video DVD players and will only play on this Toshiba DVD Recorder. The second type of discs you can record with on this recorder is DVD-R and I have found that these will play on the Samsung and GoVideo DVD players and I will for now on be using DVD-R Discs instead. I know that DVD-R discs can't be recorded on again once the discs have been finalized but most of the things I record are things I want to keep anyway so I have no problems with this type of discs because I can play them on our other DVD players. The third type of disc that can be used is DVD-RW which I haven't tried yet but If I saw some in a store I would buy them to try out. I almost forgot to mention that this DVD recorder VCR combo is very user friendly, it's so easy to use and you don't have to be an electronics expert to understand how to operate it and the remote is very good too and it's not too big or too small and the number and function buttons are big and easy to see! Another thing that is nice about this DVD Recorder/VCR is that it doesn't need a computer to work, all you have to do is hook it up to your TV just like you were setting up a regular VCR! Just make sure you buy discs that are compatible with it, some stores will not take back a package of discs that has been opened. Update: January 7, 2005: I have mainly used this to record onto DVD but have since also watched prerecorded store bought movies and TV shows on DVD and everything played flawlessy with no skipping, freezing or any other annoying problems which always happened on my old glitchy DVD player so upgrading from that to this was great!

Rating:
Summary: Lemon - i hope...
Review: I have been very disappointed with this machine. It has major problems recording to -RW discs, namely:

Machine freezes frequently during recording and can only be 'unfrozen' by unplugging the appliance at the mains. When you do this, you then have to go thru the lengthy process of setting up the machine again - tuning in channels, setting the time etc - very frustrating.

Frequent disc errors. Will not record becuase machine claims the disc is not formatted, when it has been formatted

Sometimes the machine stops recording mid-way thru a show for no apparent reason (ie - there is sufficient room on the disc, so you only get half of the show you recorded.)

Has problems deleting recorded material; claims that the show is deleted, but when you power off and power on again, sure enuff the supposedly 'deleted' show is still on the disc.

I have worked with TDK and Sony -rw discs - problems with both. The other issue is that it is very difficult to find -rw discs in stores. There is an abundance of +rw discs out there and this is certainly something I would consider if I were to purchase today.

One other issue is the amount of time it takes to 'load' discs, and to format them - around 2 minutes. It also takes around 1 minute to process after finishing a recording.

I think I will need to return my machine to Toshiba, as I have problems with it around 50% of the time I use it to record in rw format.