Rating: 
Summary: Toshiba has lousy customer service
Review: I purchased this unit in May and was pleased as punch until July when it ate my DVD. Since the unit was only 2 months old, I was not happy about having to pay the shipping to return it to them so I held my ground and had to wait a day for a supervisor to return my call and he very begrudingly agreed to issue a pick up tag for it. Sent the bad one back, got the replacement and less than a month later, it bit the dust. Different problem this time. Live TV kept breaking up and then the screen would freeze. This time I wanted my money back. No can do. They promised me my unit would be repaired and fully tested and returned to me within 48 hours. I shipped it on 9/15 and today is 10/1 and no box. I just called customer service and was told that it will take about 3 (more) business days just to get me an answer about the status. I suggested a big technology company like that might be able to do a tad better than that, especially considering I have gotten TWO bad products from them, but NO CAN DO.
I have spoken to 4 different cust service reps there, including a supervisor and have gotten an identical mantra from each and every one of them: You are not our only customer. (how special i feel, indeed) We have millions of customers and we have a system. The "system" does not allow any deviation. Customer service cannot make an outbound call to the service depot to check on my repair. I suggested he give ME the phone number so I can call them. NO CAN DO (of course). Understand that this machine costs a few bucks. It takes a good hour to go through the set up. Twice I have done that. Twice I have lost everything I have recorded. Twice I have had to unplug everything and ship it back. The only thing I can figure that I did wrong was buy from Toshiba, but they treat me like I'm the one that screwed up.
I don't know, maybe it's just me. I own a little business and my goal is to exceed customers' expectations. If customers do have a problem, I consider it an opportunity to prove what customer service is all about. Toshiba has made it pretty clear that I'm a drop in the bucket to them and I'm sure I am. But I am a consumer and since the internet gives me a voice, I'm using it to say I will not buy Toshiba again and want as many other consumers as possible to hear me. I also want Toshiba to hear me, if anyone there cares. One additional note: I did ask Amazon for help, but to no avail.
Rating: 
Summary: Better TiVo than TiVo!!
Review: I wanted something for my wife and me to better manage our TV viewing, yet I'm completely against paying a monthly-fee for recording TV programs. The Toshiba SD-H400 with TiVo Basic turned out to be a perfect product for us, until Media Center PCs go mainstream.I didn't really need another DVD player at home (we already have 5 other stand-alone DVD players), but if that's the only way to get TiVo Basic service, so be it. Plus, the price I paid for this Toshiba (no rebate) is only (a bit) more than a stand-alone Series 2 TiVo (after rebate). For (the money), I got a progressive-scan DVD player, progressive output for TiVo, AND free life-time subscription to TiVo Basic service. What a bargain. TiVo Basic Service:
Okay, so I don't get the Season Pass feature. However, once you're set to record a show (say, Friends at 8PM this Thursday), you can navigate to the To-Do list and select that program, and change the recording option to "Repeat this recording". Change it to weekly, then you're all set. The only risk if that if NBC changes the time of Friends to 9 due to say the State of the Union Address, then you'll record 30 minutes worth of a bunch of people clapping at nothing. But that's a risk I'm willing to take. One feature I don't get with the Basic service is the show search feature. However, we got the TiVo to help with managing the shows that we KNOW we want to watch. With young children, we really don't have time to watch the programs that we didn't want to watch in the first place but are suggested to us. So I won't miss that feature. For new movies we have had Netflix 4-disc service since 2000. You can always navigate using the program guide to set up recording if you want to watch something. If you visit TiVo forums such as tivocommunity.com, you'll see that other TiVo owners complaining about the fact that you can no longer use TiVo Series 2 for anything, including manual recording, without paying the (monthly) fee. With the Toshiba SD-H400, not only you can use it for manual recording, you have a 3-day program guide available to you over the phone or wireless network. If the Plus features are important to you, then you can always upgrade to the full TiVo feature for the same fee as a stand-alone Series 2. It goes without saying that we have no intention of upgrading. To get program guide via wireless network:
My Toshiba came with version 5.1.1 of the TiVo software, but version 5.1.1b is required for the newer version of the Linksys USB Wireless Adapter (v 2.8). It took a few tries to download the new version of the TiVo software. It would have done it over night, but I was impatient and wanted to pull the sw manually. Note that landline is required to get the software upgrade. To record one channel while watching another:
I can watch a different channel than the one I'm recording because I split my cable signal so that one cable goes to the Toshiba and one goes to the TV. While recording on the Toshiba, I can use the regular TV remote to switch to other channels. Any cons?
Remote: The Toshiba remote is not as nicely designed as that of the TiVo, which had just been recognized by the NY Times as one piece of industrial design mastery. The Toshiba remote is long and hard to use if you change channel via numeral buttons often. Wireless adapter: Since the TiVo software it comes with is version 5.1.1, it does not support the newer versions of the Linksys USB wireless adapter (I got a v. 2.8). You will need a landline to download a new TiVo software to upgrade to version 5.1.1b for the Toshiba to recognize your network adapter. Video extraction or copying: Like the stand-alone TiVo Series 2, there is no easy way of extracting the recorded video from the Toshiba device without opening it up (voiding the warranty) and load some files onto the base Linux operating system. The only other way is to video capture (analog cable to digital to analog to digital again) it back into a PC. Not the most elegant solution. Upgrade: according to TiVo specialists at Weaknees, it's not simple to upgrade the HD on the Toshiba. You can replace the 80G HD with a larger one, but it will not see beyond the first 80G. Weaknees is working on a solution.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Product: Good Blend of Value and Function
Review: I've had it for about a week and did not have any problems setting the system up. I was able to sign into the Tivo service quickly and am in the processing of connecting it into the wireless network and removing the phone lines. For those who would like to simplfy their electronic gadgets for their TV, this is an excellent product. I was able to free up a DVD player for another TV in the house.
Rating:
Summary: The coolest gadget I've ever bought!
Review: I've had the SD-H400 for about four months. Great device! I bought this unit because I needed a new DVD player anyway and I liked being able to streamline the number of components I had to store around the TV. I've had no problems at all with the unit. It does make some quiet running noises all the time because like all TiVo units it has a hard drive that is always on. I can't really hear any fan noises at all. I do have the unit in a glass enclosed cabinet so that muffles most of the sound. If you were to keep this unit out in the open and in your bedroom, the running sound might be bothersome at night. My only concern is that if the DVD were to break you would be out the whole unit. So, if having multiple components and cables doesn't bother you, buying a straight TiVo unit and a separate DVD player might be a better idea.(...)
Rating: 
Summary: Great as Tivo, not as a DVD player.
Review: If you're looking for an inexpensive Tivo box with all the features, then this product does a great job. If you're lucky, you can find it for as little as $100 after a mail in rebate. The only real problem with this box comes when you try to use the DVD player. It is, apparently, very hit or miss. The unit I purchased worked decently for about a week, and then it would freeze when it reached the second layer of any DVD. A few weeks later, it stopped reading any type of disc other than a DVD, even non-CD-R cd's. Toshiba's customer service was no help - unplugging it for two minutes is not going to help. Now my Tivo is somewhere in Alabama and I'm back to watching commercials while I wait for it to come back...
Rating:
Summary: Great Unit
Review: It's obvious from his post that neil_d is quite disappointed and upset . . . but with respect to image quality and noise, I think he's unfairly slamming the unit and probably scaring folks into not purchasing what may be a great choice for their needs. I find the recorded image quality outstanding. I suspect that the poor image quality he's getting might have somthing to do with the quality of his cable system's signal. Why? Not being a big TV watcher and being "allergic to recurring monthly fees", I'd never been a cable subscriber. I muddled along with rabbit ears. Then I purchased the SDH400 and a terrific new Toshiba Cinema Series TV (27AF53). I decided to ditch the rabbit ears and get cable for local channel reception only. The cable man came and did his install but at the time of installation, he did not have the "trap" or "signal filter" with him to block out the cable channels that were not included in my monthly fee. For one week I had full cable service (excluding premium channels like Showtime, Cinemax etc). While the cable only channel reception was good, local channel reception through cable was not impressive - whether through the DVD Tivo or directly through the TV. All in all though, things weren't bad until . . . The cable man returned a week later and put the "signal filter" on the cable line. The image quality degraded slightly on ALL channels (local & cable only) when watch directly through the TV. When watched directly through the DVD Tivo - the image quality was HORRIBLE. The cable man came back, removed the filter . . . and miracle of miracles, things looked good through the TIVO once again. He put the filter back on and it was horrible once again. BOTTOM LINE: The cable company, despite lots of effort, could NOT deliver acceptable image quality to me when the "signal traps" were in place -- either through the TV or through the DVD Tivo. Heck, they could barely deliver acceptable image quality without the "signal traps." So . . . I canceled cable and mounted an antenna on my roof. I now have the crystal clear quality that I expected of cable and it's impossible to tell whether I'm watching through the TV or the DVD Tivo unit. And I assure you, having worked in the field of image quality for 20 years for the world's leading imaging company, I'm extremely sensitive to and fussy about image quality. Now, had I wanted to keep cable, I would have been forced to return the DVD Tivo unit. BUT I certainly wouldn't have placed the blame on the DVD Tivo unit for poor image quality. That blame rests squarely with Time Warner . . . garbage signal in = garbage signal out. As for the complaints some have made about noise . . . I honestly can barely hear it. It's the quietest hard drive based device I've NEVER heard. :-) The way some have described it on here you'd think it made such a racket it rattled the windows! What drama!! Anyway, while it may not be the perfect choice for everyone for a variety of reasons, it's not cheaply made . . . nor does it warrant a place in the trash heap. I've found it to be great a unit that does what it says it does and does it well.
Rating:
Summary: Great product for the money
Review: Let me start this review by saying that I ran across this item at a QVC Outlet store and it was EXTREMELY inexpensive - about $70. I had never had TiVo before so I figured for that price - "what the hell?" That said, since then I've added another Series2 TiVo to my home and just love TiVo...
The Good:
- I've seen other reviews of this product that criticize the remote, but I really like it. It is fairly large, but the layout of the nav and select buttons is very intuitive. That said, there are about 20 buttons that I never use.
- TiVo in general, rules. Not so much specific to this product, but I, like numerous others before me, agree that "TiVo will change your life". The days of scheduling time home for your own "must see TV" are over - watch it when you have time, skip the filler and commercials!
- Wireless TiVo (Home Media Option) is excellent - I had NO PROBLEMS getting this set up on my wireless network (unlike some other reviewers). One key is to follow TiVo's recommendation for wireless adapters TO THE LETTER. Plain-jane USB wireless adapters won't work - buy one of the recommended models. Once set up, you can stream music from your PC and view your digital pictures through the TiVo, two excellent features.
- My unit has worked flawlessly since I got it - no freezes, crashes or other problems.
The Bad:
- I'm really irritated by the DVD copy protection setup on this unit. If you want to watch a DVD, you can't have a VCR inline or the Macrovision copy protection is triggered, brightening and darkening the screen to deter taping of DVD's. Problem is, there's a good chance you might want to tape some shows from your TiVo, which means you need to jury-rig a setup to work around this nasty little problem. It's kind of moronic, which is typical of the Movie industry.
- Switching from TiVo mode to DVD mode takes too long.
- It's a fairly large unit, depthwise, and you may want to measure your cabinets before purchase. Mine was slightly too shallow and I needed to get the drill out for "modifications" in order to make it fit.
- This is one of the few TiVo models that has "Basic TiVo" built-in. Admittedly, Basic TiVo is an extremely hobbled version of the full TiVo service, but if you don't want to spend the money each month, this can be a nice feature. In addition, it gives you time to get used to the TiVo and its main functions before setting up the full service.
All in all, I'm very, very satisfied with the product and service.
Rating:
Summary: Mostly good
Review: My TV cabinet didn't have much room for extra components, so a new Tivo unit was going to be a tight squeeze. That's where the Toshiba DVD/Tivo (or as a friend coined, DVDivo) unit comes in. The DVDivo solves this problem by being rather small and by replacing my existing DVD player. Not counting the mandatory rewiring of the video and audio cables, the install was mostly a piece of cake. You first setup and configure the box with the phone line (a handy 25' phone cable is included.) That took about 30 minutes. After that, the Tivo was supposed to recognize my Linksys network adapter. It didn't. I had to reconnect with the phone line and spend another 90 minutes downloading (are we there yet?) the 5.1b Tivo software update. After that, the wireless worked A-OK.
During all this update time I could, of course, still watch and pause live TV. On the downside, I'll admit that the unit is a little noisy. If I'm cruising the Tivo menus without the TV audio on, I do notice the sound of the hard drive actuators softly clicking away. I'm not sure if that noise is specific to the Toshiba design. If so, then I figure it's just a trade-off for having such a small footprint. It's not a major problem for me. Besides any audiophile will already have this issue "covered" with glass component doors. The other item to consider is the remote. Toshiba, I assume, had to stack extra button on their remote to support the DVD player. This remote works well, except for when you want to use the number buttons the change channels. The placement of these teeny-tiny number buttons (0-9 + Enter) at the bottom of the remote makes me occasionally use two hands to change channels. I hope my thumb gets used to it. Better yet, I hope that Tivo is so good that I'll never have to manually enter channel numbers again. Despite those two items, I'm very pleased with my purchase. Now all I have to do is decide between Basic and Plus Tivo service.
Rating:
Summary: Awesome, awesome, awesome, awesome!
Review: Okay, there's a lot of ignorance about this machine in these reviews, so I feel the need to comment. This is my second Tivo, and I am an avowed audio-phile. Do I own $10K worth of AV equipment? No, but then, I do know that you don't have to buy the priciest product from the priciest brand to experience exceptional quality. First, this is not a simple "home video" compnonent. It is actually a Small Form Factor (SFF) Linux computer, with hard-drive, modem, processor, and RAM. Hence, it does have a fan, as do all computers except that one model of Apple G3 (or was it 4?). As such, it does not ever "power off" completely (nor do most "home video" components). It will often run in the middle of the night, for 2 reasons: first, it is recording shows based on the "Tivo Recommends" function; second, it will generally make its daily call in the middle of the night when you are unlikely to need to use the phone. If you don't want it to be whirring its drives in the middle of the night, turn off the Tivo Recommends feature and you will free yourself from all but about 30 minutes of activity. You can also upgrade to a LAN or WLAN connection to make those daily calls all the faster. Or, like I do, put it in a glass doored entertainment center. I barely hear mine in the dead of night, and it certainly doesn't keep me up in the next room. If you are OCD, maybe you should consider no Tivo at all: they all do it! As for a noisy DVD player: huh? Even with the glass doors open I can't hear the player running during DVD playback. I'm not sure what some people want from a player, I guess. I mean, a silent tray? Or maybe a DVD drive that can change tracks on the disc (like when it accesses the menu) without repositioning the laser? I mean, come on. That's just silly. Also, the LAN features on this model do indeed work wonderfully, but no, not right out of the box: you are REQUIRED to make at least one initial phone call. This model registers itself for the Tivo Basic service and downloads the operating system's most recent updates. Please also note that since October, when the review concerning "wireless and broadband not ready for prime time" was posted, Tivo has corrected the compatibility problems with the Linksys WUSB11. You could also use the WUSB12, or several models from Dlink and Netgear that are known to work appropriately. (...) It is a pain that you need to buy an adapter, but I imagine that this model with native WiFi or ethernet would cost an additional $50-$100: less than the price of the adapter, so its probably a wash. But note: if you don't know how to set up a wireless or wired home network, or don't already have one, well, at best you're going to need help with using the Tivo on a LAN. It's still a computer, and you still need to manually adjust some settings. Just get your techy neighbor/son/daughter/nephew/cousin to help. Please also note that you do not need to get the Home Media Otion upgrade in order to put the unit on your LAN and take advantage of your broadband internet connection. That is only for sharing information between Tivos and computers on the LAN. Which brings us to money. Yes, its expensive. But there are considerations you need to make. First, if you're like me, you already own at least one DVD player. Which you will no longer need. There's a great website for getting rid of high quality, used items. It rhymes with "see-bay." So there's a little less out of pocket. (...) And lastly, once you cancel that Premium service and rely on the basic service, you are saving yourself $155 a year in subscription fees over other Tivo devices. This is indeed the only model of Tivo currently available that offers free service. You can't use other Series2 Tivo's without service anymore, as you could with Series1 DVRs. So if you want Tivo, and you want to buy new, you've got to pay - manual recording is no longer supported. Unless you buy this Toshiba! Next, picture quality. I have noticed no loss in picture quality at all for live TV since I got this unit, on a 35 inch CRT television. If you follow the correct setup instructions (mine is connected separately to a VCR and AV receiver) and use quality cables, your experience should be no different. I also find that, while the Best Quality setting is indistinguishable from live TV, the High Quality setting is more than clear enough for my needs, and gives the unit 35+ hours of total useable space (as opposed to 24+ using the Best setting). I really, really, really recommend this unit if you're in the market for Tivo. If you're "just curious," maybe give it a shot. Personally, its the best value out there.
Rating:
Summary: Some problems
Review: Overall, a good device, but some caveats: 1). For some reason, you cannot play DTS-encoded audio CD's on this unit. I called Toshiba, and they say this isn't supported. There is no problem with DTS-encoded DVD's, however. 2). General TIVO comment: TIVO does not allow a dual input setup using cable directly and a cable box (it does allow the combination of a satellite and analog cable). This is a strange restriction. This configuration is useful under a number of scenarios, especially when the cable box channel switching is unreliable. ReplayTV supports this feature well.
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