Toshiba RD-XS54 DVD Recorder with 250 GB Hard Drive
Close, but no cigar
I had purchased a Toshiba RD-XS52 DVD recorder 8 months ago from Amazon and was quite happy with it's performance. When the XS54 came out, I purchased one right away as a second home DVD recorder because of three features:   (1) The 250 GB hard drive vs. the XS52's 160 GB drive  (2) The RAM/-RW/-R write cabability (the XS52 only does RAM & -R)  (3) The new ethernet/networking capability    After getting one of the first XS54 units from Amazon, I quickly discovered a few flaws in the XS54 that caused me to send it back:  (A) The cooling fan runs ALL THE TIME, even when the unit is turned off (i.e.; in standby mode). I had heard about this flaw with the RD-XS32 and XS34, but my trusty XS52 does NOT do this- the fan goes off when you turn off the unit. Admittedly, the cooling fan is fairly quiet, but when you place this recorder in a bedroom or other place where you want/need complete quiet at times, I personally found the noise it made to be very annoying. Not to mention the fact that the expected life of the fan (a three-wire low speed/high speed affair and undoubtedly pricey) has to be relatively short when it is running 24/7. To be fair, if you have this unit buried in an entertainment unit with doors, you might not even notice the noise the fan makes. I called the Toshiba service hotline concerning this 'always-on' fan design, but all the the customer service drone on the other end could tell me was that the fan was 'always on to keep the hard drive cool'. This excuse for an always-on cooling fan is completely bogus- I verified that power is removed from the hard drive when the recorder is turned 'off' (i.e.; placed in standby mode) and thus requires no 'cooling.'   (B) The built-in TV Guide channel selection software is clunky, clumsy and difficult to navigate through. And that's being polite. Contrary to other reports that I have seen on this feature in the XS34, you CAN bypass the TV Guide selection feature- but they sure don't make it easy to do so. I'll takethe straightforward, easy to program, non-TV Guide process of the XS52 any day.  (c) In the admittedly short time that I had the unit, I could NOT get it to communicate with my G5 IMAC, even though the user manual says that it should interface with either Microsoft or Apple software. The computer-to-recorder setup process described in the manual is poorly written and unbelieveably complex and confusing.    Addenda:  I see that an \\"A. Guest\\" wrote a reiew on this unit and gave it a 5-star rating BEFORE HE EVEN RECEIVED OR USED ONE. Give me a break. Read Thambi's second opinion on this unit if you have not already done so. He and I speak (and rate) from our hands-on experience with an XS54, not from 'glowing reviews' in a magazine or from self-serving spec sheets put out by Toshiba. You're not in Kansas anymore, Toto.  P.S.- Learn to spell and capitalize words correctly and you might be taken more seriously.