Toshiba D-R4 Multi-Drive DVD Recorder
Nice machine, but get ready for disc errors
I agree with everything good said about this machine. I also had bought a Panasonic which I returned when I learned that there was no zoom and no \\"time remaining\\" feature, two things which I use constantly with my old player. This machine makes nice recordings and has some cool features and a lot of options. But my experience has been one of getting a disc error of some sort maybe every third time I try to use it. Not \\"fatal\\" errors, just terribly inconvenient ones. I tried to schedule one recording of a TV show while I was out. Uh-uh. Disc Error. Missed program. Just moments ago I spent maybe 20 tedious minutes setting up thumbnails and titles for the menu of a recording I just made, only to lose them all to \\"Disc Error\\". These are clearly just some kind of random, transient disc errors because all I usually have to do is exit the setup menu, or turn it off and back on, or at worst take the disc out and put it back in again, and it works fine. But as I've found, by this time you've either missed your program or lost all the custom menu settings you've laboriously worked on. I should point out that the Panasonic I briefly had also had disc error problems, so maybe all these DVD recorders have this problem. Most of these errors happened on brand new DVD-R discs which were carefully handled, but one also happened on a DVD-RAM disc which I had used a few times. I did a full format on it which took an hour and it hasn't happened since. They recommend buying discs that are housed in cartridges, but I can just imagine the price of those, if I could even find them in the store. <br />It's a great gadget, and I'm making nice recordings on it, but I'm keeping the VCR to record any shows I absolutely have to see, because I can't count on this thing. And I'll probably never again waste my time setting up menus because I usually lose them to disc errors.