Toshiba D-R4 Multi-Drive DVD Recorder
Great Feature Set but Finalizing DVD-rs
I bought this because it plays WMAs, has Chase Play, and seemed a good price. Although I never had had much trouble learning to use a VCR, and this was my first DVD Recorder, (I have wanted one for years), this manual is impossible.  Some of the instructions are in fact, wrong. It gives a picture that you can just use a coax cable instead of composite cable or component cables. It says if the disk does not work tghen format it, but says nothing about how do do this at all. You have to follow the onsceen instructions which seem to vary in an inconsistent manner. (Placing a ram disk in upside down did not help things).<br /><br />  After struggling with this unit for a long time, I finally got it to work. They do not list the feature set very well. I knew it had a tuner--something the Panasonic does not have. I knew it had Chase Play--something the Samsung and others do not.  I did not know it had 30 second skip..something dropped on the newer Pioneer Unit with the hard drive.  The Pioneer model without the hard drive dropped Chase Play. It also scans up to 500 lines, something that is made a big deal about in the promotions for the Panasonic.<br /><br />The Toshiba is the only unit, as far as I know, of all the units, Tivo or non-Tivo, that has both Chase Play and Pause Live TV.  One of the Lite-on Units sold at Cost-Co came with Pause Live Tv, and I believe it is only available elsewhere on Tivo, which is an unnecessary expense.<br /><br />  I do not have pay cable movies,  so recording movies from there is not a problem, but I think that really should be expected. This is how studios make their money.  I had no problem recording on any disks, but the RAm disks are not exactly easy to find. They did not carry them where I bought the unit, and 4 out of 5 electronics stores did not carry them. The last one I went to had one pack of 10 Panasonic 1-3 times and six indivual packs of these of a quantity of 1.  Needless to say to find the Double 9.8 Gb units, you probably have to go online.<br /><br />  I was SO frustrated with this unit, I bid and won a Pioneer 220.  At least I know this unit will finalize a Disk.  I have not tried that yet, but I supposed since so many people posted about this, it must be true.  But I intend to use this unit to use the Pause and Chase Play features, so I have another unit to finalize disks.<br /><br />  I really like the Pioneer 520H unit, but these are impossible to find.  They dropped out several of the best features in the new units. Tovhiba has a D-5 with HD listed on its website, but as of mid March 2003, it seems not to be available. They also have an a unit that has HD and 250 GB, and an even newer model as well, in addition to their new 499 dollar unit that is coming out soon (Or is out) that uses the new HD disc format.<br /><br />  I imagine some problems will be resolved with these units. I hope they write better manuals. This manual is really terrible, and I am quite used to reading manuals. What makes it worse, of course, is the onscreen menus are also confusing, at least to me.<br /><br />  Of course, I have a very old tv, and this must be reset to Video 000 every time I use I jump back and forth.  I hope to program the TV into this Toshiba remote, but it may not be possible because of the age of the TV.  My next purchase will be a Toshiba HD TV CRT, so I hope some of these issues go away.o online. <br />    I was SO frustrated with this unit, I bid and won a Pioneer 220.  At least I know this unit will finalize a Disk.  I have not tried that yet, but I supposed since so many people posted about this, it must be true.  But I intend to use this unit to use the Pause and Chase Play features, so I have another unit to finalize disks.   <br />  I really like the Pioneer 520H unit, but these are impossible to find.  They dropped out several of the best features in the new units. Tovhiba has a D-5 with HD listed on its website, but as of mid March 2003, it seems not to be available. They also have an a unit that has HD and 250 GB, and an even newer model as well, in addition to their new 499 dollar unit that is coming out soon (Or is out) that uses the new HD disc format.  <br />  I imagine some problems will be resolved with these units. I hope they write better manuals. This manual is really terrible, and I am quite used to reading manuals. What makes it worse, of course, is the onscreen menus are also confusing, at least to me.  <br />  Of course, I have a very old tv, and this must be reset to Video 000 every time I use I jump back and forth.  I hope to program the TV into this Toshiba remote, but it may not be possible because of the age of the TV.  My next purchase will be a Toshiba HD TV CRT, so I hope some of these issues go away. <br /> <br />