Toshiba RD-XS35 DVD Player/Recorder with 160 GB Hard Drive
Better than I hoped for
Wanted to buy a hard drive based DVD recorder last year, but saw so many bad reviews of most brands/units that I decided to wait.  I bought a low end Toshiba recorder (D-R4) and have been happy with it.  Thus I decided to try this new model without benefit of reviews.  Had it a couple of weeks and I have to say I'm impressed.  I have experienced no problems.  The menu system is similar to my D-R4 so it was quick for me to learn.  The TV Guide took two days for 1st download, but has been perfect since (have Charter Cable). Have recorded to HD from TV Guide and burned to DVD; copied existing DVD to HD, edited and burned new DVD; and copied programs from two existing DVD's to HD, changed bit rate to fit them both on one DVD (unit calculated new bit rate for me automatically).  Editing out commercials on the HD is very straight forward.  High speed dubbing will burn a football game to DVD in about 10 minutes.<br /><br />In short, it has done everything I bought it to do flawlessly.  The only reason I didn't give it five stars was the pain of reorganizing the TV Guide Channels after the 1st download to match our cable box order and the copy protection on HBO, VCR tapes (that I'd like to archive to DVD), etc.  Of course I know that they pretty much have to implement the copy protection, but I don't like it anyway.