Toshiba RD-XS54 DVD Recorder with 250 GB Hard Drive
A Great Recorder!
Toshiba RD-XS54 DVD Recorder with 250 GB Hard Drive <br />I wasn't sure that I would like this recorder after reading some   of the reviews. And I was concerned that my cable company wouldn't provide the TV Guide. I called my cable provider, which is the Charter Cable serving St. Louis County, Missouri. Two calls brought negative results - the \\"customer service\\" people never heard of the TV Guide and said that it wasn't available, even after supposedly checking with someone familiar with Charter's programming content. <br />I took a chance anyway and ordered the recorder. Two days after hookup I had 8 days of programming information, free of charge!  <br />The free TV Guide is one of the many features that make this machine a great performer. Yes, you can manually schedule recordings. Yes, you can easily edit the commercials out of movies and produce great DVDs. Complete with menus, thumbmails and chapter titles that you choose and select. No, the 'always on' fan is not too loud. I cannot hear it until I am 2 feet in front of it. They must have replaced the supposedly noisy fan with a whisper fan. <br />Since I have had it for a short period of time, I haven't tried all of the features, such as remote programming. Check this out: <br /> You can connect the RD-XS54 to your LAN router and program the recorder anywhere in the world via Internet. Have I done this yet? No. Am I going to? You better believe it. <br />I suppose the manual could use an index, but I was able to navigate quite nicely using the contents. When Toshiba provides a pdf version of the manual like they did with their earlier models (hint, hint, Toshiba), you could easily search for anything. <br />In summary, this recorder has everything I want and is great to use.