Customer Reviews

Toshiba DVR3 DVD Recorder/VCR Combination

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

I had been wanting a DVD recorder for a long time, ever since I heard them on the Discovery Channel and I am so glad that that I saved up and bought this Toshiba DVD recorder, I like the DVD recorder and I like that it also has a VCR. I am sorry but I am very heavily disagreeing with the previous review that says this DVD recorder is hard too use, When I was shopping for a DVD recorder and I said I wanted one that was easy to use the sales guy told me that out of all the brands they were selling this was the easiest to use, the most user friendly and after having used this and taped over 100 movies that I taped off of cable movie channels I agree with him 100 percent This is so easy to use and the remote and its buttons is large enough for me and the movies I've taped on DVD's look great! You have to remember that you aren't going to get the picture quality that you would get with professionaly made DVD's that you buy with programs already on it and the quality is only going to be as good as your TV, cable or satelite reception. I have noticed that some blank DVD's work better than others, I prefer Memorex the picture always looks great while other brands I tried were bad. One guy said that his unit froze and I admit that happened to me once but it was because I had hit the wrong button but in my experience if you hit the DVD or vcr function keys then it starts working right and you don't need to reset the clock or channel memory. Also you must realize that sometimes you may put in a blank DVD that turns out to be a defective dud and a lot of times when the blank DVD fails people seem to automatically assume it was the recorder unit itself that failed and they don't stop to think that perhaps it was the blank DVD that failed and then they return the unit and bad mouth it without realizing that it was the DVD that was defective or that they themselves just did something wrong! I personally find this Toshiba DVD recorder with the VCR to be of the higest quality and I have no qualms about recommending it and if I could I would buy more of these for other rooms! Of course with any item like this it is possible to get a unit that is defective but my DVD recorder unit is not defective at all.

Have owned this unit for a week now and have copied several VHS tapes to DVD format using the Fuji DVD-R 4.7 GB discs. Very impressed with this machine. It is very easy to use. Just put your tape in the VCR side and your blank disc in the other and push one button and your off !! Bought for $313.00 at another web merchant so check prices before ordering. This unit can be had for less !!! The unit autmatically adjusts the tape tracking to copy the best image over to the DVD. THe discs come out very very good. I won't repeat what the other reviewer said about the units functionality as I agree with those statements. Overall a great machine for the money.

I agree with what the other reviewer people said about this product.

Its a great DVD recorder and I want to say that I agree that its a bummer that you cant make pause edits while using the dubbing features on this unit but if you hook up another Video recorder or DVD recorder you can pause things and its kind of a pain to have to get the dubbing cables and hook up another unit but if you have a tape that needs editing this is what you have to do. btw: You can only copy tapes or DVD that aren't copyright protected. If you try it you will learn that the DVD recorder or VCR will not copy anything copyright protected. I only copy stuff that is not copyrighted so I dont have any problems.

I purchased this recorder, so 1) I could move shows I've recorded on my Directv TIVO to more permanent storage on DVD, and 2) to copy my old VHS tapes to DVD. The unit fulfills both my objectives and I'm a happy camper. I've really not used the machine to its max. I've only used DVD-Rs so far, so cannot say much about whether it works with other formats that it should support.

I have been very disappointed with this machine. It has major problems recording to -RW discs, namely:

Machine freezes frequently during recording and can only be 'unfrozen' by unplugging the appliance at the mains. When you do this, you then have to go thru the lengthy process of setting up the machine again - tuning in channels, setting the time etc - very frustrating.

Frequent disc errors. Will not record becuase machine claims the disc is not formatted, when it has been formatted

Sometimes the machine stops recording mid-way thru a show for no apparent reason (ie - there is sufficient room on the disc, so you only get half of the show you recorded.)

Has problems deleting recorded material; claims that the show is deleted, but when you power off and power on again, sure enuff the supposedly 'deleted' show is still on the disc.

I have worked with TDK and Sony -rw discs - problems with both. The other issue is that it is very difficult to find -rw discs in stores. There is an abundance of +rw discs out there and this is certainly something I would consider if I were to purchase today.

One other issue is the amount of time it takes to 'load' discs, and to format them - around 2 minutes. It also takes around 1 minute to process after finishing a recording.

I think I will need to return my machine to Toshiba, as I have problems with it around 50% of the time I use it to record in rw format.

I chose this product because I have a recently-purchased large screen Toshiba TV and an older Toshiba VCR. Those products have been excellent in all respects. This product is very difficult to use, has a poorly-written and unhelpful user's guide, and has poor technical quality in several respects. The DVD recorder produces a mediocre picture. The VCR is very noisy. The remote control is the worst of any product I've owned. The buttons are tiny and the text is very hard to read. The electronic signal is poorly engineered and in general just refuses to work. There are many other problems. I would be glad to be rid of this machine so I could buy a better engineered DVD/VCR player (without the DVD recorder).

The Toshiba DVR3 is a great DVD recorder. Toshiba VCR's and DVD players have always worked great for me; they have been in working condition after years of use when I decided to upgrade and sell the old model. I purchased this DVD recorder/VCR for $139 from OneCall as a refurb which is a steal. The DVR3 is hard to find new any more as it has been replaced by the DVR4. However, the DVR4 does not have firewire input, like this model has. The DVR3 is packed with features, including firewire input from a camcorder, and other things you can read about in the specs. But it does have its flaws, none of which are deal breakers, but something to be aware of before you plop down your hard earned cash.

First, their is no S-Video input on the back. This was corrected in the DVR4 but I have my HDTV outputting via S-Video to the DVR3, so I need to always have my S-Video and audio cables connected in the front, which is a little unsightly. Recording HDTV via the S-Video produces a very nice picture, and it retains the 16:9 widescreen format and plays back as widescreen.

Another thing is the front display is nice and large, but I wish the display was not in the color orange but the more common neutral/blueish hue used by most electronics.

The remote is horrible! The range is terrible. I can get up to 12 feet where my couch is, but even then, it is spotty. Even at closer range it doesn't always work when you push a button. And the buttons are placed in non-logical places, unlike all my other Toshiba products. But fortunately a universal learning remote I own works well with the DVR3.

The manual lacks a lot of detail, like specifying when you hook up the S-Video out that that output will not work for the VCR but only the DVD player.

If you can find the DVR3, like I did, for under $140, I'd highly recommend it. That beats almost any DVD recorder price, plus this has a VCR and the backing of the Toshiba name. I rarely use a VCR but bought this unit as a DVD recorder and to play an occasional VCR tape, so I could get rid of two stand alone units. I plan to do some VCR to DVD dubbing in the near future.

Lastly, it is interesting that the menu system is different than previous Toshiba DVD players I have owned. The menu on this DVD recorder/VCR is very similar to a Samsung unit my workplace uses. In fact, in the Toshiba manual, one screen shot it shows the disc being recorder as having the name "Samsung disc."

I got this Toshiba DVD recorder last year for a birthday gift and it is a DVDplayer/recorder/VCR combo and I like that I can take our old homemade family video tapes and copy them to DVD and I have also copied some old made for television movies and Christmas specials from video to DVD and I have gotten quality recordings each time I have made a copy to DVD disc and I'm happy about that but for some reason you can only pause a recording if you are recording a TV show or movie directly from the channel to DVD but when you are making a Dubbing copy of a video to DVD or DVD to video you can't edit it or pause the recording so I have to take a point off for that but all in all I'm pretty satisfied. This Toshiba model uses 3 types of discs, DVD-Ram which is nice and lets you rerecord over it but unfortunately this doesn't work on alot of DVD players and I have found that they will not play on or Samsung and Go.Video DVD players and will only play on this Toshiba DVD Recorder. The second type of discs you can record with on this recorder is DVD-R and I have found that these will play on the Samsung and GoVideo DVD players and I will for now on be using DVD-R Discs instead. I know that DVD-R discs can't be recorded on again once the discs have been finalized but most of the things I record are things I want to keep anyway so I have no problems with this type of discs because I can play them on our other DVD players. The third type of disc that can be used is DVD-RW which I haven't tried yet but If I saw some in a store I would buy them to try out. I almost forgot to mention that this DVD recorder VCR combo is very user friendly, it's so easy to use and you don't have to be an electronics expert to understand how to operate it and the remote is very good too and it's not too big or too small and the number and function buttons are big and easy to see! Another thing that is nice about this DVD Recorder/VCR is that it doesn't need a computer to work, all you have to do is hook it up to your TV just like you were setting up a regular VCR! Just make sure you buy discs that are compatible with it, some stores will not take back a package of discs that has been opened. BTW: I have mainly used this to record onto DVD but have also watched prerecorded store bought movies and TV shows on DVD and everything played flawlessy with no skipping, freezing or any other annoying problems which always happened on my old glitchy DVD player so upgrading from that to this was great!

We got the unit, and it stopped working within 6 months.

Further investigastion showed that the high frequency switching power

supply (line condtioner with NO transformers) was dead.

Amy engineer will tell you.......... do not purposely make a design

prone to the power surges and irregularities that are going to happen

-------or else the unit will die an early death.

So, toshiba saves $5 on a cheap power supply but assures the customer

that this unit WILL die within 3- 9 months.

I think this is shameful.

Thank you Amazon for your easy return.

Got it out of the box and tried to format the DVD Ram disk it

came with. At 85% it had a data error. After that it would not read, recognize or write DVDs. Powered off to reset but still broke. Of course I was very disapointed.

I going to return and try another and also get a service policy.

After reading many reviews of all DVD recorders, I have decided that they all seem problematic and fragile.