[Review] Toshiba DR1

Toshiba DR1

just picked one of these little beauties up from richer sounds this afternoon for the princely sum of 250 quid.
my old limit dvd player was beginning to get a bit flaky with certain dvd's and the chroma bug in it's video codec was making me go cross eyed on certain dvd's, so i thought, time for a change.
as it's a dvd recorder as well it's also allowed me to start to retire my old panasonic vcr. my tapes will be archived to dvd-r's over the next couple of weeks and then the old girl can go off to crack converters or the tip.
the tosh is multiregion for a start so i tested that with a region 2 copy of payback. it worked fine so i tried it with a region 4 version of jackie brown that i got from a 2nd hand dvd shop and has not played on any of the dvd players i've owned - even pc dvd rom drives. IT WORKED as well! my god that's tonights entertainment worked out - i've not seen jackie brown for years money well spent already. but wait....
This recorder is dvd-r, dvd-rw and dvd-ram compatible. this last one means a lot of those nice tivoesque timeslip functions such as chasing playback (start recording, go make a cuppa, put the kids to bed and then come back and watch the programme from the beginning while it's still recording) or perhaps the ability to 'pause live tv', only for as long as you've got space on your dvd-ram disk though although in 'lp' mode you get 271 minutes of decent quality recording so not really a problem. i've not tried the higher quality modes as yet (i'll use these for archiving only i suspect) however a few of the reviews has an issue with the image quality of recorded stuff - can't see why, it beats vhs hands down which is all i'm really after - and that's in lp mode.
playback of pre-recorded dvd's is great and even in 3 channel mode (no front left and right) the sound quality is obviously better than my old limit dvd, which was a cheapie so not much of a big thing but reviews have also picked up on the playback quality too.
looks wise it's pretty snazzy with a kind of old bmw 3&5 series 'overbite' the facia slopes back towards the bottom and is mirrored with the drawer in the center and all the buttons on the top. the supplied remote is reasonably easy to use and can control a tv too.
other nice stuff it has are - co-ax and optical digital outs (useful as i can use this as a transport for my dac via optical in an emergency), 2 scart sockets one in/out selectable one in, coax in/out for an antenna type ariel, component outs, pal progressive scan, front composite and dv (firewire) inputs for camcorders, various other outs for 5.1 audio (internal decoders for dd & dts) svideo, etc. more editing modes than you can shake a stick at. ability to record sound as bitsream, dd m1 or dd m2. outputs can be configured as svideo, rgb, etc.. the list goes on and on

the only slight complaint is that it locks up whilst 'loading' and 'unloading' a disk and the process is quite slow. things like going into standby, comming out of standby and being ready to go, putting in a new dvd or taking one out can be a bit laborious but then it's got a lot to sort out with all the formats it has to check for. i think i can live with that one. if anything else crops up i'll make an addition. also with a dvd-ram in the drive there is a blinding blue led on the front and it's a bit of an xmas tree if you are recording and timeslipping at the same time.

overall it's a superb bit of kit for the money. i've got rid of a box on my rack and gained some very useful functionality. if you're not looking to get sacd or dvd-a (titter) and want some of the funtionality described above this is about the cheapest way to get it and it does loads more besides, a big 5 star thumbs up from cassa jules.

cheers


julian