Toshiba DR430 DVD Recorder

Here's my story. Maybe you'll recognize yourself. When VCRs came along it seemed to good to be true. You could record a whole library of stuff for about 10 bucks a show and watch it whenever. I guess I made or bought hundreds of VCR tapes over the years. Then VCR became obsolete and DVD came in. About 10 or 15 years ago I thought, "I'll just get a DVD recorder and pick up where I left off with the new technology." Cost me a couple of hundred bucks investment. What a disappointment! The machine was unreliable. I couldn't tell whether it would work or not until I "finalized" a disk. If it didn't work, that was another disk ruined. This was when each disk cost a couple of dollars each. I don't know how many I broke up in frustration. Now the new thing is DVR, which you can get (for a fee) from your cable company. Sounds like a good idea, but it only allows you to record stuff from the cable, not to build a permanent library or convert your existing tape library. I wondered what was new in DVD recorders. It was with trepidation that I made a flying leap and bought this unit. A major factor was price, less than 100 dollars. And DVDs are down to about 50 cents each or less. I was very pleasantly surprised. I don't use the HDMI hookup, just component video/audio, the red, white and yellow RCA connectors. I'm not really a video snob and the quality is better that what I expect. It has an option to record in four modes, the best quality of which puts one hour of video on a DVD and the longest of which lets me record 7 hours on a disk. It was a chinch to hook up to my system. The menus are intuitive and work like they should. I'm thinking now that one day, I will convert some of those ancient tapes with big sentimental value to DVD. The timer gives me the flexibility to record multiple shows as if it were a DVR, but I don't have the monthly fee. Of course, it is a little less convenient than a cable DVR, because I have to flip over to a separate input on my TV to program it and there is no recurrent program to record a given show every week. Each episode of a program is a separate event, as far as this unit is concerned. Still and all, I'm delighted with this purchase so far. It has many features to recommend it, first among them is: it works!

The delivery was excellent. This DVD runs beautifully. We are enduring a major snow storm here and the quality of this delivery made it through such incredible amounts of difficulty and in sound delivery. I am very impressed. This is Rare for sellers to be honest about their products and to delivery despite the challenge of the weather. Seller made no excuses and arrived SOONER than was expected. This Seller was very kind to ship ALL of the accessories included for this DVD Recorder. This seller kept this DVD In beautiful condition. It looks BRAND NEW and RUNS as if we only just purchased this from one of the top stores. Would consider purchasing from this seller again with out a doubt. Very fast shipping; very well sealed and the seller was responsible to seal this product for the type of weather . Professional and pleasant. I hope that I am not speaking too soon; however, in comparison to the Toshiba DR430 to the 2009 Sears combo VHS/DVD, This Toshiba marks the spot head on--runs exquisitely. The price is fantastic and that is what it should be about. The Sears 2009 Magnavox DVD/VHS Combo (purchased brand new and for 30.00 more) is, unquestionably, top of the line serious junk of the dirt bag rip offs. It is better never to purchase combos. And upon purchasing the Magnavox combo, it was delivered approximately during the very same season, in 2009 and the box was as wet as a soggy kitty litter box exchanged by 10 mother cats and a opossum. The Toshiba DR430 was delivered with such care and doubled sealed with shipping tape and was wrapped as if it were a personal Christmas gift and did not have a flake of snow on the box. This Toshiba DR430 is top of the line for simplicity of playing and recording DVDs. Besides, who needs that Blue -Ray pain in the butt players when the Toshiba records ANY program with out restriction of recording programs as the combo players. This seller is tops and deserves the 5 star with A+ rating for salesmanship and the decency in honesty of its condition.For a used product, the seller came through better than the advertisement---and this is the treat for any consumer--- Cheers to this Sellers. Keep in touch. A very sound player and recorder! Thank you very much! Very attractive!

I purchased this a few months ago to replace an old DVD/VCR recorder that was wearing out, and so far I am happy with it. It has a few little glitches or things I would have liked to be different, but overall it seems like a good reliable product. Pros: 1. The recording and playback quality is great (have it connected w HDMI output and RYW input from satellite receiver), even on the lowest-quality recording settings. 2. After a little initial confusion with the menu setup and location of the remote buttons it's simple to use. 3. If you hit the record button once it will start recording, but pressing it multiple times sets the unit to automatically stop recording after 30, 60, 90, ... minutes, which is really convenient for recording a TV show or other standard-length event. 4. The user's manual is very detailed (~100 pages) but was straightforward enough that I (with very limited experience with this sort of thing) had the unit set up, figured out and running/recording in less than 15 minutes. 5. While the finalized DVD menus are basic, they have much more space for longer titles than my old Panasonic did, and show the complete title without truncating it. 6. It also lets you change the placement of chapter marks, but only with DVD+/-RW and DVD+R disks. I haven't used this feature because I record on DVD-R, but it seems like a great option. 7. And it's a heck of a lot cheaper than most of the other comparable models out there. Cons: 1. It takes FOREVER to read a disk when first inserted, finish writing a recording to the disk, and finalize the disk. My old recorder would take a few seconds to do the first two and maybe 30-60 seconds to finalize, but this one seems to take much longer. Thankfully it hasn't happened to me yet, but if you ever decide to record something on short notice and don't have a disk in already you will probably miss the first minute or two of your program. 2. The finalized DVD menu is very basic, with just the text titles in rows. 3. It doesn't have a built-in tuner, so you will need to hook it up to an antenna, satellite, cable, or other video feed. 4. The DVD tray is fairly loud when it opens/closes and I'm not sure how good the quality of its motor is. 5. Last and probably least, the unit doesn't show the clock when it's turned on, just the input source (or at least I can't figure out how to make it show the clock instead). To summarize, this might not be the newest or greatest DVD recorder, but if you're looking for a good recorder at a decent price with some neat features, look no further.

My original review is below, and I downgraded this to 1 star... however I will make this simple. This machine has no TUNER so you cannot record anything into it that is off a coaxial cable. You can ONLY record using RCA cables and I believe S-Video, THAT IS IT.... What this leaves you with is a reproduction of what you are recording in the quality of a VHS tape. If you have a old VCR and a bunch of VHS tapes then go for it, this will do what you want no problem.. however remember RCA input is the lowest quality they make, there is nothing worse as far as inputs, except rabbit ear antenna which nobody makes anymore. This is like having a 10MP camera and taking pics in less then 1MP quality. My machine has since made it to the garage. MY Cable box does not have RCA outputs so I had to have a VCR connected between my tv and this dvd recorder. Why would anyone make such a machine with no tuner and no inputs of higher quality like component, is beyond me.. Its like buying a Corvette with a 4 cylinder engine. Don't waste your money unless you have old antiquated machines to copy from because you can have the highest quality machine to play your original, but you are forced to input this machine with RCA cables leaving you with a vhs quality reproduction... Give me a break. I would STRONGLY recommend getting a machine that has a TV TUNER, it would give you more options... I will make this brief, if you are buying the dvd recorder to record shows off cable, maybe pay per-view, movies you order from cable that you might want to keep then there is a HUGE downfall to owning this machine. This dvd recorder ONLY accepts basic RCA input and S-Video Thats it..NOT EVEN A COAXIAL INPUT . IT has HDMI, Component, S-Video and RCA OUTPUT but no Component video? Basically this downgrades the input video to basically VHS quality, regardless if the signal is HD. So if recording and saving is important to you then I would look elsewhere. Also if you have COMCAST you are in trouble, you can only use the S-video as at least my Cable Box does not have RCA outputs only component that is going to my tv. No HDMI output on my cable box, there is a DVI-1 output and S-Video so I can hook up my Toshiba using S-Video or RCA ONLY. Since I currently don't have a S-Video cable I am forced to keep my old vhs/dvd player on top of my tv. I can only get signal input to my Toshiba is connecting a Coaxial input from cable to the vhs player and then use RCA cable out from the VHS player to the Toshiba... Yes this has HDMI output so dvd's you rent will have the highest quality short of blue ray, but any recording you do will be recorded under the lowest input setting... I wont even bother discussing the rest of the options because so many others have. My problem is the lack of input signals... You can have a HD signal and record it but you will record it on RCA cables... ARE you JOKING? We just purchased a new LCD tv for my sons bedroom and it DOESN"T even have RCA inputs, ONLY hdmi and component... RCA is outdated... If recording higher quality video is your concern look elsewhere... If you are using this as strictly as a basic recorder to record missed shows only to delete them later with a -R/W disc you will be just fine...

I don't know why, but I seem to have overlooked writing a review of this DVD recorder. I bought it to replace a combo VCR/DVD recorder from Panasonic that suddenly stopped working. I had bought the combo unit to transfer my home movie tapes to DVD. It's a good thing I did, as the oldest one was just about 20 years old, the supposed shelf life of video tape, and was starting to degenerate. So, my transfer was just in time. Turns out the VCR section of that unit wasn't so hot and I ended up connecting another VCR to it, anyway. Using the Panasonic, I finished the home movie transfer and was just using it to copy movies from Cable TV. Now as to this unit. I was considering giving it 4 stars as it lacked one great feature of the Panasonic. The Panasonic had a variable record mode, which would maximize the quality of any length of movie you wanted to copy. In other words, if a movie were an hour and a half, you would set the variable speed accordingly and get the best quality you could for that time, and not settle for the two hour (LP) speed. This unit doesn't have that. However, after months of recording with this unit, I have decided to give it the full 5 stars. Granted, I don't have a flat screen TV (not that I don't covet them - just no space for one). So I can't attest to the quality of the upconverting to near-HD. I also have not, as yet, tried reusing DVD+/-RW's. I've just recorded movies from cable that I wanted to keep on DVD-R. But I have to say that this was the best $100 I've spent in a long time. First of all, there are very few DVD recorders being made, anymore. The top reviews I've read on this are back from 2011 - quite a long time ago. Panasonic has stopped making them. Still, I couldn't have been happier with my purchase, unless it happened to have the variable speed mode, as well. That said, the quality of the recording is excellent. That includes the XP, SP and LP modes. I believe I copied one long program at the EP (6 hour) mode and found it lacking in quality. But I rarely use that speed, mostly copying movies for my video library. I never bother with the timer, finding the one-touch recording very simple to use. Just press record and it records for 30 minutes. Each additional time you press the record button, it adds another 30 minutes. So press record 3 times and you get an hour and a half. And so on. Very simple. I do have to say that the Panasonic was faster in loading and in finalizing (to play a movie on another machine you always have to finalize the disc - a procedure that is simple to do). This is a bit slower. But that is quibbling. You can set the auto chapter to various time durations, the default being 10 minutes, which is what I prefer. The Panasonic had only 2 to 3 minute chapters - far too short a time interval. I've never bothered naming chapters, so I can't comment on that, but with a little playing around, that shouldn't be hard to figure out. I just never cared to. Bottom line is for a hundred dollars you can't go wrong with this unit and I would suggest getting it before DVD recorders stop being made altogether, in favor of DVR's (unless you're waiting for Blue-ray recorders).

This does not have a channel selector so you would have to have a tuner in a vcr or tv set to record tv. It has S-video in,and out, rca jacks in and out and a set of rca, & 1394 firewire in on the front of the unit also, behind a drop down panel. What I love about it is the record modes. You can record in HQ 1 and 2 hour, in medium quality at 4 hour, and in 6 hour and 8 hour modes. I do a lot of copying of informational material I produce [...] on common-law and sovereignty and found in 1 and 2 hour mode the reproduction was flawless, studio grade. I produce a cable access show and see a lot of in house video production of high quality. In 4 hour mode I can very slightly tell the difference (especially with a lot of movement)but it's still very high quality. In 6 hour and 8 hour are about the same, but it is easily noticeable in the difference in quality between studio grade and these recordings. I like packing as much info on a disc as possible to allow the dissemination of information and package discs in 8 hour mode and they are very watchable [better than the MP4 compression I upload to my youtube channel in]. The [8hr] sound is identical in quality and the video is like HQ vcr used to be. I am very impressed with this Toshiba's abilities. The remote is easy to learn to program. I can edit a title for the different recordings and after all is done finalize the disc to play on other machines. Once done the menu shows a list vertically of about 8 titles per page. Of course it won't copy rented movies. The DVD burner reader is great quality as it reads discs my Sony home DVD system wont'. Of course the Sony is 3 years old and the lens do get to the point of needing cleaning. But I have used a que tip and alcohol to clean the lens and regular lens cleaning discs (with little brushes on it) to clean the laser lens and it still has a hard time. I can record from the Sony [DVD], from my Handycam [miniDV tapes], and from a vcr. I can pause the recording to change inputs and add to a recording to 'edit' on the fly, and until I finalize the disc, I can add more recordings later. Great price, good burner, I recomend it.

I bought this unit to replace a failed 7 year old Sony RDR GX-300 DVD recorder. After reading all the comments, I had mixed feelings. Upon receiving the unit and setting it up, here's what I found. The Toshiba DR430 DVD Recorder is a solid DVD recorder. It records and plays all formats you'll ever need (+R, +RW, -R, -RW, and others I never came across). If you're over 40, your eyes may have a hard time with the remote, but some squinting will overcome this. This remote is like all other black remotes with gray buttons. In regards to comments that this unit loads and formats disks slowly, that's a bunch of nonsense. All DVD recorders take a bit of time, period. Your not playing a store bought movie. You can record in SP, LP and EP. You'll get different recording capacities per disk depending on quality wanted. Longer time = lower quality, less time = higher quality. Just like on the old VHS VCR recorders. It's a no brainer. You set that up easily with the RECORD MODE button on the remote. I never use the timer, I always use the ONE STEP RECORD button. Each push gives you 30 minutes of recording time, then the recording stops. Want to record a 90 minute movie off your Tivo, then press the record button 3 times, its that simple. Paid $113 with free shipping and had it in 4 days...in good condition. No dents in the box. It isn't repacked in a larger box though, but I received mine just fine. The video and audio inputs and outputs are on the back You can use RCA or S cable. I'm using both and it doesn't care. There an input on the front, behind a small door, for recording (downloading) from a camcorder (or any other device). The manual covers everything, but you have to read it to understand it. I got going in 15 minutes with the QUICK START sheet (4 pgs). One important thing to remember, after you make your recording on a disk, you have to FINALIZE it, so it will play on other DVD players. Remember to read up on FINALIZE in the manual, and you should have no problems. The menus are very basic, especially the TITLE EDIT button, but simple is good. My earlier Sony DVD recorder took some time to get familiar with. This one is alot easier. A recommended buy.

I purchased two DR430 DVD recorders 6 months ago. Yesterday one of the two stopped recording. It would not even format a blank DVD-RW disc (error E4). It will not play back recorded shows I previously made on the same recorder. Thankfully they will play on my second DR430 as they are not finalized. It will only play standard DVDs - so much for the recording functionality! I was set to call Toshiba for a warranty repair - I assumed it was one year as with most electronic AV equipment - but the warranty is only 90 days (3 months) parts and labor. I ordered a replacement DR430 (price has increased $20 in 6 months) along with a 2 year SquareTrade AV protection plan for about $9. I am against buying "extended protection plans" but in this case it is advised due to the minimal manufacturer warranty. My two star rating is only due to the 90 day warranty and the fact that it has failed in only 6 months which is well within most AV 12 month warranties. Otherwise it would have earned four stars. Pros: Easy setup, fast skip feature through commercials in 30 sec intervals up to 180 secs which is a feature we use frequently. Cons: Setup display is something out of the old PC DOS screens - very archaic looking, clock setting drifts and has to be reset every 2 weeks otherwise you end up cutting off the end of your recorded show. Clock drifting was also a problem with my previous Panasonic DVD recorder. (Does Toshiba use the same clock technology as Panasonic did?) Finally, the manual warns that you may cutoff the end and beginning of two shows if they are recorded back-to-back, but I have never found this to be an issue.

Très bon produit. Fonctions simples et à la fine pointe de la technologie d'aujourd'hui. Belle image, bon son. HDMI excellent. Très bel aspect fini noir brillant et peu encombrant. Je le recommande et à ce prix, on ne peut se tromper. Toshiba est une très bonne marque.

The 2 I bought were nothing but scrap in a box and they never ever worked right no matter how they were hooked up . I suggest to other buys of this product to invest in something better than this brand and this dvd recorder since its both a waste of time and money if you buy one or two of them . The seller I had to deal with gave me non stop problems when I went to return them back to them to get a full refund . My very good advice to you fellow buyers . Don't always believe the good reviews you read about a product like this one they can be posted as a false comment to lure buyers in to buying their products from the seller .

We've been using this product to record video output from a video mixer and sound coming in from a sound board for a little over a month now. The product works great giving us DVDs available for duplication as soon as the event concludes. I find the menu system a bit hard to work with. It took a bit of trial and error to determine how to edit a title so that it doesn't say "L1 SP" but rather something more appropriate like "PLAY" There is no way (none that I can find in the menus, manual, or internet) to configure the disc start menu. All you get is a plain title screen which isn't very attractive. There is also no way to suppress the title menu and just auto-play the video which would be an ok alternative for me. We will be looking for an alternative solution, probably record directly to the computer rather than to this device, since the title menu lowers the professional feel of the recording. Besides the title menu, however, we're quite happy with this device.

When my old Toshiba DVD recorder died after many years of service, I purchased this new DR 430 recorder. If this new machine has any great improvements over the old one, I have yet to find them. It records fine but when it comes to putting a title on the disc, I have been unsuccessful so far and I have read the instructions many times. The old recorder gave you a computer-style keyboard and you just selected the letters for the title. No so with this new machine. Also, I have yet to determine whether I can edit on this new machine.

The unit works well and easy to set up. I was able to record shows on both DVD -R and+R without any issues. The only problem I had with the unit was with the remote control...Everytime I pushed the 'up' button on the navigation controls, it would interrupt the picture on the screen, causing me to reset the machine. I think this may be a defect in the remote control. Anyway, I'm not grumbling too much based on the low price I got the machine at.