Review on Toshiba DR430 DVD Recorder by Ben Duncan

I don't know why but I do think I forgot to write a review about this DVD recorder. I bought this to replace a Panasonic combo VCR/DVD recorder that suddenly stopped working. I bought a combo box to transfer my home video tapes to DVD. Glad I did, because the oldest was only about 20 years old, the estimated expiration date of a videotape, and was beginning to deteriorate. So my transfer came just in time. Turns out the VCR section of this unit wasn't that hot, so I hooked up another VCR anyway. I just finished transferring a home video with Panasonic and just used it to rip movies from cable TV. Now to this unit. I thought about giving it 4 stars as it was missing a great Panasonic feature. Panasonic had a variable recording mode that maximized the quality of the film you were trying to copy. In other words, if the movie was an hour and a half long, you would set the variable speed accordingly and get the best quality for that time, rather than settling for a two hour (LP) speed. Not this block. However, after several months of recording with this device, I've decided to give it all 5 stars. Of course I don't have a flat screen TV (not that I wouldn't want one - there just isn't room for one). So I can't confirm the quality of the upconversion to near HD. I haven't tried reusing DVD+/-RW yet either. I just burned movies from the cable that I wanted to save to DVD-R. But I have to say it was the best $100 I've spent in a long time. First, very few DVD recorders are made today. The best reviews I've read about it are from 2011 - that's quite a while ago. Panasonic has stopped production. However, I couldn't be happier with my purchase if it didn't have a variable speed mode. However, the recording quality is excellent. These include XP, SP, and LP modes. I seem to have copied a long program in EP mode (6 hours) and found it to be of poor quality. But I rarely use this speed, mostly when copying movies for my video library. I never bother with a timer as the one touch recording is very easy to use. Just press the record button and it will record for 30 minutes. Each additional press of the record button adds another 30 minutes. So press record 3 times and you have an hour and a half. Etc. Very simple. I have to say that the Panasonic was faster when loading and finalizing (to play a movie on another computer you always have to finalize the disc - a process that is easy to do). It's a little slower. But these are subtleties. You can set the auto chapter to different lengths of time, the default is 10 minutes which is my preference. Panasonic only had chapters of 2-3 minutes - too short a time frame. I never bothered to name the chapters so can't comment on that, but if you play around a bit it should be easy to figure out. I just never cared. Bottom line, for a hundred bucks you can't go wrong with this unit, and I'd suggest getting one before DVD recorder production completely ceases in favor of a DVR (unless you're waiting for Blue-Ray recorder ).