Review on Toshiba DVR610 Upconverting Tunerless Recorder by Paul Barnes

I bought this unit to transfer VHS home video to DVD. I'm not interested in fancy edits, headlines, or transitions. I just want the video to be copied directly to DVD. Although I eventually managed to get this device to do what I wanted it to do, and at this point it actually does more than I expected, the frustration I experienced trying to get it into the to get a grip, with 2 stars. The first hour with this machine was spent understanding the instructions. The next hour was spent implementing them. After making sure I followed the instructions exactly, I spent the next 3 hours searching the internet for a solution to my problem. The device did not transfer from vhs to dvd. Every time I clicked the "Duplicate" button following the instructions, all I got was a red circle with a slash with no explanation of the problem. I finally found the answer on an online problem solving forum. The missing step that made everything fit together was to set the input to "L1" in DVD mode before clicking "Dub". I expected that such a simple task would be mentioned in the instructions and that Toshiba representatives, who answer countless questions about the red crossed circle issue, would provide this information. Now that I know how to use it, I can save my VHS movies. In fact, I can save to a DVD from multiple sources (internal VHS or external source), which made me very happy. The system creates a separate title on the DVD for each recording session. Excellent. Unfortunately, working on how to use it left me a little bittersweet. While it exceeds my expectations, I wouldn't recommend it until the instructions and support for it are improved.