Toshiba RD-XS24 (160 GB) Receiver

This is a brilliant unit, I have had one for about two years now and cannot praise it highly enough. I brought it (used) fom eBay and although it came without a manual I had it fully configured and recording programmes in less than an hour.

Connectors include; two SCARTs (one with RGB), S-Video, Analog Audio, Digital Audio, Optical Digital Audio, DTS, Dolby Digital Surround Sound, UHF in, UHF out. It even has front mounted phonos for camcorder use. It does NOT, however, have a UHF modulator so you have to connect to a TV via SCART.

Recorded programmes are accessed through simple interface which can operate in either text or graphical mode, displaying either (up to) 24 programme titles or six thumbnail images plus titles, duration etc. somewhat like a photographic 'contact sheet'.
Alternatively thumbnails corresponding to the chapters of the currently selected title can be displayed.

For ease of access the disk can be organised into 24 folders and timer recordings can be automatically saved in an appropriately named folder.

Upto 32 timer events can be programmed for any given date over the next month or scheduled for; every mon, tue, ... sat, sun or mon-thur, mon-fri, mon-sat. But, sadly, NOT fri-sat, sat-sun or sun-mon. Each timer events can be named [using an on screen keyboard], assigned to one of the folders and [optionally] classified with a Genre. The date is appended to each recording's name for ease of identification.

The editing facilities, though extensive, are incredibly simple to use. I can review a one hour recording (1:04 with padding), mark the start and end of the programme, mark all the advert breaks, top and tail it and delete the adverts leaving approx 42 minutes of content IN UNDER TWO MINUTES! Fantastic. It is so easy I simply cannot imagine a better way of doing it. This just has to be used to be believed.

Every recording has its own 'place marker' so you can stop watching and carry on from where you left off by simply selecting the title and pressing play regardless of what you've watched in between - a really nice touch!

I find it to be an amazing device with an incredibly intuitive interface. All the features are readily avasilable from the remote control which, although a little large, is laid out in a neat, convenient and easy to use manner.

I use this extensively; recording and watching about eight hours of television each and every day, seven days a week. I burn a couple of DVDs at LP quality [eight to 12 hours edited down from 12 or 18 hours of source] each week with only two or three duds out of about 200.

Any negative points?

Well, the tuner is analogue so these units will be of limited use once the digital switchover is completed.

I've only had one problem: while editing a recording I managed to create a zero length chapter and when I tried to delete it the file system became corrupt losing over 50 hours of recordings! Ok, so it was a serious glitch but now I am aware of the problem I will never do that again!
And, hopefully, neither will you.

So, to summarise:

This is an incredible piece of kit and an example of how these things should be made. It is so easy to use - with on screen prompts and consistent usage of the remote control keys - I am not sure I would have needed to look at the manual if it had come with one.

I would really like to have another couple of these but funds are limited and they are getting hard to come by now...

Regards
tbod