Very pleased, reliable, glad I moved to DVD-R
937404
UPDATE 8/2008: After 18 months, it stopped working, giving a series of software errors, a message says "turn off/on" but the errors return.  So today i would rate it much lower.  The very first one i got was dead-in-box and an instant return, and this second one went kaput after 18 months of ordinary use.  Amazon lets me edit this text but Amazon does not change my five star rating.
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We delayed several years buying a DVD-R because so many models had mixed good/bad reviews.  Finally when our DVD player died we moved up to this DVD/VHS double recorder.  It doesn't have a 'tuner' - it expects some form of cable/dish tv input - but we haven't used an antenna in 10-15 years, so that didn't matter to us at all.

1) Ease of use.  There are multiple types of DVD (DVD+R, -R, -RW, +RW etc).  There are extra steps with most, to "initialize" the disk and to "finalize" the disk.  But the VR357 will do most of these steps automatically if you want to.  It will also make automatic chapter titles every 5 minutes.

2) Works with hard disk recorder.  We have a hard disk recorder with our cable system and I've heard some DVD-R are extremely finicky about recorder.  This one seems to record anything so far that is on the hard disk recorder of the cable system.

3) Compatibility with older equipment.  We've tried both DVD+R and -R and they have always played on our DVD-PC, and most have played on a four year old plain DVD player in the house.  Apparently no recorder generates a home DVD disk that plays on every machine always. This one seems pretty good.

4. Advantages of DVD-R.  Obviously, the DVDs are vastly smaller than VHS and you can use them in portable players, laptops on airplanes, etc.  There are four record fidelities.  1 HR, 2 HR, 4 HR, and 6or8 HR.  (Double each if you use more expensive double layer DVDs).  We have a routine old TV set, and the 1 HR and 2 HR modes are visually the same.  4 HR is a little fuzzy, and 6/8 HR is noticeably fuzzy, but better than 6 hr VHS for sure.  At best it's probably not quite as good as commercial DVDs but neither were home recorded VHS tapes.  It does take a while to recognize any DVD (commercial or home-made, maybe 20-30 seconds; apparently it has more to "think" about than a regular old dvd player).

5. In/Out cables.  It has a wide array of input/output cable types, including HD cable output (but it is *not* an HD recorder).

6. Bells and whistles.  When you are finishing a disk, for example, it will have 2 one hour shows on it.  The DVD will open with two little pictures of the first image of each show.  You can get into a menu with 26 letters and scroll around and pick out a title for each track, if you want.  Tedious but possible.  There is one-button copy between DVD and VHS, assuming it is not a commercial and copy protected DVD or tape source.

7. Disappointment.  The box says "plays MP4" and the manual "plays .AVI video."  We could not get any home videos in these formats to play.  Would be great to solidify this feature in a later model.  Does play standard audio CDs and MP3s-on-CD.

7.  Summary. The world of DVD-R is a little more complicated than VHS recording but this model automates most of the options if you want it to, like auto-initialize and auto-finalize.  DVD-Rs are compact, take on airplane etc, and cost as little as a quarter for blanks if you buy a large spindle.  We're quite happy with the visual quality but we have a routine old tv and routine cables, we are not video experts or HD people.
3310365
I am very happy with this unit.  It Does it All....and Well!  Records and plays DVDs and records and plays VHS tapes also(believe it or not it is handy to be able to record on those old-fashioned tapes).  The playback of the DVDs on my HDTV(even though) not Blu-ray is great.  I placed one call to Toshiba customer service,not because the machine was malfunctioning but because I had a question and I reached tech support(a real and knowledgeable person) on the first ring. I definitely recommend this product.  I even hooked up my minicam to it's inputs and watched those videos on my HDTV.  Today, I plan to record the minicam videos onto one of the Toshiba's media.
592954
I've used these discs for a while with my set-top box (and recently bought a drive for my computer that's also compatible with them).  The discs have been reliable, and it's possible to do so things with DVD-RAM that can't be done with the other major formats - My favorite feature when using DVD-RAM is being able to use the DVR-like "chasing playback" on my DVD recorder, because if I arrive home in the middle of a movie I can start from the beginning without waiting for the recording to finish.  Being able to put a file directly on the disc without needing to use DVD-burning software every time is nice.  The largest disadvantage with DVD-RAM is that it can't be used with most devices (for example, you might not be able to play your recording at a friend's home).
2124936
Kudos to everyone who left feedback regarding this product. The product's favorable reviews lead to the purchase of this Toshiba unit and so far I have been happy with the results. After having problems with other brands such as Sony, JVC, Magnavox, etc. my process of elimination left me deciding between Toshiba and Panasonic. I've only had the unit for a week but so far I have managed to dub from VHS to DVD without major problems or complications. I recommend this product with enthusiasm as well as Amazon.com for reliably processing my order.
3959561
This is the sort of purchase that has one scrambling through their collection, revisiting older favorites.  Finer image details now become more apparent.  DVD up conversion is rock solid.  I have yet to find anything that trips it up.  Mixed film-video content in a rapidly edited music video?  No problems here.  Multi-channel hi-res music playback is seamless now, with my small SACD and DVD-A collections getting new leases on life.

This is also the fastest, smoothest player I've used.  Laugh all you want, but I was pleasantly surprised when I realized I could enter 'Setup' mode during playback and adjust on the fly.  This player loads discs possibly even faster than my old PS3.  Even my worst-case test disc 'T2: Skynet Edition' loads without incident now.

There are some nits.  The network apps are on the sluggish side, and I'd like to enable DVD 24p mode more easily during playback instead of diving through the menu each time out...but knowing Oppo, these will be fixed by the end of the month.

Darbee processing is the real deal.  It can be easy to crank it up to 85% and kill the image, but at the 30% to 40% range (my display's sweet spot seems to be 34%), it subtly adds a level of detail that goes missing once turned off.  It doesn't play well with overly sharpened images, so display settings can play a large part in its effectiveness vs. inducing artifacts.
1331079
I've gone through the recording of roughly 300 DVD's over the last three years, some for backing up the contents of computers, many more for very old films that will never be on DVD. I've tried several brands and I say you can't beat Memorex DVD+R as far as quality versus price. I'd say out of each 100 pack I've had, 2 DVD's burn with errors. None of those happened when backing up from a computer. All of them came from recording from a DVR, so for all I know it could be my DVR that was the source of error. The quality of the DVD+R in the case of film recording appears to be perfect. The oldest DVD's in my collection still play in my pickiest DVD player after three years.

I will warn anyone who is recording filmed media to stay away from DVD-R's of any brand. In the beginning I was going with DVD-R just because it was cheap and I paid for it in artifacting that often appeared in the finished product.
4620977
I owned a Panasonic VHS/DVD recorder for nearly two years with very few problems. The upscaling of VHS and standard DVD's  was ok with the HDMI cable and some standard def dvd's looked a little jaggy, but overall, it played DVD's/ VHS tapes fine.
However, recording from VHS to DVD - what a nightmare!! First, when I inserted a DVD -R , the machine froze and it took several hours to finally remove the DVD; after that, it wouldn't play ANY dvd's - previously recorded, commercial, anything. After several hours with customer support, I gave up. It would only play VHS tapes - what an expensive VHs player this turned into!
So I saw Costco was selling this Sony that pretty much had the same features, but I especially wanted to be able to convert a bunch of old vhs tapes to dvd.
This Sony worked flawlessly from the beginning, and I was well on my way to converting nearly 60 old vhs tapes to dvd. No problems whatsoever with different DVD types- DVD(+-)(RW) were accepted . It won't record to DVD -RAM, but will play them. The upscaling feature on this Sony is also much better than the Panny, and so far it works great.
However, since it doesn't have a tuner built in, you'll need a connection to your cable/satellite box to record TV shows, but that doesn't matter to me at all since I'm not interested in taping TV.
Overall, I'm satisified.
3709434
if your looking for DVD-R writable discs, this is a very affordable 100pack on a spindle with a convenient handle of VERY high quality discs.  I've been using these to burn countless DVD ISO files of movies that I've made into DVD's, and I've never had a bad burn a single time.

Great quality, i mean, it's HP, not some crap, so they have manufacturing quality controls over the optical discs, and found very reasonable for the price point.  I continue to purchase these as needed.
3847039
I bought this product so I could play DVD-RW discs in DVD-Ram format from another DVD-Recorder. This product works flawlessly for that purpose. The upconverting feature seems to work well with DVDs on my HDTV, although I have not yet purchased an HDMI cable so I cannot confirm optimal performance. This is a great machine at a great price!
1331426
Have had the BDP-93 for about a week...very happy with this purchase, so far. Being my 3rd blu-ray unit I finaly made up my mind to purchase what I consider an expensive (from all my reshearch) one of the higher end players. In the short time I have had the BDP-93 I can say it is everything the more positive reviews suggested. Will be returning to update this review in the near future(GW) but as for now, I feel it would be irresponsible, to call this my "Dream Machine".One last thing some reviewers may take of interest is that the "Title/Chapter Repeat" button on the BDP-93 has worked on every blu-ray  movie I have tried, for example: Zodiac,Braveheart,Gladiator & all of the Harry Potter series...just to name a few. Left out DVD Movies as I have never had a problem with the "Title/Chapter Repeat button"playing standard DVDs with any of my previous blu-ray players... Sony or Samsung.

Change is Inevitable, Growth is Optional
2593446
This DVD player is really a great unit, when you consider that it retails for just over a C note, you can't fault it. I am completely happy with the purchase. My primary reason for picking this unit was the region free capability. I have DVD's from all over and hate the region coding. So, this player is the answer, and it makes no apologies in it's performance. This thing works like DVD players should have worked for years.
3599340
I bought this to make copy of old family video in VHS and Hi8 formats. I am very happy with the results and like to recommend to people who are in the market for DVD recorder.

Great

- Intuitive once master the basic concepts

- RCA amd S-Video connectiors are available in the back panel as well as backpanel

- Progressive scan produces excellent quality even in SP mode (on level below the best)

- Comprehensive feature sets - just look at the user manual

- DVD-R format allows play on most DVD players

- Can be used to record TV programs saved on DVR

Not so great

- The remote control is very busy and not intuitive -  intimidating for beginners

- Does not record on 8X disc - only 4X only

- Start dropping images when buffer memory is filled during long recording sessions (> 2 hours in my experience) - 10% of my recording has to be repeated

Generally speaking, it is a great product for the money and I look forward to a double layer version in the near future.
4398686
Wanted to buy a hard drive based DVD recorder last year, but saw so many bad reviews of most brands/units that I decided to wait.  I bought a low end Toshiba recorder (D-R4) and have been happy with it.  Thus I decided to try this new model without benefit of reviews.  Had it a couple of weeks and I have to say I'm impressed.  I have experienced no problems.  The menu system is similar to my D-R4 so it was quick for me to learn.  The TV Guide took two days for 1st download, but has been perfect since (have Charter Cable). Have recorded to HD from TV Guide and burned to DVD; copied existing DVD to HD, edited and burned new DVD; and copied programs from two existing DVD's to HD, changed bit rate to fit them both on one DVD (unit calculated new bit rate for me automatically).  Editing out commercials on the HD is very straight forward.  High speed dubbing will burn a football game to DVD in about 10 minutes.

In short, it has done everything I bought it to do flawlessly.  The only reason I didn't give it five stars was the pain of reorganizing the TV Guide Channels after the 1st download to match our cable box order and the copy protection on HBO, VCR tapes (that I'd like to archive to DVD), etc.  Of course I know that they pretty much have to implement the copy protection, but I don't like it anyway.
2560517
I bought this unit almost two years ago.  I have made hundreds of discs, from other dvd, cable tv and vhs.  Has always worked.  I use dvd-rw discs. They are universally compatible.  I have made many discs for friends. None have been incompatible. I bought with hesitation two years ago. Was going to take back if any problems.  Will buy another when or if this one dies.
2710517
Since installing, I've had no problems with this product. It runs reliably and quietly, was really easy to install, and, of course, reads and writes DVDs with no problems. It's a five star item!
165440
Works great and I absolutely love this DVD set!
3144953
works as advertised, Transferred all my VHS to DVD