Home > Consumer Reviews > Toshiba D-R550 1080p Upconverting Div-X Certified DVD Recorder with Built In Tuner

I bought my first D-R550 to replace a cheap DVD player. I wanted an ASTC tuner, and I wanted to record like a VCR. The product did what I asked of it, plus a little more. I've since purchased a second for another TV.

Pros:
: Nice looking - sleek and black
: VERY nice recordings
: No-problem setup
: ASTC high-def over-the-air tuner
: Works with my Phillips universal remote control (PMDVR8) - code is 690, if you need it. It's not in the Phillips manual
: Nice DVR-like feature allowing you to pause what you see while it continues recording the show

Cons:
: Took a couple of tries to find a DVD-RW that would work. Memorex didn't work, and neither did Verbatim. I ended up using Imation.
: Manual could definitely use some work. Can be challenging to locate what you want in there.
: I tried to watch a recording on another DVD player, but it wouldn't work. May have been the disk, though.
: Pet peeve - there is no button for switching between aspect ratios. There's a zoom feature when watching a disk, but not for live TV. You have to go into a menu for this.
Hey, Toshiba - not all of the shows are in 16:9...
: No channel buttons on the front of the device - only on the remote. This would be a nice feature.
: Does not include an HDMI cable

All told, definitely worth the money. -1 star because that missing aspect ratio button really ticks me off.

UPDATE 2009-11-21: Toshiba has replaced the (previously) bad link to the user manual on their support site, and you now can get the user manual there.

This unit works OK as a DVD burner. I use it as a DVR to watch shows as they are recorded so I can skip the commercials or record using the timer and watch them later. I wish it had a second tuner so I could record one show and watch another. But, the main reason I bought this unit was for the ATSC/QAM tuner. I have it connected to my projector so it was intended to be my main tuner. It is awful. Analog channels seem to work OK. It takes about 20 minutes to scan the extended cable channels. That would be OK if it the digital channels worked the next time I accessed them. After I scan the channels, I can use the up/down arrows to scroll through them. Several channels it finds are unused or encrypted so I see a blue screen. Digital channel changing is slow but acceptable. The problem is that the next time I scroll through the digital channels or enter the channel by number, they are gone. Blue screen on every channel I enter and it takes about 10 seconds to switch to the blue screen if the channel is missing. If I use the up/down arrows, it scrolls through the 3 aux inputs only. I can not recommend this unit at over $200.

7-24-07 I sent my unit in for repair and was told that it would be fixed in 3 days and sent back overnight. After the 3 day repair time was up they called and told me it could not be fixed so they will be sending me a new unit. Of course, it is going to take 7 to 10 business days to process the paperwork before they will even ship the new unit back to me. What a piece of junk. This will be the last Toshiba product I purchase.

8-15-07 They sent a new unit to me. Same problem. I called for more support and they told me the problem is the signal strength of my cable. They could not explain why I could rescan and the channel would be back. They also could not explain why I have other ATSC tuners that do not have problems finding and keeping the same channels. The person I talked to told me that they have sold over 10,000 of these and I am the only person complaining about it loosing channels. The funny thing is that my first unit had S/N 26 and the new one I just got had S/N 3037. Not sure haw you can reach 10,000 sold if they are only in the 3000's for S/N's! Piece of JUNK!

I bought the D-R550 to record two shows daily. It worked great for a week and then began to lose the preset channels as others have reported. This prevents it from using the program timer. I was using DVD-RW media and had it hooked up to a Vizio 42" LCD HD-DTV through the HDMI cable. Reception was from digital antenna. Note that this is a digital tuner; not high definition as some posters had stated or expected.
All was fine except the problem with losing the program data. I sent it back for a refund because it appears from the other posts that Toshiba has not been able to fix the problem with repair or exchange. I cannot recommend this product for that reason.

The built-in tuner didn't work properly and I had to return this to Amazon. When I connected my cable to this Recorder, the picture came out really snowy and unclear. I know it's not my cable connection either because using the same wire connected to my Samsung DLP HDTV which has a QAM Cable/ASTC/NSTC tuner, the picture came out clear. I even connected my cable to my 10-year old analog VCR tuner and again the picture came out clear. So I concluded that the Recorder's tuner was defective. Additionally, when I tried to auto-program my cable's DTV (digital) channels, the Recorder malfunctioned doing that. Some channels got in, some didn't. Even for the DTV channels that did get in, as I was flipping channels using the Recorder remote, periodically, the channels would turn blue screen...I had to turn off the Recorder to get the DTV channels working again.

The remote control is the lightest remote I've ever felt because it felt extremely cheap.

As for the upconversion to 1080p, I knew something was odd when the quick reference manual didn't mention anything about upconversion and had a picture of the back that didn't show the HDMI connection. Anyways, the unit does have a HDMI connection and when I tested the upconversion, I swear that the 480p mode looked better than the 1080p mode which looked pixely. Not what I expected.

The timer program and setup menus were surprisingly very MS-DOS looking (you know that operating system before Windows). I didn't even bother to test the Recording function since the Tuner was defective...the recording would have just came out crappy.

I don't think I will purchase a Toshiba product again anytime soon until I see positive reviews. Trutech and Toshiba might as well be brothers given the poor quality.

I purchased one of these door stops in MAY! I have payed for shipping to send it back to Toshiba under warranty. The device would not remember its programming. The original unit had bad memory. The new unit I got in JULY, has the same problem. DO NOT BUY ONE OF THESE!!!