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- My rating: 0 stars
Full user review
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2 out of 2 people found this review helpful
3.0 stars
"Overall good, but some annoyances"
Pros: DVD Burning, 30 recording hours in best quality
Cons: Not the best DVD player, Crude DVD burning, Some oddities and bugs
Summary: First of all, I was upgrading from my Sony TiVo series 1. The recording capacity of this Toshiba unit is over 3 times that of the old Sony, with 30 hours of recording time in best quality compared to 9 hours on the Sony. For those that are new to the TiVo scene, don't expect to get the 140 hours advertised. The medium quality is bad enough; I don't even want to see what basic quality looks like.
My biggest complaints about the basic operations of the unit are:
- The controller isn't nearly as well designed as my Sony controller is. It is easy to get confused with the symmetric design. Quite often I try to forward or rewind the video and find myself doing the opposite. Also, the numeric keypad isn't very easy to reach when holding the controller naturally.
- Navigating on the guide isn't as responsive as it was before.
- I cannot use both the rca/s-video inputs in addition to the analog cable input. I would like to be able to use the analog inputs for channels 2-99 and the rca/s-video inputs for digital channels. That way analog-to-digital-to-analog (then back to digital then back to analog) conversions could be avoided. But I have to either have everything routed through my cable box or only use the analog channels with the TiVo, which is what I set it up to do.
I bought this unit because I wanted to make DVD's of the NBA playoffs this season. My team, the Spurs, went all the way to the championship, so I got quite a bit of use out of it.
The DVD recording worked adequately, but I needed extra PC editing software to create dvd's in a format I was satisfied with. First of all, TiVo only records 59 minutes of programming per DVD at Best Quality (why not 60, I have no clue). It should be able to hold at least 81 minutes. Also, a small portion of video is lost in between DVD partitions (a 3.5 hour game required 4 DVDs). This actually happened at a critical moment in the Finals and I lost a key game moment because of this. Finally, if you want to make professionally looking DVD's, you will again need software as the TiVo menu's look really ugly and are not customizable.
If you do want to use external software to edit DVDs, I recommend TMPGEnc DVD Author. You will also need several DVD-RWs as well as adequate hard disk space. First, burn the program to the DVD-RWs with the TiVo. Then copy the VIDEO_TS directories to hard disk. Then using the DVD Author software, you can import the video in these directories. You can then cut out commercials and whatever else you don't want, and recombine video tracks of the DVD's the TiVo made. It also has a nice Menu creator.
Finally, this TiVo unit can be used as a DVD player. People have given this unit great reviews for including this feature. But it is not a GREAT DVD player. It doesn't use the hard disk at all to save your location, and it doesn't even save your settings. Every time I use it, I have to reset the subtitles if I want to use them. And it is difficult to even find where to change the settings (you have to press the info button). Also, the forwarding and rewinding don't work nearly as well on the DVD as it does for tv video. When you forward/rewind then hit play, it jumps way too far back in the video.
One other small bug I found. When I was attempting to record the press conferences of the NBA games, I would attempt to record in medium quality. When I hit the record button then go to recording options and change to medium quality, it warns you that it will have to delete the saved video and start recording at the current location. If I tell it to 'Record new portion only at Medium Quality' it cuts off the buffered video and then records the new video in *BEST* quality. uhhhhhh WHAT?! I got through a whole 45 minute press conference before I discovered that. Sometimes it does this, sometimes it doesn't. I could only avoid this by doing a manual recording by time and channel (annoying).Updated
First of all, I was upgrading from my Sony TiVo series 1. The recording capacity of this Toshiba unit is over 3 times that of the old Sony, with 30 hours of recording time in best quality compared to 9 hours on the Sony. For those that are new to the TiVo scene, don't expect to get the 140 hours advertised. The medium quality is bad enough; I don't even want to see what basic quality looks like.
My biggest complaints about the basic operations of the unit are:
- The controller isn't nearly as well designed as my Sony controller is. It is easy to get confused with the symmetric design. Quite often I try to forward or rewind the video and find myself doing the opposite. Also, the numeric keypad isn't very easy to reach when holding the controller naturally.
- Navigating on the guide isn't as responsive as it was before.
- I cannot use both the rca/s-video inputs in addition to the analog cable input. I would like to be able to use the analog inputs for channels 2-99 and the rca/s-video inputs for digital channels. That way analog-to-digital-to-analog (then back to digital then back to analog) conversions could be avoided. But I have to either have everything routed through my cable box or only use the analog channels with the TiVo, which is what I set it up to do.
I bought this unit because I wanted to make DVD's of the NBA playoffs this season. My team, the Spurs, went all the way to the championship, so I got quite a bit of use out of it.
The DVD recording worked adequately, but I needed extra PC editing software to create dvd's in a format I was satisfied with. First of all, TiVo only records 59 minutes of programming per DVD at Best Quality (why not 60, I have no clue). It should be able to hold at least 81 minutes. Also, a small portion of video is lost in between DVD partitions (a 3.5 hour game required 4 DVDs). This actually happened at a critical moment in the Finals and I lost a key game moment because of this. Finally, if you want to make professionally looking DVD's, you will again need software as the TiVo menu's look really ugly and are not customizable.
If you do want to use external software to edit DVDs, I recommend TMPGEnc DVD Author. The software allows you to cut and combine video with ZERO QUALITY LOSS. The software comes with a free 30 day trial. You will also need several DVD-RWs as well as adequate hard disk space. First, burn the program to the DVD-RWs with the TiVo. Then copy the VIDEO_TS directories to hard disk. Then using the DVD Author software, you can import the video in these directories. You can then cut out commercials and whatever else you don't want, and recombine video tracks of the DVD's the TiVo made. It also has a nice Menu creator.
Finally, this TiVo unit can be used as a DVD player. People have given this unit great reviews for including this feature. But it is not a GREAT DVD player. It doesn't use the hard disk at all to save your location, and it doesn't even save your settings. Every time I use it, I have to reset the subtitles if I want to use them. And it is difficult to even find where to change the settings (you have to press the info button). Also, the forwarding and rewinding don't work nearly as well on the DVD as it does for tv video. When you forward/rewind then hit play, it jumps way too far back in the video.
One other small bug I found. When I was attempting to record the press conferences of the NBA games, I would attempt to record in medium quality. When I hit the record button then go to recording options and change to medium quality, it warns you that it will have to delete the saved video and start recording at the current location. If I tell it to 'Record new portion only at Medium Quality' it cuts off the buffered video and then records the new video in *BEST* quality. uhhhhhh WHAT?! I got through a whole 45 minute press conference before I discovered that. Sometimes it does this, sometimes it doesn't. I could only avoid this by doing a manual recording by time and channel (annoying).
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