Most home entertainment systems today comprise of a number of electronic gadgets that will include mainly the LCD TV as its focal paint, a set of speakers, a video source like a DVD player, digital video recorder, Blu-ray player, and even some video game consoles. And with all the new technology and designs being offered today, some may even opt for a unit that has combined the features of two or three units. For heavy users, there can be the combination DVD player with a digital video recorder using a hard disk for recording TV shows.
But for those who don’t have a need for a hard disk unit, maybe because they don’t really watch that much TV, or already has a personal video recorder, or you simply want a gadget that will be able to let you record DVDs for family and friends, then the Toshiba DR18DT may just be what you are looking for.
A scaled down version of the Toshiba RD-98DT without the hard disk capacity, the Toshiba DR18DT has support for two formats of rewritable DVDs. The first and most useful is the DVD-RW. This format supports video recording mode that allows editing afterwards of any recording. Also, there is support for video mode that, although takes out advanced editing later on, allows it to be more widely accepted by other DVD players. The next format is the DVD+RW that have more fundamental editing features. Both formats have write-once formats supported. Unfortunately though, the Toshiba DR18DT is not able to support DVDs with dual layer formats so you basically just get eight hours of maximum time for recording.
Design wise, the Toshiba DR18DT has been granted the standard all black finish that’s classically found in most of its products, with a silver strip dividing the unit into two. The design is sleek and sexy and looks great paired with a glossy black LCD TV. The Toshiba DR18DT is solidly built and is very slim. It won’t take up too much area if space is a consideration for you.
At the top half is where most of the distinct features of the Toshiba DR18DT is found. At almost the middle of the upper half is an LED display panel that shows much of the information relevant to its ongoing operation. The display can make use of a larger dimension as it is difficult to decipher from a fairly normal distance. A modest array of controls can be found on the silver strip with most options are designated to the remote control.
The Toshiba DR18DT comes already with a built-in Freeview tuner, so if your LCD doesn’t have this option, you are in luck, The unit even has full support for series and split recordings which are Freeview playback features. With this feature, you won’t need to set the timer each and every time to record your favourite TV show, it is done automatically and is even able to recognize if a show has been split into parts.
Overall, the Toshiba DR18DT is a very solid unit that offers a set of well-rounded features. It’s very affordable, easy to use, and does a superb job of not only decoding videos from DVDs, but also in encoding them.
