I looked around for about two weeks before I decided to buy this unit. I wanted to go with a Panasonic because I have always had good luck with the brand, but, after reading all of the reviews on Panasonics in this price range I decided to look at other brands. And I mean I looked at EVERYTHING. It seems that Panasonics have lots of problems reading DVDs burned by other machines. Every brand I looked at had some kind of problem except for this Toshiba. This is a very nice product...

I am impressed with the features/performance of this recorder for $140.00!!! For this small amount of money you get a DVD recorder that up-converts to 1080p. It's a steal! I have played many different DVDs burned by at least five different machines as well as computer DVD burners, and I have not had a single problem. In fact, I can now watch several DVDs that I couldn't watch on my old DVD player!

(Keep in mind that this is my first DVD recorder)
Something that surprised me in a... Read more

I definitely notice a big difference in quality from my old normal DVD player and this up-converting one. My 57" DLP HDTV showed how bad my old DVD player displayed an image. It was very pixelated. But this looks very nice coming through in 1080p. Since the image is up-converted it is not quite as good as the 1080i HD channels, but still looks much better than the old DVD. I have only recorded to a DVD once and it worked perfectly. I guess I thought I'd be recording more often. I love that it plays DivX files and I use that frequently. Complaints: I don't really care for the remote. It feels a bit awkward and too squarish. But that's not a big deal. The best input is S-Video, so when you record something that was on an HD channel it will not be as good of quality as the original. I don't know if this is the case on all DVD Recorders or not. And when you first put in a disc it spends about 30 seconds loading it befor it plays it. I guess this is because of the up-converting, I'm not... Read more

I was looking for months for a product that is under $200 range, can upconvert to 1080p and record on DVDs. Toshiba D-R400 is the solution.

The product works great out of the box. I can definitely see the good upconversion quality but to be honest, I cannot tell much difference between 720p, 1080i and 1080p. All of them look almost the same on my 1080p LCD TV.

For those of you who do not know, please remember that you cannot expect the black bars above and below of the widescreen DVD movie to get removed using this upconverter. I was under the impression that an upconverter lets view the picture full screen but that is not true. Only Blue Ray/HD DVD will do that. But hey, still for $140, you get good quality upconversion using D-R400.

I tried recording on one of those cheap GQ DVD RW from Frys and it works fine. The disc preparation is fast enough and does not take forever as my old junk Lite-On DVD recorder used to. This DVD recorder did not complain... Read more