Review by JOE BLOW for Toshiba DVR670 DVD/VHS Recorder with Built in Tuner, Black
Rating:
The Toshiba DVR 670 is virtually the same as its predecessor the DVR 660. The major difference being that you have to flip down a panel on the front of the unit to access the VCR/DVD buttons whereas on the DVR 660 these are on the outside.

The DVR 670 is one of the few VCR/DVD combos on the market that allow you to record Off The Air Digital broadcasts on VHS tape. While the quality of HDTV programs on VHS tape is inferior to DVD, it’s a quicker, easier, and cheaper way to make recordings if you just want a temporary recording of a TV program you don’t want to miss, plus you save money in not having to pay monthly fees for a DVR service.

The Toshiba DVR 670 VCR/DVD combo has a Digital tuner so you can record Off The Air OTA channels with it. It is a little bit complicated to use but the manual has a lot of information. If you want to make quick recordings of HDTV and don’t care about high image quality you can easily use VHS tapes and reuse them to record over and over. If you want high quality HDTV recordings then you need to use the DVD recorder part of the VCR/DVD combo.

The Digital tuner works very well, it produces high quality images from HDTV, however the audio is not as loud as when I watch HDTV through my Digital converter box.

If you have an analog Tube TV and you want to record one OTA channel and watch another OTA channel at the same time you can do it with the DVR 670.

The following are instructions on how to do this:

ITEMS NEEDED:

2 Rabbit ear antennas

1 Digital converter box

1 tube TV with analog tuner only

1 RF Coaxial cable (included with the DVR 670)

1 set of Composite cables (included with the DVR 670)

1 set of Stereo Audio cables colored white and red (included with the DVR670)

STEP BY STEP INSTRUCTIONS:

1. Connect TV antenna into RF IN on converter box.

2. Connect one end of RF Coaxial cable to TV RF OUT on converter box.

3. Connect other end of RF Coaxial cable to RF IN on TV.

4. Connect 2nd antenna into antenna IN on the back of the DVR 670.(You will NOT need to use the antenna OUT on the back of the DVR 670).

5. Connect one end of the composite cable, the yellow one, to OUT on the back of the DVR 670.

6. Connect the other end of the composite cable to the IN on the TV.

7. Connect the Stereo audio cables to OUT on the back of the DVR 670.

8. Connect the other end of the Stereo Audio cables to the IN on the TV.

You are done. Now you will be able to watch one channel and record another channel at the same time.

To watch a channel with your converter box, turn your TV to channel 3 and turn on the converter box and use the CONVERTER REMOTE to switch channels. To check on what you are recording press the VIDEO or GAME button on your TV REMOTE and this will switch you over to the DVR 670 tuner. To go back to watching multiple channels with your converter box while the DVR is recording one channel, press VIDEO or GAME on your TV REMOTE, now you can use your CONVERTER REMOTE to watch multiple channels.

***UPDATE 3-12-10***

I have to down grade this from 4 to 3 stars because of a couple of minor problems: 1. once in a while it will freeze for a second or two when playing DVDs. It seems to be hypersensitive to dust or light scratches on the DVD, if you clean the DVD well this momentary freezing goes away. 2. when I tune in OTA Digital stations on some it goes out of order when I change channels, for example when using the remote up or down channel button it will go to 2-3 then 2-4 then 2-1 then 2-2 instead of 2-1 then 2-2 then 2-3 then 2-4. It only does this on a couple of channels but it’s irritating.

This unit can be noisy too, the exhaust fan turns itself on a lot, even when the unit is turned off it will run.

I would probably still buy this because there is not a lot to choose from on the market, the JVC DVD/VCR combo has a lot of problems(see Amazon reviews) and the Panasonic DVD/VCR combo doesn’t record OTA DTV on VHS tape.

Review by Glazed Over for Toshiba DVR670 DVD/VHS Recorder with Built in Tuner, Black
Rating:
Have used this recorder for three weeks now after the ol’ VCR died and it works even better than I had hoped. The digital tuner can pick up all the “clear” local HDTV signals on Cablevision’s cable system so now (using a simple splitter) I can record one show at 480p using the DVD while watching another in full HD either via the TV’s tuner or via the cable box. Or record any of remaining channels non-clear channels using the cable box’s S-Video out (the best you can use as external recording input source). The quality of the resulting tuner recordings (in 2 hour SP mode) is almost as good as the original as seen on a 720p TV (and I am very picky in that respect), and it is certainly far better than the VCR side. Plus, the DVD-RW discs are of course re-usable via an erase (or format, as Toshiba calls it). Recording is almost one-touch; really very convenient. I can’t see any reason to record anything on a VHS tape again. This box is a great alternative to the monthly fee for a HD based DVR if you do not need any of the fancy programing and scheduling features that come with such other options.

I bought a set of 10 Sony DVD-RW disks and they work as expected. I can view recordings on my PC and also create DVDs on my PC (in DVD-VR mode only so far, via NeroVision) which are then viewable on this unit. I have not been successful in creating AVI movies that the unit is happy with but after converting such movies (or WMV files etc.) to DVD-VRs I can view them on this unit just fine. It also played mixed folders of JPGs in slideshow format, although if you have many files in a directory any kind of manual navigation gets a little tedious. I have not tried any of the other myriad supported formats yet other than a CD-R music CD which also played as expected.

I tried VCR->DVD recording (“dubbing”, as the manual calls it) and it works as expected but the quality is just so much worse than a HDTV tuner->DVD recording but that is just a limitation of the VHS technology. It did seem that the quality of VCR playback was a little worse than on my old 15 or so year old Mitsubishi but since the latter died I was not able to do side by side comparisons. However, this unit serves its purpose well of digitizing old home movies etc. before the tapes degrade even further.

The only small negatives are the almost impossible to read “gray on black” text on the remote (now who thought that would be cool?), and the slightly noisy VCR motor or fan (?) that is always on when the unit is powered on.

All in all, I am very impressed with this unit’s performance and even the manual is quite readable I thought and I have had no issues with what I have tried to use it for so far.