Toshiba RDXS32 DVD Recorder

When DVD recorders initially arrived on these shores the choice was fairly straightforward. Choose your DVD type (minus, plus or RAM) and then hand over between £800 and £1200 for the privilege of being an early adopter. More recently prices of DVD recorders have plummeted and you’re likely to pick up a decent spec Philips in Tesco for under £200. As DVD recorders grew in popularity the combined DVD recorder and Hard Drive began to put in an appearance. Championed initially in the main by Panasonic, these hybrid machines offered the ability to store large amounts of data, editing facilities and the ability to write your perfect creation to a blank DVD. As technology improved so, like your PC, did the size of the hard drives.

Toshiba arrived late to the UK DVD recorder party, later even than Sony who were uncharacteristically tardy. Whilst Toshiba’s initial effort (the DR1) was fairly well received, it lacked a number of features demanded by advanced users such as DV in (good for digial camcorders), RGB in/out and even the ability to copy straight to DVD! It was a missed opportunity but sold in decent numbers and was well received by the more knowledgeable consumer. Next to Phillips and Panasonic however, it was still very much the bridesmaid.

Toshibas sparkly new RD-XS32 corrects a lot of the earlier omissions and adds a whole lot more. Here we have a DVD recorder capable of writing to DVD-R/RW and RAM combined with a hugely flexible 80GB Hard Drive. It offers progressive scan in both PAL and NTSC forms, reads a large amount of varied media and crucially, can be picked up for as little as £400 in multi region flavour. By using DVD-RW and RAM discs it also avoids most of the format wars that exist in the DVD recorder market and ensures that you should be able to produce a disc that plays in the majority of machines out there. If you search online you could get this recorder for between £400 and £430 which, although a substantial investment, is many hundreds of pounds cheaper than its closest, similarly specced competitors.

Initial Impressions

The XS32 arrives in a shiny blue box which to my mind seems a little cheap looking. Inside the box you’ll find the XS32 itself, a remote including batteries, manuals, a 4.7GB RAM disc, and all necessary leads. There’s no scart included but then you wouldn’t use the one that came with it if it did. Would you?!

The front panel of the machine is devoid of any buttons at all. There is a large central display and a drop down panel housing AV connections and DV in. There are few operating buttons on top of the unit but they’re limited to playback generally so it’s very important not to lose that remote.

Around the back there are two scart connections. The second scart input will accept RGB and allow it to pass through the first scart output. This is useful so that you can connect a Sky box and allow the signal to pass straight through to your TV. Clearly, if you have only one RGB scart input on your TV it becomes essential. Having connected your Sky box (for example) to the XS32 you can then record the incoming signal. When the box is in standy you do need to press “sat mon” (satellite monitor) on the remote to allow the RGB signal to pass through. It’s a little bit of a chore but not too irritating. There are two connections for the aerial (in/out), a variety of composite, audio and s-video connections and, crucially, a set of component outputs. The latter allows you the best quality video signal and progressive scan. You’ll need a suitably equipped display for that of course.

So with all of this set up how does it perform? Well, let’s take a look at the manual first, this is a complicated machine.

The Manual

For anyone who’s already read about this machine on the internet you might have heard that the manual is complicated. I can confirm that it really is. I’m not sure this machine was ever marketed at the Dixons buyer but if it was I really don’t think the manual is very well written at all. That said, for anyone with a small knowledge of AV equipment you should be quite safe. The manua reflects the powerful operating system of this recorder. In fact, on the first page the manual states that the XS32 has more in common with a PC than a DVD player. This is fairly true but a PC would allow you even more powerful editing options of course.

Setup

Setup is actually quite easy. Just hook up the DVD and select the setup button. Unfortunately the button is hidden within the remote panel. You then have a variety of options to set up AV connections, default recording quality and the usual operations. You can also choose to manually tune into your channels or allow the player to do it for you. All in all a fairly simple job. There are a large amount of setup options but, recorder options aside, none present anything that the seasoned DVD user hasn’t seen before.


Performance

DVD playback

Let’s start with normal DVD playback. I think most people would use this as a DVD player as well so it seems to make sense. I connected up the XS32 to a Panasonic TX-36PD30 using both RGB scart and component connections. To enable the component you have to set the AV output to video so let’s take each in turn.

In RGB mode colours are warm and detail is excellent. There is little evidence of digital artefacting or blocking. Fast scenes are handled well. Using a Region 2 disc of the Lion King really does demonstrate that this is a very capable DVD player indeed. Sound is also excellent with focused dialogue and good surround steering.

Switching to component mode increases the picture quality again. It isn’t light years ahead but it’s certainly preferable overall. Detail is better and the picture looks sharper. The good news is that the same terrific picture quality is carried over when using NTSC discs.

Lastly, progressive scan. The XS32 has a rather useful button on the remote marked porgressive scan so you can turn it on and off when you want to. No need then to fiddle around with settings in the menu. Personally I found only a marginal improvement with progressive scan material. In many ways the picture merely looked “different.” It certainly did look more filmlike and focusing and panning shots were handled better. However I preferred the sharpness of the straight component picture. Another feature the XS32 has is the ability to set the progressive mode to either Video, Film or Auto. Film and video sources each have different frames per second so this is a useful feature. Personally I set it to Auto and forgot about it.


Recorder Mode

As you know you can choose to record onto the hard drive or to DVD. Recording to the drive first is generally always the better option. You can edit recordings, ensure that maximum bitrate is recorded without first having to guess what will fit onto a disc, create chapters yourself and thumbnail pictures to identify those chapters.

When you’re ready to being your recording you’ll first need to select either a pre-set record mode (and therefore bit rate) or set a precise bit rate to get the very best level of detail onto the hard disc. You can even choose to record the audio in the less compressed LPCM mode. To do so will mean that the picture bit rate needs to be ramped down but this might be a good option for recording live TV concerts where sound quality is all important. This spells and end for all those machines where you had to select 180 minute mode for a 125 minute film because the 120 minute mode wouldn’t allow it. Keeping the bit rate up also allows the number of lines, and therefore the display resolution, to be maintained. Of course, since the hard drive is so large you might as well copy everything on to it at the maximum bit rate which is 9.2KBps in Dolby Digital stereo mode and 8.0KBps in LPCM sound mode. Both of those will be enough to copy a perfect digital copy of the source material. You might want to copy a whole series of 24 over to your hard drive instead. Fine, just reduce the bit rate to something in the 4.0KBps range and you’ll easily fit a whole series on there. Some might argue that recording source material off a platform such as Sky doesn’t need to make use of the full bitrate. This is certainly arguable but it would seem better practice to record those transmissions that you want to archive to DVD at the best rate possible onto the harddrive and then allow the recorder to sqeeze them onto DVD.

Of course, you can do the same thing if you record to DVD first. You just have to make sure you again set either a pre-set bit rate, 1 hour, 2 hour etc or a manual one. Using manual you really can set it to the minute. If you have a 105 minute movie then you just need to consult the helpful table at the rear of the manual to set a bit rate which will squeeze those 105 minutes on. The advantage to this is that the quality will be better than the 2 hour mode. A word of warning however. Some broadcasts bit rate can fluctuate and you might find that your fine planning leaves you with a missing few minutes. As I said above, it’s better to go to the hard drive first and then transfer to DVD

So what kind of copy can it create? As a test I recorded Final Destination 2 from Sky+ onto the hard drive at the best quality bit rate. Then I used the edit menu to “rate convert” that recording onto a blank DVD-R. Rate convert works out how much space there is and selects exactly the right quality for the disc space. The result (of a 95 minute film) was a copy identical to the original broadcast with little sign of digital artefacting or blocking. Sound in LPCM mode was clear and dynamic. As you reduce the bit rate quality does worsen. However even at the very low 1.2KBps the recording is still watchable. You’ll get a load of blocking and artefacts but it’s still better than that old VHS tape you had where the tracking kept wandering.

The edit facility allows you to carry out some very powerful editing indeed. Aside from the rate convert function above you can create a DVD or another copy of the recording on the HDD using high speed dubbing. You can combine recordings together, create specific or player generated chapters for a title, create playlists. The list is almost endless. The recorder also produces some very neat title and chapter screens for your finished DVD’s. Far more exciting than those generated by the Sony recorders for example.


Conclusion

Of course this isn’t the last HDD/DVD combi we’ll see this year. Panasonic have their E95 with a 160GB HDD now available and Sony their 250GB monster lurking in the wings. There were rumours of a Panasonic with a 400GB hard drive and integrated digital tuner and ethernet port by the years end as well. One thing is certain though. Neither of those machines will compete on the price of this superb value DVD recorder. If you're worried about which machine to choose and being outdated soon then why not grab one of these now and eBay it for what you paid for it when you get bored or fancy a change.

Overall this is a superb piece of kit offering good value and the ability to ditch having two boxes under the TV. Toshiba have progressed from the flawed DR1 to the almost perfect XS32. It’ll be very interesting to see where they go from here.