DVR670/DVR670KU DVD/VHS Recorder with Built in Tuner, Black (2009 Model)

OK, first I must say after reading all the reviews of several DVD recorder/tuners, I was impressed mostly by the Toshiba model. Now that I have owned it for about 2 months, I can safely say this product definitely lives up to its reputation. I am very happy with its performance thus far. I originally got the recorder to transfer all my VHS home movies to DVD. VHS tapes have [at best] about a 20-25 yr life span IF you use them very infrequently. If you use them frequently, then you are lucky to get 10-15 years out of them. And it they are subjected to heat, humidity, then they go even faster. With a DVD on the other hand, you lose NO quality no matter how many times you play it over and over. Just dont scratch them!!! The recorder transfers the VHS to DVD very easily and is user friendly for anyone IMHO. The only thing I noticed is that you cannot pause the DVD recording when using the VHS to DVD transfer. But, you can pause the DVD recorder when using the tuner. Also, if you concerned the DVDs you make with the Toshiba will not work in another DVD players, you can relax. I tried the DVDs the Toshiba made in 4 other DVD players and all players played it just fine. Also, every DVD format I could find work perfectly in the Toshiba...DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD+RW and DVD-RW...all work just fine. I was recording a movie with the recorder and about 10 seconds into the recording, a box popped up and said...DISC ERROR. I tried several times and thought the recorder was the problem. But I tried recording another VHS movie tape and it did just fine. Apparently, some movies are copyrighted, so you cannot record them. Also, another good feature: You can delete titles that you dont want. So if you mess up, you can still salvage the disc if you choose to do so. Only thing is that you cannot use the disc space that you delete (on the DVD-R, DVD+R formats). But, you can reuse the space on the DVD-RW, DVD+RW DVD formats. All in all, the only drawback is not being able to pause the DVD recorder when transferring VHS tapes. But, if you use the DVD+RW format, you can delete portions of the recorder AFTER you have recorded what you want. Then you can go back and manually delete. If you want a good performing DVD recorder, this product definitely lives up to its reputation and name!!

I gave this DVD/VHS Recorder five stars as it has a digital tuner, it does not atomically break when it detects a stop when copying tapes to DVD, and it has worked great for me on both a newer TV that does have audio video inputs, and on my older TV that does not have audio video inputs. I tried copying a home movie from a camcorder on a different recorder, and every time I had stopped the camcorder, the DVD recorder stopped to write to the disc -- this recorder doesn't do that. So if you have old tapes to copy, this is the perfect recorder for you. As for playing VCR tapes, I haven't had any problem playing tapes recorded at different speeds. There is a learning curve to using this recorder, but I think it is well worth the effort. If you are still using your VCR to record, now is the time to switch to DVD recording, and copy your VCR tapes to DVD. Why switch to DVD recording? Once you get the hang of it DVD recording leaves VCR recording in the dust. One of the features of DVD recording is that you can record programs and cut out all of the commercials by using the "pause" button. Using the "pause" button, information will not be written to the disc until you stop recording. Therefore, everything you record is written to the disc in one title (page 49 of User Manual). When recording programs using the timer, be aware of the following: - Set the clock to manual (valuable tip from another review) - Turn the recorder off using the "Timer Set" button when you are using the timer record (valuable tip # 2 from another review) - If using a rewritable disc, make sure you delete from last item to first item or you will lose available disc memory. Basic hook up is not hard (see Quick Guide). As with all (I think) new players there are two separate hook ups for TVs that have audio video inputs. - Coaxial cable hook up ( 1 cable included with recorder) Step 1) TV cable to ant in on recorder Step 2) Ant out on recorder to ant in on TV. - Audio video cables (1 set included with recorder) Step 3) Audio video out on recorder to audio video in on TV. Basic hook up for older TVs is not that hard either (page 24 of User Manual): Note: you will need to buy (see my other reviews for the items I purchased) 1) RF Modulator 2) An extra coaxial cable Coaxial cable hook up - TV cable to ant in on recorder Step 1) Ant out on recorder to ant in on modulator Step 2) Ant out on modulator to ant in on TV - Audio video cables Step 3) Audio video out on recorder to audio video in on modulator. Still hesitating? Maybe my experience will help. I owned an older expensive DVD/VHS Recorder. The VHS recorder played tapes fine, but began having problems with recording. I found out that most repair shops no longer repair VHS recorders, but I found a repair shop that offered free estimates, so I took it there. Big mistake! After they had it a while, I was told the parts were not available, and it could not be repaired. When I took it home I discovered the VCR was worthless. I couldn't even play tapes. I was upset, but learned the following lessons: - Beware of Free Estimates! - The day of the VCR is coming to an end -- it's time to begin recording on DVDs and copy old VCR tapes to DVD! I recommend the following items to get started recording to DVDs (see my other reviews): - DVD-R - DVD-RW - CD Storage Box - CD DVD Paper Sleeves with windows - CD/DVD marker

I would have given this machine five stars except for a few oddities in the user interface. Even then, by itself, I would probably have given it five stars, but the oddities are things that work better and more smoothly in other *Toshiba* products. Why they chose to do them differently in this one is a mystery to me. I've had this machine since February, 2011. It has been trouble-free electrically and mechanically. I record one hour every week day and a couple of other shows once a week to the DVDRW drive. I watch a few hours a week of VHS taped shows. I occasionally (maybe once a month) dub a VHS tape to DVD-R. At that rate of use, I have not had any problems so far. I bought this machine because my latest VCR had a bad head. I still watch VHS tapes which are recorded at another location and I wanted something to record shows at home. This machine is a very good solution, providing a way to play VHS tapes, but allowing me to migrate my home recording to DVD, and to dub the occasional VHS tape to DVD if desired. If you don't need/want to watch VHS tapes, then there's no reason to get this machine. Get a DVR machine with a built-in hard drive instead. If you want removable media, get one that includes a DVD-RW drive. The built-in tuner is an excellent feature as others have mentioned. After the conversion to digital broadcast (I do not have cable -- all my viewing is Over The Air, OTA) I was using one of the "free" tuner boxes. That was horrible for recording because one had to set the VCR, but then also remember to set the digital tuner box to the proper channel, and there was no ability to change the channel while recording or between recordings without being present to do it manually. Obviously, the built-in tuner solves that issue and the tuner seems to be of good quality. We have a lot of trouble with multi-path signal interference since the switch to digital broadcast. The "free" tuner boxes are terrible with respect to multi-path interference. Channels which would futz out in a wind storm with the digital tuner box continue to work fine for the tuner in this recorder. The video quality of the VHS side is okay, not great. IIRC, it only has two heads. So paused images tend to flicker and are not so sharp as they would be with a high quality four head deck. The quality is about equal to the old 2 head VCR I had for fifteen years before the four head deck. So I would guess that this is normal 2-head quality. Four heads would be better, but it would probably also be more expensive. The unit does seem a little slow to adjust tracking when beginning VHS play. Also, fast forward and rewind are slower than I am used to. Be prepared to watch something on the DVD player (or have a book handy) while rewinding or forwarding through tapes. I do all my DVD-RW recording in the mode which gives 4 hours per disk. The quality here is also okay. It is somewhat better than the VHS quality, but again, not fantastic. It would probably be better at the 2 Hr/Disk or 1Hr/Disk setting, but I don't want to reformat the disks or swap them out that frequently. It is good enough. While DVD+/-RW media costs a few times more than DVD+/-R media, you can reformat and reuse it many times, just as you would a tape. It pays to pick up some RW media if using this machine to record programs. You will definitely want to read the manual for this machine. If you are temperamentally incapable of reading the manual, then get something simpler. There are a few oddities in the use of this machine which make the manual essential. The machine is very feature rich, and all those features take a lot of explanation. Fortunately, the manual is clearly written, with steps clearly demarcated and capabilities spelled out. One thing that is an irritation is the zoom function. On this unit when you hit the "zoom" button, a drop down menu of magnifications appears and you must select a magnification. But before it executes the zoom, the viewing area must be selected while still in 1X zoom. After selection, if you want to select a different viewing area you must go back through the menu again, and change magnification twice to get back to the desired magnification with the viewing area selectable. Also, a menu bar stays across the top of the screen the whole time, unless you use another button sequence to dismiss it. On other Toshiba units I own, which are just simple DVD players, each press of the zoom function increases magnification immediately. Press it enough times and it circles back to regular size. Once the image is zoomed, simple use of the arrow keys moves the view area around on the fly. No move a box and then select it forever. If one dismisses the view-area-move box with the players, another single press of the zoom button brings it back. This is a simple, elegant way to handle zoom, which Toshiba already knows about. Why switch to something so awkward and inefficient in this unit? The second awkward thing is setting daily, weekly, etc. timer recordings. There's no menu item for it in the set-timer-recordings screen. The way you get to those options is to attempt to select a recording date earlier than the current date. This leads to those options. This is clearly explained in the manual, but it's pretty frustrating if you think it is a function you should be able to figure out from the on-screen menu. The third awkward thing is enabling timer recordings. As you might expect, the unit needs to be turned off in order to allow timer recordings. However, the unit has what amounts to two "off" buttons. If you turn it "off" one way, any timer recordings you have set are enabled. If you turn it "off" the other way, the timer recordings are not enabled and your program will not be recorded. This is also explained in the manual, but it takes some getting used to, if you expect to use the same button to turn it "off" as you used to turn it "on". I've missed a few recordings by turning the machine "off" in the wrong manner. I think this two-"Off"-buttons confusion may be logical necessity of the multi-function nature of this thing. For example, you can let timed programs record to the DVD-RW while you are watching other shows on the VHS deck. Probably vice versa as well, though I have not tried it in that direction. Being able to play from and watch one unit while recording something else to the other unit is a very nice feature. The inputs include front and rear A/V inputs as well as a front Firewire (IEEE 1394) input, which is very handy for some camcorders. USB would have been nice, but I believe it lacks that. I think it was designed when Firewire was still prominent on Camcorders. The extra inputs are also handy, if one doesn't have quite enough inputs to one's television. You can hook this machine to the television, route other devices through this machine's inputs and just set the input for this machine to whatever port the extra device is plugged into, when needed. There is a 30-second skip button for the DVD side which is great. Most commercial breaks are in 30 second increments. One may repeatedly push this button to accumulate a skip period up to three minutes. It does a sort of super-fast-forward through the skipped time, so you can see enough to know if you're missing that commercial about pizza specials that you really wanted to see. There is also a function that allows one to play a program at an increased tempo with the sound adjusted to have the proper pitch. I haven't tried that, but it could be useful for boring training videos, or take-home Defensive Driving shows. I can't remember if it works on VHS, DVD or both. Anyway, it's a pretty cool machine. Seems to do what it claims reliably. Isn't the greatest in image quality, but it's not the most expensive either, although I liked it better for under $200; it seems to be going up in price. A few things could be better, especially given that Toshiba has done them better in the past. However, a lot of imagination went into making the machine very feature rich and versatile. It's an especially good unit if you need a convenient way to preserve old VHS or Firewire equipped camcorder tape to DVD. 10/10/2011 Update: My unit is still working perfectly. My friend's unit, which was purchased a couple of years earlier had problems with the VCR portion last week. It was eating tapes when using FF or Rew. It also was not ejecting properly, and ultimately, would not play a tape after loading. I opened it up, compared it to the guts of my unit, and found that (bear with me, I don't know the correct names for these things) there is a clear/white plastic strip which goes around a wheel in the front bottom of the mechanism. I think the strip puts proper tension on the wheel. The little strip is hooked into place at both ends. On the end towards the back of the unit, the strip had come loose and was no longer hooked in place properly. This probably resulted in improper tension on the associated wheel, leading to the tapes not transporting properly. After I rehooked the strip the unit went back to proper functioning. However, while I had both units open, I noticed that in FF and Rew the VCR mechanism does not disengage the head. Most VCRs disengage the head during FF and Rew. This is probably why these units are so slow during FF and Rew. And no, I did not get confused and have the unit in Play when I hit FF or Rew. This was FF or Rew. from Stop. This will probably result in more wear on the head and tape when using FF or Rew. I wonder if this is a firmware problem.

Well, the unit finally gave out. Lost audio on VHS last year and just lost dvd recording last week. This item was/is really a piece of "JUNK". I will never ever buy a product made by Toshiba again. If I could give it a 0, I would. My sympathies to all of you that bought this piece of "GARBAGE" I had originally given this piece of equipment a 3. Since I have now used it for some months now and having talked with Toshiba, I have come to the conclusion that this is a piece of junk. Poorly engineered. I have never ever had a vcr that did not show you the counter display on the TV when forwarding or rewinding. Toshiba's answer is "look at the display on the VCR". Ever try doing that 12 feet away ? Wrong answer. Also the counter does not move at times when forwarding and rewinding, so that is inaccurate. As for the DVD, the picture does not allow for "Full" mode on my Sony TV. It just blows it up to the size of the screen. I expect what I record is what I should see on playback. Now when I fast forward the VCR sprocket is whinning. Not sure if it is the tape sprocket or the VCR. The tapes are brand new, so verdict is still out. The VCR to DVD dubbing works fine, except the manual is wrong and if you go by it, you will not get it to work. If there is another choice out there I would think twice about this piece of junk. Have not tried the Panasonic yet. My next choice. I bought this mainly based on reviews. It was a toss-up between this one and the Panasonic. The item should be around $200. It is really not worth much more, but since you can get free shipping, that makes it okay. You can get a plain recorder for $100 or less and i figure the tuner is worth about $100, so that's $200, but what are you gonna do. Anyhow, the manual really pissed me off, as it took me about 30 minutes to figure out that it was incorrect in explaining how to dub from vcr to dvd, not to mention, like everyone else has stated, it was quite extensive and complex. So you have to go through it more than once. So far I have recorded to tape and disk. Both seem reasonably of good quality. I don't like the fact that if a program is not in wide screen, that it records it in wide screen anyway even though in the setup you can define the aspect ratio. So not sure if that just doesn't work, or that is the way it is suppose to record. Reliability is still out for debate even though I gave it a 3.

I bought this model recorder/player in 2012. I have used it quite a lot. It was refurbished from the factory and I bought it from a seller that gave great service, fast mailing and communicated well, about it all. This player/recorder is just as good as the $500+ units. The quality in the recordings is excellent. Can record programs direct to DVD disc or VHS tape and transfer to DVD. You can record on another VCR machine, edit out the ads on two VCR machines, bring it into where you have this unit, set it up per instructions, to record the VHS tape to the DVD disc. If you go to a blank channel after the VHS program is done and record that blank channel for a few seconds, it will act as a buffer to edit your recording so that if you forget the tape running, the DVD will have marked it as ended and not record beyond that dead spot that you placed into it. It takes a bit to set it up right, the instructions are really not the best, but, if you go through the entire booklet, make highlights or notes or add stickers saying what is where in that section of the booklet, before you attempt to set it up, it will be very helpful. The remote is kind of an odd design with having to push on buttons for different commands all over it to achieve one or two commands, but after you use it for a while you get to understand it better and better. Just like a new car. There is so much more to this, but not enough room to write it all, but, if you want very good recording capabilites, with special items like zoom rates of 1.0, 1.2, to 1.5 and to 2.0 with a square box that comes on screen when you pause the DVD and push the 'zoom' button, you can move the square on teh screen where ever and then hit enter and it will magnify that square. Great feature. When running in record mode, you can hardly hear it at all. Only little draw back is that when loading a DVD disc in, the unit scans the disc thoroughly for several seconds before ready to play. But this unit has many many nice features that most will enjoy, IF YOU HAVE PATIENCE. That is No.1 !!! If mine goes out, I will definitely buy another one like it. It is that good. UPDATE: September 2013: I am still using this recorder player and have no problems what so ever with it. Still records great and clear from VHS to DVD or vice versa. Recording off of TV is a snap and records very nicely from that also. If you are wondering whether you should get one of these, do not hesitate as it is a wonderful unit and I am very happy with it. Remote can be intimidating a bit, but, the more you use it, the more you will master the controls. This unit has a plethora of cammands that can be used for different uses. While the manual is a tad vague, you can get it off of their website and print your own manual pages for what you need it for. Have fun!!

This review is about a Toshiba DVR670KU DVD/VHS Recorder. I recently bought a Magnavox MDR515H with a hard drive and sent it back it was such a frustrating POS. I then got this Toshiba DVR670KU DVD/VHS Recorder. Looks to be the same lousy firmware as the Magnavox by the menu screens and horrible channel selection method, etc. but I kept it anyway. (I can't keep wasting money on return S&H!) At least it only records a black silent screen on some of the channels as opposed to most of the channels like the Magnavox, and 5 to 10 seconds can add up when you have to wait that long between every channel change. It can literally take several minutes just to go from a channel at the low end of the tuner like 4-1 to one somewhere in the middle like 20-2. And yes, you have to wait for every single one in between. You can't see the channel you are programming as you set the timer so you don't know if there is actually a channel there and you can't label the channels so you better remember that 90-6 is actually channel 38. Also, you cannot remove subchannels from the channel list, so if you have one subchannel you want to keep like 120-11, but you don't want the other subchannels 120-1 thru 10 and 120-12 thru 22 say, which may not even have programming there, you're stuck with all or nothing. Now, some of the channels look fine when you tune to them, but when you set a timer recording you end up with 60 minutes (or whatever) of blackness with no sound. It records alright... there's just nothing there to see or hear, so you have to figure out which channels do that and hopefully find the same program on a different channel that will record actual video and audio. (I know, I know... whaddya want, everything?) Other than the aforementioned difficulties it has been pretty reliable timer-recording-wise. The remote is aggravating. Maybe it's all me, but I can't help pressing the wrong buttons all the time when I want to pause, play, rew, ff, etc. When you pause you can't just hit the pause button again to resume you have to hit play. Simple, I know, but I just don't think the buttons are laid out very well. If you accidentally hit next program instead of fast forward you've got to go back and start at the beginning and ff till you get to where you f'ed up. The trouble with that is the fastest speed isn't all that fast and the incremental (up to 180 secs.) skip speed isn't either. Editing titles isn't a lot of fun. A lot like typing on a telephone. Maybe texters are better at it than me but I prefer a display that you can navigate. The remote is also very directional. If I don't have it aimed exactly at the sensor on the unit it doesn't respond. The remotes I'm used to were good anywhere in the vicinity, even bouncing the signal off the tv screen. I've found that formatting discs in VR mode on the Toshiba eliminates the need for "finalizing" if I want to play a disc on my Panasonic. Also, the Toshiba will play the DVD-RAM discs I record on my Panasonic though it won't record to them and I lose the ability to play back at 1.3x speed. Another good thing is being able to record to VHS from a digital signal (unlike the Panasonic), especially since we have no analog channels provided on our cable system anymore. (Now, Comcast... THERE's a topic for disgruntlement! Some other time and place.) I would recommend it, hesitantly though keeping in mind the problems mentioned earlier, because it has been pretty reliable once I caught on to it's wierd limitations recording certain channels. I would not recommend it for it's tuner capabilities. You're better off with a converter box if that's what you're looking to do.

First I'd like to clarify a few points made by other reviewers: 1. One reviewer says "the tuner works well, it produces high image qualify from HDTV". I bought the unit partially because of this review. The fact is the tuner of this unit is not capable of receiving HDTV channels. It can only receive 480i SD DTV channels. This actually makes sense since the best quality it can record is 480p DVD, not much point to receive HD channel (it would have been nice if it did). 2. Another reviewer complaints about the clock erroneously adjusts itself from time to time. I had the same problem but it turned out to be an operator error. User's Manual clearly says that if the unit cannot find a PBS to set its clock automatically during initial setup, turn off the automatic clock setting. Once this is done, I have not had any problem. 3. A 1-star review says that this unit has only QAM NTSC tuner but not QAM ATSC tuner. This is incorrect. It does have ATSC tuner and is capable of receiving DTV channels over the air or from cable. It is just not capable of receiving anything better than 480i SD (see #1 above). Although this unit is capable of up scaling output to 1080p, there is really no point of doing so. Its video source is 480p at best and most HDTV sets do a better job up-scaling anyway. My Sony XBR4 actually has trouble displaying proper aspect ratio if I have the DVR670 output 1080p to TV directly. So my setup is to output 480p thru HDMI and let the TV does the up-scaling. My TV is then able to display 4:3 or 16:9 DTV properly. A single HDMI cable makes connection simple and cable management easy. Since it is 480p, I can use cheap cable. Overall this is an excellent VCR replacement for me (I had used VCR to record daily news to view after work for the last 20 years). What I like: 1. Very good video recording quality using RW DVD. 2. Easy to use timer recording programming, flexible to do daily, weekly, weekdays, etc. 3. 30 sec skip during playback is a great and easy to use feature. I figured out commercial for my news recording is about 150 sec, so just press the button 5 times and I am 90% commercial free. 4. Makes transferring old tape video to DVD really easy. 5. Easy setup. User's manual can be a bit overwhelming but it does provide useful information for resolving issues you might encounter What I don't like: 1. Display on the front panel is tiny and hard to read from 5' out. My 8-year old JVC VCR has much better display. 2. Like many reviewers have said, the letters on the remote is HARD to read. I try to memorize the button locations so I don't have to look at the letters. Toshiba could and should have made this user interface much more friendly. 3. When playing DVD movies some previews show annoying gray boarder on my XBR4 TV. If I play the same DVD from my PS3 I don't have this problem. I do not use DVR670 for playing DVD movies, so it is not really a problem for me UPDATE: Almost 6 years after I posted the original review, I was surprised to receive a comment requesting me to update the review to clarify my points (1) and (3) as the requester believes these two conflict with each other. You can see comments for this review for details of requester's question. Here's my reply: This unit is able to receive and decode digital and analog channels, so it has an ATSC tuner, not a NTSC tuner (old analog only tuner). However, when scanning over the air it is not able to tune in to any HD channel, only SD digital channels. This has nothing to do with recording capability (only 480P). You simply won't get any HD channel in the channel list after you scan. My TV had no problem finding HD channels. Not all ATSC tuners are equal.

After much research and review of many, many customer comments I purchased the DVR670KU on Jan. 9, 2011 and I am elated that I did. I wasn't sure about ordering online as I generally only purchase electronics locally in case there are problems and I need to return it. I received the unit in about 3 days and also ordered the HDMI cable since I have a new HDTV and received that in about 7 days. In stores the cable runs $25-$35 and I got it for $3 by ordering it with the recorder. Initially I had some trouble setting up the recorder because I was following the directions in the manual word for word. I could not get a picture on the TV and spent several hours redoing all the connections; finally decided it may be the (cheap?) HDMI cable so went out and bought another. Still nothing. Then I was staring at the remote and saw a "setup" button which was never mentioned and tried it, BINGO!, a picture and menu!! (Later I went back to the orginal HDMI cable and returned the new one). Then all I did was follow the set-up instructions in the manual beginning with the clock and there was no stopping me from there. I mainly wanted to be able to record TV programs while watching another channel; using the "timer programming" button and menu is a breeze. The problem I was finding in locating a unit locally was that none had a built in tuner which is what you have to have to record one program while watching another. Also, I don't have a cable box or satellite; my cable comes right from the wall so I needed the antenna/coaxial in and out on the recording unit in order to go to the TV and this unit has that also.I am in no way a techno-phobe and have found this unit to be quite easy to work with. I haven't dubbed from a VHS to a DVD yet but it can do that also. I have a question about separating programs to resolve yet that I can't find in the manual but I am very pleased with my purchase!All my research and the reviews for the Toshiba DVR670KU were way above the Magnavox or Panasonic and the price was better.

Cannot give a full review because I really only use one feature of the machine .. making DVD's direct from a camera . One of the few machines with an IEEE input available .