Toshiba D-R5 Multi Drive DVD Recorder / Player w/ HDMI Out (no remote)

DVD players are preferred over VCRs because of their ease of use and their quick access to content without fast-forwarding or rewinding. Still, many who have left VHS behind miss the ability to record their favorite content. With the Toshiba D-R5, you get all of the recording versatility of a high-end VCR and the convenience of a progressive-scan DVD player. It even delivers some of the best functions of a DVR.

Multi-Drive Playback and Recording
The D-R5 is designed to record and play back video using DVD-RAM, DVD-R, or DVD-RW recordable discs formats. The DVD-RAM disc, due to its flexibility when recording, offers the best value when using the time-shifting functions of this recorder, such as timer record, chase play and instant replay. DVD-R is a disc type to which content can only be written once, but it is also the most widely accepted format by other players, so it's ideal for recording and sharing home movies. The DVD-RW format generally fits between them in that it's more widely accepted by players than DVD-RAM though not as easily rewritten.

The D-R5 provides a range of recording options. It lists five recording modes with trade-offs between time capacity and video quality. It has an auto title/chapter/thumbnail creation feature, but you can create your own titles with the help of an on-screen keyboard. Front panel composite and S-video input ports make it easy to record straight from a variety of other video sources, such as a camcorder.

HDMI Compatible
High-Definition Multi-media Interface (HDMI) is an interface format that provides uncompressed digital audio and video directly to a digital television. It represents the current state of the art in high-definition video and sound because the information never has to be converted into an analog format. Another benefit of HDMI is that it puts all that information into one cable and one easy-to-use connector.

An added benefit of connecting the D-R5 to your television with HDMI is that the unit can "upscale" commercial DVDs, which are rendered at 480p resolution, to a digitally interpolated 720p resolution, which makes for a much sharper picture. Also, the unit's built-in MPEG decoder is able to display your JPEG files at higher resolution when connected HDMI display.

Lacking an HDMI connection, however, the D-R5 offers 10-bit digital-to-analog video conversion at 54 MHz and ColorStream Pro component video output for a clear image. This player is also DivX Home Theater Certified, which means it display popular Internet video formats that have been burned onto a CD, such as DivX, AVI, and MPEG4.

Audio
For home theater audio hookups, the unit provides optical Dolby Digital and dts surround sound output 24-bit analog conversion at 192kHz. The D-R5 also plays MP3 and WMA files recorded to compatible disc media.