RD-XS54 experience going sour

[fmillion]

When I first got my RD-XS54 it was the best unit I could have wanted. It seemed to have every feature I could ever need. For a long time my experience was smooth-running, but lately, I've been slowly getting annoyed with shortcomings.

My biggest beef is the TV Guide system. It's buggy at best and generally unreliable. Navigating around is a bear and takes forever. Finding shows is equally challenging. Unless you only care about what's on in the next few hours, you'll be doing a lot of "next page" buttons. Besides, the unit has Ethernet! Why can't it get program guides that way! It'd be much more reliable than checking for pulses in the VBI! I've tried everything I can to just try to avoid the guide but it's deeply embedded and you can't skip it. You can't schedule programs without setting up the Guide, even if you use the manual mode. And once the Guide is setup, you can't manually modify the date and time! What's with that?? I wish I could just access a more traditional-style programming menu on the unit.

The DVD drive seems unreliable too. It could just be that it's picky about its media, but I've had it "destroy" more than one DVD-RW disc (to the point where even my computer's drive went crazy when it tried to read the disc!). I've pretty much resorted to DVD-RAM and DVD-R only, which kinda stinks when I'm burning a disc just to get something to the computer. and planning to reuse th disk.

Also, Toshiba apparently has a firmware update for the unit, but from what I heard you can't download it. This makes no sense since the unit includes firmware download abilities! What's the point of writing an entire networking layer and software for downloading firmware if you end up aving to pay Toshiba for shipping of a CD anyway?

If anyone has good "answers" to my issues, I'd be glad to hear. It seems whenever I find a recorder I really like, something about it ends up being so annoying that I start to wondre if it was worth it.

Flint

[next]

I can make a few suggestions that may help.

Navigating around the guide:

My guide seems to work fine. An easier way to navigate (instead of going page to page) may be to use the hours ahead or hours behind option. If you want to move ahead 2 days you can press 48 (hours) on the remote and move ahead two days for example. One day would be 24 (hours).....etc. Doing it this way allows you to bounce around the guide very quickly. It is actually quicker than my substantially more polished cable STB guide.

You may want to "lock" the channel monitor (upper left hand corner). This locks one channel in place and stops the channel from constantly changing when moving around the guide. Everything seems more ordered to me when I have it set up this way. This is really helpful if you are using the IR blaster. You can set this by highlighting "Listings" on the Service Bar. Press the Menu button on the remote to see the adjustable options.

The Search function with TVGOS is excellent. This is where TVGOS excels. Especially the key word search. Pretty darn good. You can really drill down with TVGOS.

Also try using the Menu button on the remote at different places when in the guide. It offers different options depending on where you are.

Manually Setting the Date and Time:

You are right. This is tied to TVGOS for obvious reasons. The date and time are constantly being updated when the guide updates. For example the time change earlier today happened automatically on my XS54 and all of my timer recordings were adjusted accordingly. This required no manual intervention. Even if for some reason you found the need to manually adjust the date and time the next time the guide updated it would be set to the correct time as a function of the guide update. I actually think this is a good thing.

Picky about Media:

Toshiba does have this reputation. Best bet is to stick with quality media. Find a quality brand media that works and stick with it. Best thing about the XS54 DVD drive is that it is easily replaceable. It is a $40 fix if the drive goes bad.

Also - update the firmware.

Firmware Updates:

Call Toshiba's 800# service line. They'll send you the firmware update free of charge.

Network Connection:

It would be great if the guide would updated over Ethernet. My LG LRM-519 updates the Microsoft guide this way and it takes minutes. I'm not sure if TVGOS offers this so it may not be a Toshiba decision. Not sure.

The network capabilities have been restricted on the U.S. models. The Japanese versions do A LOT more. For example you can move recordings to a PC via Ethernet. Not so with the U.S. version. What you can do is great but it is capable of a lot more.

I don't know why the auto firmware via Ethernet is not working for you. I've never tried it. There has only been one update so far so for me it is not that big of a deal. Maybe the http:// link needs to be updated in the XS54?


If I were you I would spend a bit more time understanding how the guide works. It offers a lot of shortcuts that are discovered as you use it. It is actually pretty good once you get the hang of it. I also have a couple of the KX50's (XS52) that do not have the guide. They are great machines. I like the simplicity they offer for scheduled recordings but I also like all of the information the guide on the XS54 offers. To me the XS54 is more "DVR" like. But one thing is for sure. They both offer top of the line editing features not found on any other DVD recorders.

[fmillion]

The network capabilities have been restricted on the U.S. models. The Japanese versions do A LOT more. For example you can move recordings to a PC via Ethernet. Not so with the U.S. version. What you can do is great but it is capable of a lot more.

Oh, what I wouldn't do for THAT capability!! Right now I just burn a DVD-R (or RW) and rip it on the PC, which is not that bad but does take more time. It is probably just a firmware feature so the hardware is probably more than capable. In fact it is: Net Dub. Since I've done some network developing in my time I was looking into "sniffing" a Net Dub session (borrowing my parents RDXS54) to see if I could pick apart how it works, and write an app to simulate on the PC... That'd be hot, but probably would get me in more trouble than it's worth unless I kept it to myself. (The lovely US is just obsessed with content protection and DRM, bleh.)

The guide si still annoying because th signal here seems intermittent at best; sometimes it comes down and sometimes it doesn't. That's not a Toshiba fault, admittedly, but I still wish there was a way to disable the guide system. I did realize you could just not use the Guide for programming and still use the "new manual" option to "sort of" get this capability...

Flint