Product Description

With the RD85DT player/recorder, you can enjoy digital television and archive hours of TV programmes on your hard drive. The RD85DT comes with a digital TV tuner, a 160 GB hard drive and allows you to enjoy advanced recording functions such as TimeSlip. The RD85DT is also equipped with the electronic programme guide, EPG. The RD85D player/recorder is a real digital video recording tool which will allow you to build your own personal video library.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #35908 in Consumer Electronics
• Brand: Toshiba
• Model: RD-85DT
• Released on: 2006-06-27

Manufacturer's Description
The 85DT's appearance positively demands a thumbs up. It has a really attractive, futuristic design with colourful surrounds on the buttons and sharp, defined features. It's silver and black making it compatible with most TV designs.

It supports multi-formats including DVD-RW, DVD-RAM, single layer, DV-R, JPEG and MP3 playback. It's also got all the desirable connection like a component-video output, RGB-enabled scart and S-Video. Toshiba have come up with four unique recording modes with the ability to be customised, allowing you to optimise recording quality with any source. It also boasts a 32 event or 2 month timer ready to be programmed manually or by using the 8-day EPG.

Box Contents

Customer Reviews

my feelings on this unit
Hi i bought this unit from Amazon on the 9th Feb and when i opened it i looked through the quick start guide then as advised the first manual enough to get it up and running. once turned on the unit found the freeview channels no bother and the quality of picture with my newly installed Digital ariel is superb. i have found that the panasonic which i am replacing was far easier to use much less complicated but for the equivalent panasonic to this you can pay half as much again, the manual on the tosh is not the easiest to digest. once you get through the book it is quite easy to set up a recording either using the epg or manually. note this unit does not have PDC which helps when programs run late, as said in some other reviews the cooling fan is noisy. quality of play back is excellent, one thing i like is you can modify you freeview channel layout to group all your favourates together. one big down point is that unlike my old panasonic is if you want to record and watch another recorded program thats ok, but if you wish to watch another program and record , unless you have another freeview box which i have or are still able to receive standard channels then you are stuck as it will not allow you to be on a different channel to what you are recording hence the reason for only four stars as i was used to being able to do just that. the menuing is easy to see but is not visually as good as the panasonic. all in all though quality picture, good big hard drive, DVD RAM compatable, adjustable sound and picture quality and all at a pretty reasonable price for what you are getting.
I hope this was of help.

6 MONTHS ON

Hi i wrote the above review just 6 months ago about this item which i had just bought, just to say that twice now in the first 6 months i have had problems with loosing picture quality, for some reason the tuner starts to loose the plot and the sound breaks up as does the picture. it has been back to toshiba who were supposed to have fitted a modification to it some sort of filter i'm told but a couple of months on it is doing the same. this is very diapointing as i have got quite used to this and don't want to loose it but it is going as the fault is getting on my nerves.
i would hope that this is a one off but who knows.

Toshiba RD-85DT
Having received this recorder last week I'm very impressed, although still coming to terms with all it can do.

Setup was completely straight forward. We live in an okay freeview area and the picture is fine. Have yet to use the DVD recorder, but the HDD functionality is excellent.
I've only used SP quality but the picture is perfect and at this level allows 72hr of recording. Folders makes long term storage easy.

Only problem I've seen is that the EPG is a little slow and not always "up-to-date" and only seems to update on the hour. The fan is also a little noisy, but I think that's to be expected for an DVR. The machine doesn't always set the correct screen size so sometimes people are stretched.

Superb bit of kit
Having bought this DVD recorder just over two weeks ago, I am still impressed with its quality, functionality and easy of use.

Setting the unit up was a doddle - connect it to the tv and plug it in to the mains and it will set itself up for you pretty much on its own in next to no time at all.

Reception of digital channels is excellent - much better than my last freeview box with a few extra channels appearing in the list. However, please note that this recorder will ONLY receive digital channels and not 'old style' analogue broadcasts.

Using the program guide to record from is very simple, and the quality of recording/playback is excellent even in standard play mode. The large HDD provides loads of space for recording just about everything under the sun.

Time slip recording can be usefull in some situations and functionality wise works well, but I can't really see myself using it.

Being able to watch a recording at the same time as recording is excellent - no need to wait for the recording to stop first!

Very smart design. Display is large, clear and very uncluttered. Recording time and settings can be seen very clearly from the armchair. Toshiba have added a nice touch to the machine when they designed the record / play / dvd / HDD buttons to light up different colours (not the actual button, but a ring around the button) to indicate the operating mode. This is much clearer than trying to show the same on the display and results in a very uncluttered, clear display.

I'm still finding new functions to play with, but at this stage I am still very very impressed with the machine. It's the first Toshiba product I have bought, but I don't think it will be the last!