I just purchased the Toshiba DR-410 DVD Recorder and hooked up the connections as shown in the manual. These are:

1. RCA cables for audio and video come from my Dish Network receiver and go into the input for the DVD recorder

2. HDMI cable comes from the DVD Recorder and into the TV.

The issue is that I can only watch TV if I have the DVD Recorder powered up. Can you not watch TV without having to power on this unit as well. Not a huge problem but I am wasting electricity.

Has anyone else encountered this?

Yes in your setup the Toshiba would need to be on anytime you wanted to watch TV. If your Dish receiver has it's own HDMI out I would run that to your TV direct. Then assuming your TV has another HDMI in, hook that to your DVDR.
In this setup you will not need to have your DVDR on to just watch TV.
Due to signal degradation I would really avoid watching live TV through your Toshiba. Only use that connection for setting up your DVDR or playing DVD's.

Thanks JJeff.

I had considered that except the Dish Network vip211 receiver has had a well documented and discussed bug (see this forum board and others) for at least the last two years in which the HDMI port either does not work from the start or stops working after a few months of use. So I had been using the component video instead on that receiver. I guess I'll go back to using the component video again to watch TV and use the DVD Recorder only when I want to record or watch DVD's

Thanks much for your help.