Costco is showing on its web pages these items:

Toshiba Symbio 160HD4 160 GB HD Recorder
RCA DRC8030N 80GB DVD Recorder

Much has been written here about the Phillips and Magnavox DVDRs available from WalMart and perhaps elsewhere in the U.S.

What are these components? Does either or both really have a hard drive, or are they both DVRs?

The Symbio is a white elephant, - it can only be used with 2004 Toshiba HDTV's, and depends on the analog TVGOS built into the TV's, which will not work after February '09.

As for the RCA, I'd probably trust the Philips/Magnavox before I'd trust that. But if you want to take a chance, go ahead. There are some reviews of it on Amazon you can read, and they only want $126.00 for it used.

The RCA dvd/hdd machines are extraordinarily flaky and have unbelievably random quality control. Input thru the tuner is near-useless with the line-in not much better. There are many reports of RCAs hosing their hard drives simply because a user did not operate the HDD navigation/edit buttons *exactly* the way the machine prefers. One out of ten buyers manages to get a "good" one, generally after making several exchanges, but these folks are the obsessive types hell-bent on making the most of a cheap piece of crap. Or, if you're a gearhead who likes to fool around with swapping hard drives and such just for the hell of it, the RCAs are often cobbled together from easily-replaced off-the-shelf PC parts (similar to some older Polaroid models).

But for the average consumer? On the whole, the RCAs are a waste of time unless you like to gamble, don't expect it to be your primary recorder, and can get one for under $100. Anyone with $199-275 should go directly to the Magnavox H2160 or Phillips 3576, retail or factory refurbs: much better recorders.

Thanks for the info. This was simply a curiousity question since I thought the Phillips/Magnavox were the only ones available in this country. I'm going up to Canada this weekend to purchase either a Panny EH-55 or the Pioneer 560 and I'll ask the warranty question in a separate post on the forum.