Toshiba RD-XS32 Help Thread, Current Owners Only - Page 33

Is it just me or has anybody else noticed that Toshiba has pulled ALL firmware updates for ALL RD-XS models off their website???

In addition, I called two different Toshiba numbers and both reps told me they do not have firmware disks for the RD-XS52, RD-KX50, or even the other models!

I wonder if this stems from the RD-XS52 fiasco where the update ruined the machines? The problem was not the customer doing the update correctly, but Toshiba providing a corrupt file! To pull all firmware files off their site because of this is ridiculous.

I got my firmware disc today from Toshiba for my RD-KX50 and they sent me a YA11 and not YA12 Since I"m running YA10 I went ahead and did the upgrade.

So far switching between TV to DVR via HDMI is not causing "err-3B" to show up...but it would always happen so randomly.

I'll post an update in a few days.

Sigh..."Err-3B" came back last night when we switched to the DVR in an attempt timeslip "24". We had to wait for it to finish recording before restarting the unit.

I called Toshiba today and they told me that YA11 is the only firmware available for the RD-KX50. booji, where did you find information regarding YA12?

There goes the hard drive again!

Okay this is becoming a habit with this XS-34! I even just bought a bunch of DVD-RAMs. Some stuff was backed up but most...

First thing noticed was a recording halted before finishing. It mentioned in the title "next rec". Next thing was that the timebar was missing. I was looking through the thread to see how to return it.

Read that by pressing the power button for more than 10 seconds doing a "hard reset" would restore it. After that... bye bye data!

The library is still intact but who cares! Just shows all of my lost recording times.

Does this problem also occur with the XS-35?

I'll just have to pick myself up, dust myself off and start all over again!

Thanks Toshiba for your quality control!

Yup, about once a year. An HDD, one must repeat to oneself mantra-like, is for temporary storage. The bright side is that despite the scare it creates, at least the machine isn't completely hosed and your setup even remains intact.

I'll have to start transferring things I want to keep right away so I don't forget from now on!

Lesson learned.

I thought maybe this problem was fixed with the XS35 but apparently that is not the case.

BTW: Clark Griswold's response was mild compared to mine.

Pressing the power button for 10 sec or more will not reformat your drive or cause you to lose your scheduled recordings. You lost your data because when the HDD gets corrupted, the machine can act squirrelly. You will not be able to salvage anything by moving stuff off the HDD to DVD-R before the drive really goes, as you won't be able to access the titles.

To prevent this in the future, I do an ALL HDD TITLES DELETE every 4 months or so, as I record many titles a week. I don't think you need to actually do a reformat at this point; maybe 1x/year is adequate.

If your HDD is dying, you will get the same problem.

As I mentioned on another post, if you do a lot of editing, do it on playlists. I put in chapter divides on the original title, then make a playlist. I do my deletions and combining on the playlist. This prevents the HDD from being corrupted. The only deletions I do on an original title is maybe a beginning and end cut, that's it. Internal cuts I do via playlists. Besides, I'm sure everybody has made the mistake of doing chapter divides and deletions on the original title, only to find out you deleted the wrong chapters! So always do this with playlists as you can always start over.

None of the RD-XS models are immune to HDD corruption. Although the RD-XS35 is a higher model number than the RD-XS34, it's not really an improvement.

At least you didn't go all angry German kid, I hope.

I think Clevor makes at least two good points. Do the bulk of your editing on playlists, and it might be a good idea to do a preemptive ALL HDD TITLES DELETE from time to time.

Thanks for the advice guys!


That is good to know as I have done just that in the past.

One question: after making the playlist can I delete the original, or does it have to stay intact to retrieve the data to play. After 5 years of ownership, this is the first time I have done this!


German kid!

LOL!

"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! STARTA, STAART OOOOOOOOOOOOHWHOOOHOHO!"

No the recorder still works. I didn't lose the escape button! I did however lose my mind. Now I need to go look for it!

Before you do anything that would cause you to... get upset: no, you can't delete the original when working with playlists; otherwise, everything you're working on is gone and this time you would have only yourself to blame, not the machine. We wouldn't want any further self-directed rage.

As plplplpl has alluded to, you can make as many playlists of the original you want, and edit the playlists to your hearts content, but be sure you dub over all the playlists you want to keep before you delete the original title!

What I sometimes do to free up more disk space (since I archive once a week at most), is if I have a 2-3 hour title that I have edited down to a few minutes on the playlist, I dub the playlist back to the HDD (the Toshiba RD-XSs can do this ), whereupon I can delete the huge original title and save space. The short playlist is now an original title, but much shorter, to be dubbed over at the end of the week.

You can also chop up a playlist and dub over only the chapters you want. And you can create independent thumbnails of each chapter if you wish to give you an idea of the content.

Another excellent point, Clevor. Yes, the RD-XSs can dub the playlists back to the HDD as new original titles.

Another thing you may have noticed: as a matter of procedure, the machine throws up a warning each time you are about to delete an original recording to the effect that deleting this title will affect any playlists that use it. If you do make playlists, try not to rotely ignore this warning since it helps you avoid a possible regrettable mistaken deletion.

Okay so let me see if I got this straight.

I can remove the portions I want to keep using playlists. I then can take that playlist and dub it onto the HDD which now becomes an original title? Afterwards I can then delete the original recording, yet still have the playlist with removed content; i.e. commercials as if I had gone in and removed them from the original recording (way I used to do it). I can then (if wanted for archive) dub the new playlist to the DVD without loss of data?

One more thing can the playlists be combined as can be done with original recordings (hope that makes sense)?

I know there's a lot more to this recorder which I have yet to discover. Five years of ignorance by not willing to read through the massive instruction booklet!

You guys are terrific!

Yes, and yes.

Remember, once you dub the playlist, which is a virtual copy of the original with the sections you want removed, to the HDD, it is no longer a virtual copy. It is it's own original. You can archive that if you want.

The Toshiba RD-XS units were one of the fastest, if not the fastest dubber in it's day, so dubbing a 3-5' playlist back to the HDD to relieve yourself of the original takes seconds.

With the Toshiba RD-XS units, yes of course you can combine playlists like original titles. You can also mix and match chapters from different playlists in any order you want.

There are a lot of sophisticated features of the RD-XS model I am unaware of myself. I think I am using or familiar with maybe 50% of the stuff. I mainly record everything at SP, do a lot of recordings which require editing, and archive to DVD-R, but that's it. But I can record virtually anything I wish, as long as I can input it to a TV or computer screen (the Video Filter works very well on these units, BTW).

I've been using the RD-XS models since 2006 myself and only found out a year ago it can do chapter divides on-the-fly, when the topic came up here on a thread. If you are not aware of this BTW, it's a quick and dirty way to cut out commercials, although you might miss a few seconds of the movie each time it resumes again. When the TV cuts to a commercial, just press the CHAPTER DIVIDE button. After the commercial, as soon as the movie resumes, press the button again. After the movie is over, create a playlist, initialize the thumbnails, delete every other chapter, then recombine. This way you won't have to replay the whole movie to insert cut points . Essentially it's editing on-the-fly.

Doing something like this in full screen takes a lot of (resident memory) resources and engineering. What distinguishes the Toshiba RD-XS units from virtually any other HDD recorder ever made, regardless of how high end, is the ability to edit in full screen. This will become apparent whenever you use other HDD DVRs on the market, be that Magnavox, Pioneer, or Panasonic.

Yeah I record a radio show by running the audio of the receiver to the front ports. I use the lowest quality recording setting. It doesn't affect the audio and the video doesn't matter because there is none. A three hour show will only take up 30 minutes of HDD space. I then can run quickly through the ads!


What I do is go into "timeslip" mode. When the commercial arrives, I pause it at the black cut (just before the ad) and enter in a chapter divide and do the same for the end. By doing that you end up with a precise cut.

I also have skip back (instant replay) entered as 10 seconds, because the networks nowadays love to stick in those 10 second commercials. They know that TiVos and DVR's have them preset to 15 seconds. If you run the "commercial skip" it doesn't come to complete time set as it is a bit short. I think Toshiba did this on purpose so you end up seeing the tail end of the ad.

I really wish that there was a setting on it for one minute. I mean, who is going to set it for 5 minutes anyway! I don't know why that is even an option.


Sounds like you have this running into your computer? How is that done?


Were you aware if you have a "copy never" title that it cannot be copied over to DVD-R nor to DVD-RW. It can however be moved over to a DVD-RAM! Even though it cannot be copied onto any media it can be moved one time.

That TV Guide On Screen was the biggest jokes of the unit! I really dislike how the recorder will automatically shut off after three hours of non usage. I wish there was a way around that!

What I have discovered with the playlists is that they can be assembled even when a recording is in progress! BTW: how are they combined? I cannot figure that out.

I have also noticed after formatting the drive that it performs faster!

Willie G., haven't figured out how to do multiple quotes so I'll just comment on some of your questions in sequence:

I don't use timeslip, but I guess when you pause, you have to enter a chapter divide. I know if you are recording and pause to change channels, a chapter divide is entered there. At least you can change channels and resume recording within the same title, which a lot of HDD recorders can't do.

Yes, a DVD-RAM disk fools the copy protection into thinking it's the HDD, so it works sometimes. But the Video Filter works better . Can't comment further as such talk is discouraged on this site.

When I use TV Guide in the U.S., I have no problems with the recorder shutting down after three hours. I use the feature of auto shutdown after every recording anyway.

Toshiba RD-XS units are prodigious multitaskers, so yes, you can edit while recording. The only thing you can't do is delete chapters or combine titles; the resources required to allow editing in full screen and chapter divides during recording probably prohibits this. I do notice that I can actually edit while dubbing to DVD-R , but sometimes I can't. Haven't figured this one out yet.

To combine playlists you create another playlist, and highlight the ones you want to combine. If you press that blue button, it opens up the chapters in each title, so you can mix and match those any way you want.

Formatting the HDD will make the drive perform faster mainly because at that point, you have few titles on the disk, plus the drive is defragmented. When you have a lot of titles on the HDD (and the more complex they are in the form of chapters), this will slow down actions such as thumbnail generation, deletion, etc. But only by a split second or so.

Does anybody have extra remotes to sell? When I asked this (a couple years ago), I ended up buying one from someone here -- and someone else had a couple extras.

I *think* that my second XS32 remote is now in the process of dying. (Yes I tried putting charged batteries in it.) Strangely, it seems like a ton of the buttons just stopped working suddenly.. e.g. quick menu (one of the most important buttons!).. but also many of the other buttons like time bar, display, remain.. and even most of the #s inside the flap..

Is there some way I could have accidentally put the remote in some other 'mode' (e.g. TV vs XS32)? I don't think so.

I know I *did* stupidly accidentally change (this is AFTER the fact) the XS32 to think I meant remote 2.. and now I can't change it back, because the '2' key on the remote isn't working.. so I'm kind of stuck..

But does anybody have remotes to sell?

Is this it?

http://www.remotes.com/remotes/servl...12755635673480

I just bought a new remote for my XS34 here. I actually bought the wrong one - I think it's for a XS54 but it seems to work fine.

I believe there are other places offering new remotes for the Toshiba XS Series as well. Look at this thread for more info.

Actually, at some point last night, it started working again (rather, the rest of the buttons started working again). I vaguely remember that my orig remote did that before it really died.. but at least it's usable now.

Yeah, those are the right remote -- but I guess I was hoping that someone had extras that they'd sell cheaper than those new remotes (pretty darn expensive if you ask me). I'd be willing to gamble on a used remote that might die at some point.

I've seen entire XS32's (including remote!) going for about that price. (and in fact I'm semi-seriously considering getting one, just to use the original DVD burner to hopefully recover stuff from my unfinalized DVD-Rs from years back when the orig drive went bad).

Can someone tell me how to get an mpg home movie off my computer and onto the HDD on the xs32? It doesn't seem to recognize a "data DVD" and if I burn a dvd with a video-ts format, it thinks that it is a commercial dvd.

I'm using dragonburn on a mac with dvd-rw discs.

Thanks.

Assuming it's just a home video that's been converted to a standard DVD, it should work.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding.. Did you try LINE-U dubbing?

(e.g. Select HDD mode. Select LINE-U input. Start (HDD) recording of LINE-U. Switch to DVD Mode. Play DVD. Once done, Stop DVD. Switch to HDD mode and Stop recording.)

If it still doesn't work, maybe the RW disc is the problem, I don't know.

[[ Oh wait, maybe LINE-U dubbing only works with discs that were created on the XS32 to begin with -- I can't remember now ]]

Good tip on using the oft-overlooked LINE-U feature, but on an RD-XS35 anyway, it normally works with any non-commercial DVD. I've used it with home movie DVDs I had made on my computer (a PC, though, not a Mac).

This did work. Thanks! I guess I never really understood what the Line-U channel was for. I wish I could just copy between the dvd and the hdd, instead of having to play each movie in realtime, but this will work.

Yes, it's time-consuming to do a real-time dub, but in cases like this it's a pretty good solution, and the quality is remarkably good for a real-time dub; on my RD-XS35, it's virtually indistinguishable from the original. How does it compare to the original on your RD-XS32?

I am an owner of an RD-SX32 and I was trying to get an ir blaster cable for my unit.
Any ideas where I could get one? Even one for a different piece of equipment that would work.

I am not sure if I posted this correctly.

If I were in your situation and I had 5 or 6 bucks to gamble, I'd bet that one of these just might work:

http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-IR-Blaster-R...item4cf01e6984

http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-IR-Blaster-R...item53e06694a5

I was wondering what people are using for recordable media. The last I used were the yellow 4x Maxell which I bought 360 of them when they were blown out by Staples or the like.

I've put the Memorex DVD drive in mine due to failure of the original. I chose it because it seemed to handle the majority of CD audio functions. Unfortunately, my RX is sitting on top of my TV with the case off and the Memorex just laying on top of the stock drive. m'I bad, huh?

Does the non-stock DVD drive have an effect on what media will work? My guess is probably not since a 16x replacement drive will not work with 16x media (or at least for all the 16x I've ever tried.) I suspect the RX streams the data to the DVD in which case we are pretty much out of luck.

I know that with the replacement drive, you DO NOT update the drive firmware. However, what about putting the replacement drive in a PC and updating the firmware?

Thanks
Tom

Putting in a replacement drive doesn't change the fact you should use the best media available, which is still Taiyo Yuden. The XS32 won't burn faster than 4x no matter what you put in it, though.

I had an LG H22N that didn't work in an XS32 when I upgraded the firmware on the drive -- but another H22N with stock firmware worked fine. My opinion is unless there is some CRITICAL reason to try it, if you're happy with how it works in your XS32, don't touch it again! these machines are pretty picky about replacement burners.

I think that the worst chance is with 16x media. Verbatim 16x and Sony 1-16x both failed to work. Ironically, low quality 1-16x Playo's work 80% of the time.

It would be nice to know if any TY 16x work.

I seem to recall people saying the 8x work much better than the 16x