GoVideo VR4940 Progressive-Scan DVD Player/Recorder with VCR
Great Results So Far
I have read many negative reviews on this machine but decided to give it a try.  For what its worth the manufacture date on the back was April 2004, although I just purchased the unit in October 2005, at BrandmartUSA in Georgia for $179.88.  For the price I thought it was worth a try.  I have been very pleased with the results.  It has also been written that the device is sensitive to which brand recordable media you use.  The top recommended brand is Imation, and the unit came with two Imation disks so there seemed to be some consistency to the reports.  I have however been using 8x Memorex DVD-R media with excellent playback results on this unit, my home Sony player, the Honda Odyssey factory DVD player, the Polaroid portable DVD player and the cheapo Norcent DVD player we bought for our child's room.  We had bought a cheapo COBY that was supposed to play DVD-R/RW and DVD+R/RW, and this player did play DVD's recorded from my PC but not from the GoVideo.  The COBY brand seems to have problems playing back as I took the COBY back to the store and we tested others.  The Norcent was the same price $38.88 (cheapo) and plays  the GoVideo VR4940 created DVD's just fine - no skips or digital blox just perfect.<br /><br />The unit itself feels very solid and is very heavy - which makes it feel like its built like a tank.  It also has a cooling fan on the back which to me suggests a quality build.  It may mean that runs hot, but honestly I have not felt that it runs abnormally hotter than any other a/v gear.<br /><br />Copying VHS tapes has been a breeze.  Our main purpose was to get rid of all the VHS in the house, and copying children's tapes to DVD.  It's only VHS quality as expected but the kids are just fine.  Apparently the children's videos we have are not macrovision protected even though they were purchased videos because the unit has been copying them just fine - Teletubbies, Thomas the Tank Engine, Elmo etc.<br /><br />Tape transport and handling is very good.  Very fast rewind and fastforward, yet slows down when nearing the ends of the tape.<br /><br />I am usually only moved to write a reveiw to warn people off of a bad product but this time I'll have to say that this product has really lived up to what I expected.<br /><br />Recordable DVD is a bit of a nightmare all its own with the different formats and various players playing recordables better than others and some not at all.  In my opinion the sub $100 sony player that plays all 4 formats has never had a problem with anything we've thrown at it, and makes a good unit to play the videos back.<br /><br />The unit has a DV input on the front.  Once I am done transferring all the VHS - the primary function of this unit will be to transfer DV from the camcorder to disc.<br /><br />I did not give it 4 stars because there are a few excusable but undesireable things.  Big one - no S-Video input on the back. Oops - what's up with that?  They have one on the front.  Also it's a bit slow to \\"boot\\" up.<br /><br />I would also like to see a feature where by the copy process could stop based on time counter memory for unattended copy process.  As it is I have to keep an egg timer clipped to my belt to return to the unit to stop it when near the end of the program.  Best thing to do here is fast forward to the end of the VHS material you wish to copy then clear the counter to zero - rewind to where you want to start the copy.  This way you have a negative time count on the disply which counts down until zero which is the end of the program.  I use a digital kitchen timer (Pampered Chef) to set the count down time less 1 minute so I have time to return to the unit and stop it when appropriate.  Seems to me that GoVideo could have a feature to have the system stop on its own when it reaches zero.  That would have been a HUGE convenience and probably would have gotten the fifth star from me.  As a leader in this space you'd think they would have thought of this too.  Still an Excellent unit and I do recommend it.<br /><br />Maybe more than you were looking for but thanks for reading.were looking for but thanks for reading.