Panasonic PV-V4612S 4-Head Hi-Fi VCR, Silver
A VHS VCR of good value!
For the price I consider this a good value VHS VCR. Picture quality on playback is as good as any unit I have seen. The record/playback quality is not as good as some Sony units and that is one reason it only gets 4 stars. The transport works well. The stop to start times run between 2 and 4 seconds - depending on how long it is stopped - not bad. Rewind/fast-forward handling seemed gentle enough. Sometimes it auto plays a new tape and sometimes it doesn't; never figured out why. Picture quality of the tuner from channel 2 to 78 was as good as a Sony XBR TV. I could not check out the auto clock set since our cable provider doesn't support. I also did not check out the commercial advance feature. However, the movie advance does work quite well-it's almost like magic; only works through the remote and is fairly hidden. There is some breakup in the picture during search (not too bad through) and pause frames are almost perfect - a small amount of breakup at the very bottom of the picture. The other reason for only 4 stars is that the tape counter does NOT show on the unit display ever, but only on the on-screen display; and that only during play/record and fast-forward/rewind - not search. Not that it would bother everyone, but the remote control has very small, closely spaced buttons except for the transport controls which are logical and large enough. The worst buttons are the channel and volume controls - placement, size and spacing are very bad - maybe another 4 star reason. The unit controls are power, eject/stop, record, play, rew/back-search, fast-forward/search which is nice.  Played a dozen or so pre-recorded tapes, an equal mix of commercial and my own recordings, so far and the unit has handled them all with good picture quality.