Panasonic PV-V4611 4-Head Hi-Fi Stereo VCR
Great price, painful setup, marginal picture quality
After our old Magnavox VCR died after 8yrs of faithful service, we decided to replace it with something we could use to watch the occasional VHS tape (we mostly rent DVDs now) and save programs recorded with our ReplayTV. This VCR had all the features we wanted, a fine rating on Amazon (which is now lower than when I purchased it), and a price that couldn't be beat. Here's the skinny: <BR>+ Setup was excruciating. Took several resets and rescanning of channels to get the clock set (auto-clock setup isn't available if you are a Directv subscriber).<BR>+ Remote control layout is fine. The fact that it lights up is kind of cool, although we haven't needed that feature yet.<BR>+ Picture quality is adequate. It's fine for watching a yoga tape that I've seen a million times already, but when I tape programs that I've recorded on my ReplayTV (which is digital quality), it looks only slightly better than watching streaming video on my computer. Not impressive, although it may be better on a smaller TV (ours is a 36\\" flat screen. On our old 25\\", everything looked great!).<BR>+ Bottom line: you get what you pay for.