RCA VR637HF 4-Head Hi-Fi VCR
Nice player lousy recorder
I have been using the RCA VR637HF heavily for about two months. On the plus side it is a good player. That is about the only good thing I can say about it. <br /> <br />The main problem with this VCR is the remote. The bottom two corners of the remote are kind of square and sharp. The bottom third of the remote should have been left void of buttons but RCA chose to put the buttons that you need to use to play a movie down there. So if you are not good with your hands you will drop this remote quite a bit. The remote has most of the its weight in the top half. The buttons are small. If you have larger hands, you will hate this remote. <br /> <br />The most logical number to be displayed in the VCR LCD display is the number of minutes you have played. But no, RCA decided to display the time of day instead. So whenever you want to fast forward over a television add,  you can't see how many minutes you are fast forwarding over. The way around this is to reach you thumb from very lower right of the remote up to the top left of the remote and press the info. Button twice to get the VCR time recorded to display on the TV screen. Note that there is only one fast forward speed and that it is impossible to stop right at the end of an add break so some rewinding is necessary. After you get the tape to the desired position you have to press the info. button yet again to get the display off of the TV screen. <br /> <br />To record programs you have to first set the speed. Standard play (1 to 1) and Extra Long Play (3 to 1) are the choices. Whatever happened to Long Play (2 to 1)? You have to enter the 4 digit start time and then say the number 2 for PM very very slowly or the machine can't reed your input. If you did not set the recording speed correctly before you entered a TV program to record you have to delete your entry and start over by pressing the clear button. <br /> <br />After you get your events to record entered, it is imperative that you review all events to ensurethat they are entered successfully. Now you have to turn the VCR off or it won't do any automatic taping. Note that this VCR will start recording over whatever tape is in the machine if it is set to record and somebody turns it off to save energy. <br /> <br />The look of the VCR is tall and square and it is silver colored.  <br /> <br />Mechanically it is a quite unit and it records well quality wise if you clean it once every 40 hours or so. As a recorder it is a very frustrating unit to use. If you want to tape something important I recommend that you set the tape speed and set a kitchen timer so you can start recording manually using the button on the front of the unit. <br />If this unit had a newly designed remote, had the time elapsed displayed in the LCD readout, had the Long Play option, and was colored black it would be a great unit. As it is it's a second class player only.  <br />