Panasonic PV-VS4820 4-Head Hi-Fi VCR
Great SVHS recording, excellent value, poor instructions.
The feature set of this unit is (for me) a tad better better than the listed features for the similarly priced JVC units, which is what you'll be comparing it to if you are looking for SVHS-ET units that record SVHS on  both SVHS tape and regular VHS tape, the principal reason for buying such a  comparatively high priced unit. <br />The SVHS-ET (SVHS recorded on VHS tape)  recording and playback is excellent, and once you see the results, you'll  never go back to VHS recording - the picture on VHS tape is as good as the  broadcast signal - 400 lines of resolution compared to 240 for VHS.  And if  you exchange tapes with someone who has an older SVHS unit that can't do  ET, you'll find that recording and playback on expensive SVHS tape is  superb.<br />The unit also has commercial advance - detects and  skips over  commercials, which works quite well, getting about 80% of them, with  perhaps a 10% ocurrence of mistaking program material for commercials; the  advance feature can be under manual control or automatic.  There is also  movie advance, which skips commercials at the start of pre-recorded tapes,  but I haven't used it yet, as I rent DVDs, not tapes.<br />The one area where  this unit doesn't exceed the feature set in the comparable JVC units is in  the front panel video jacks - JVC also has an S-video jack on the front  panel, while this one has only a standard RCA composite video jack - which  will not be important unless you have a modern camcorder with S-video  output that you want to dub from.  If you do, you'll have a tough time  choosing between this unit and JVC, as you have to pay a lot more to get  commercial advance in the JVC line.<br />This unit is so good that I  considered buying a second unit for dubbing, but I found that there is  no  way to differentiate between two identical decks - they will both respond  to the same remote codes.  Sony allows the user to designate units as  &quot;VCR1&quot; or &quot;VCR2&quot;, so that 2 otherwise identical units  can be controlled without conflict, but Panasonic does not - at least at  this price point.  In any event, this is not the deck you'd want for  serious editing, as there is no flying erase head, and the cueing accuracy  is typical of a low cost deck.  <br />I had a hard time figuring out how to  work all the features.  The instruction book is reasonably comprehensive,  and covers the basics well enough, and almost all features are covered to  some extent, but many of the less often used features are not explained  adequately (e.g., slow motion tracking), and are are often not where you  would expect to find them, or are poorly written.  I called Panasonic  support twice for explanations (something I have never had to do on a  consumer electronics product till now!), and got a prompt, accurate  response both times (a pleasant surprise).  After becoming familiar with  the unit and reviewing the instructions to see where I had gone astray, I  found that all functions were indeed covered, but I never would have found  everything without help.  Whoever wrote the manual spoke idiomatic English,  but simply didn't know how to organize a manual.<br />Overall, an excellent  performer, a great value, and worth the hassle of figuring out the  instructions.