Panasonic PV-V4540 4-Head Hi-Fi VCR
Hard to complain for the price.
This VCR has all the essential features like indexing and labeling so you can find different recordings on your tapes later on as well as a &quot;tape-position-on-screen-graphic&quot; that helps one zero in on areas of the tape like the old music search feature on some cassette decks. Hey this is about as good as you're going to get for tapes! This is not DVD with instant access! Yes the buttons are small and the light feature only illuminates the bigger buttons in the dark like &quot;play, rewind, fast forward and stop&quot;. The other buttons like &quot;tape position&quot; you can't see. You might want to have a mini flash light by your table so you can see the other buttons in the dark. Yes these are inconveniences but the price is so cheap that it doesn't seem to matter much to me. If these things are really important to you however, then you should spend the extra money and get those features. WARNING DO NOT BUY A VCR WITH CABLE BOX CONTROLLER WITHOUT FIRST CALLING YOUR LOCAL CABLE COMPANY TO SEE IF THEY'RE CABLE BOX CAN BE CONTROLLED BY THIS FEATURE ON THE VCR. MY DIGITAL CABLE BOX WAS INCAPABLE OF BEING CONTOLLED BY A VCR REGARDLESS OF WHAT THE VCR MANUFACTURER SAID. I purchased my last VCR with this feature but it was completely useless in that regard and was a big waste of money. This VCR doesn't have a cable box controller and is fine for me since the digital cable box I had would only program-record one channel at a time no matter what.