Panasonic PV-VS4821 4-Head S-VHS Hi-Fi  VCR
Spend the Money
Spend the money on this one.  It is worth it. We love commercial advance and now time phase all the programs we watch.  SVHS means you can record in SLP without loss of picture quality.  Then replay with CA zooms through the commercials.  High speed rewind, VCRplus, and auto clock set also excellent features.  After we got our first one of these, we dumped the cheap Sony and got a second Panasonic.