JVC HRS5902U 4-Head Hi-Fi VCR, Black
JVC not user friendly
I wanted to replace an older VCR and so I bought this JVC HRS5902U based on some glowing reviews and rather impressive technical features.  Needless to say words are cheap;  experience is the best teacher.  This is the most user unfriendly device I have ever encountered.  I have to keep the manual on hand just to work through every major and minor quirk it throws at me.  It seems to arbitraily decide what it is going to do when.  It is frustrating to program because the program buttons jump rapidly in 30 minute intervals or they do not work at all.  It  does not have a visible tape counter;  it always resets to SP after you turn it off so you always run out of tape;  if set to time record you cannot stop it in midprogram. You have to unplug it.  When you plug it in the auto channel programmer  misses at least one channel.  And for whatever reason it will start blinking odd little symbols meaning something or other but you cannot tell because you have to read throughthe whole manual again.  The tape marking is a farce.  I can just tell that the designers of this machine were looking more to impress their fellow engineers with their cleverness than they were trying to simplify life for the customer.  Watch for it on Ebay.