Sharp VC-H965U 4-Head Hi-Fi VCR
What's all the shouting about?
I bought this unit based on the 4-star and 5-star ratings found here, ignoring the one-stars about defects (not all new VCR's have factory defects, but it's getting a little worse every day). The Sharp's tuner is visibly noisy -- not too bad, but not as clean as several VCRs in this price range. Playing tapes, the picture is atrocious at both speeds: SP is noisy and ghosty (it looks as if even the ghosts have ghosts!), detail is poor for SP and the picture isn't at all crisp.  There's a lot of tape slippage, poor resolution, and so-so contrast. EP record and playback is truly awful -- extremely dark, with obscured detail, video jitter, loss of midtones, murky and/or jet-black shadows. As a spare VHS, it is totally unacceptable. The Auto clockset doesn't work and the channel scan takes longer than my old 1986 RCA. This is my 2nd copy of this unit (I thought the first was defective and returned it). I couldn't even steady the unstable image with a $400 professional Time Base Correction unit.  I won't bother to send this one back, I've wasted enough time on it. Chalk it up as a $90 loss, it's even less than one would expect at this price. Many Sharps of a few years back were actually decent machines. This one is a dud.