GoVideo DDV9755 Dual Deck S-VHS Hi-Fi VCR
Perfect for archiving
Everything about this deck is driven by the on screen menu, which comes with comprehensive documentation. As with any new toy, you'll need a little patience, but within a week you should have all the necessary tricks memorized. There are special settings that control tape quality - such as if your master tape is recorded in SP or EP and if audio is hi-fi or mono. S-Video is available with the purchase of an S- Video cable (not included) and only needs to be enabled, like everything else, through the on screen menu. <br />If you have a digital cable box, this until comes with a special infrared &quot;mouse&quot; for lack of a better word that plugs into the unit and can change channels on the cable box when you are not home. (It does not work with every brand of cable box.)<br />This unit has both front and back A/V connections. The recordings made by this deck usually result in a crystal clear freeze frame - excellent!<br />Some of the things this unit is perfect for:<br />Continuous recording with both decks - I recently recorded a 48 hour TV marathon with ease, only having to swap tapes every 12 hours.<br />Copying favorite movies or home videos for friends and family - the quality of picture produced with the go deck is far superior to hooking 2 VCR's together. Visually, the copy is often identical to the master tape.<br />Less tape swapping - if you're away from home, you can easily record different programs onto different tapes, by enabling each deck to record from the TV through the onscreen menu.<br />S-VHS - You can use both VHS and Super VHS (very high resolution) tapes with this deck.<br />Con: this particular unit is long and may not fit into every entertainment center. You should measure before purchasing it to avoid disappointment, if space is a concern. Go Video does offer stacked decks.<br />Macrovision -- these units no longer disable the macrovision signal (by law), so you can no longer make back up copies of your store purchased videos if they aremacrovision coded.<br />This is an excellent product with tons of features that I'll probably never be curious enough to use, such as commercial editing through the programming of tape position numbers (e.g. edit out everything between 1h 12m 24sec - 1h 14m 07 sec), simultaneous recording, and recording from the tv while watching a seperate videotape. (sounds handy, don't it!)