Sony SLV-N500 4-Head Hi-Fi VCR
minor (missing) features make a big difference
It plays a tape. It records. The rewind/ffwd function is amazingly fast with a good display of how far you've gone in the tape, which makes it very easy to set up a tape to record in the right spot. The front AV inputs make recording home movies onto VHS tapes for our family very easy. The &quot;commercial skip&quot; feature takes a while to get used to (it's just a 30sec scan forward), but is nice now that I have it. Setting the time and timer for recording is easy on the onscreen display, although the clock/display on the front of the device shows the time only if the VCR is off or if there is no tape in the VCR. Since I like to keep a cued tape in the VCR &quot;just in case,&quot; I do not get to see the clock. Since I'm not thrilled with the VCR already, this irks me.<br />I would not buy this model again because of the remote control. First of all, it seems very finicky about being pointed just right and it goes through batteries like no other remote control I have used. Second, you have to press Enter after your channel selection before it will change the channel. Given that not every push of the button is received by the VCR right away, I've been frustrated pushing enter several times only to have my channel selction disappear from the display because too much time had elapsed. The buttons are small and not grouped well so I actually have to look at the remote before pushing a button. I think I could deal with these problems if there was a &quot;previous channel&quot; button so I could just flip between two channels, but there is no such button! It drives me nuts.<br />In my experience Sony tends to make reliable products, so I can expect to be grousing about this VCR for years.