Panasonic PV-V4525S 4-Head VCR, Silver
Panasonic Commercial Skip VCR
I usually love Panasonic products, but this one I do not recommend. First of all, the terminology is tricky: I was trying to replace one that had commercial \\"advance,\\" which turns out not to be the same as commercial \\"skip,\\" which actually means nothing. It provides a button you can use to fast forward 60 seconds at a press to go through commercials. However, since commercials are not timed at 60-second intervals, you either wind up under or over shooting, and it takes a lot of presses to get it just right. Just plain FF is easier than this silly button. Which leads to the second major problem: the darn thing zips through FF and REW so fast that when you press the STOP button, you are 9 minutes away from where you wanted to stop. There is simply no controlling it any better than that. So you are wasting time trying to get to the place you want to be anytime by going back and forth, let along through the commercials. Finally, the manual is so skimpy as to be useless. I had to call the tech support number several times to find out how to accomplish certain procedures. They verified that yes, whatever it was, was not in the manual, if you can call it that. I am still trying to decide whether to go ahead and return this VCR or not. The shipping costs may not be worth it. The only thing you can say for it is that it is inexpensive. Oh and the picture quality is not as great as it is billed.