Zenith ZRY-316 DVD Recorder/VCR Combo with Multi Format capability
Lots of options, but implementation isn't great
This DVD/VHS recorder has a lot of things going for it, like the capability to read and write to DVD+R, DVD+RW, DVD-R, and DVD-RW disks. It can dub (unprotected tapes) from VHS to DVD and vice versa, and has menu editing capabilities. If you check around, that's a lot to put into a package that only costs a little more than $200 brand new. <br /> <br />But when you put it through the paces, it doesn't really do a lot of stuff very good. It takes about 7-10 seconds to boot up at which time you see a \\"Zenith\\" text on the screen (it would be nice to see TV stations). It's clock doesn't keep good time, forcing you to have to reset it to get accurate recordings. It's DVD record quality is great in the one-hour mode and OK (but nothing spectacular) in 128 min mode, but really unacceptable in anything longer than that. You're better off recording to VHS if you need to go over 2 hrs. <br /> <br />Some of its functions don't work very well at all. For ex, when you use the DUB function, you are supposed to be able to edit out portions of the tape by pausing and FFwding to the new part of the tape and then resuming recording. But it only seems to allow you to do it once; after that, it creates a separate recording (which isn't what you want).  <br /> <br />Also, when you start the DUB, it momentarily records from the TV tuner, so you have a split second of TV recording at the beginning of your recording. Also when using DUB, the tape starts rolling but it doesn't immediately start copying and takes about 4-8 seconds to do so.  So where it begins is somewhere about 4-8 sec beyond where you wanted to start recording.  <br /> <br />When the player doesn't like a DVD (which can happen on a lot of DVD players) instead of just ejecting it it locks up the entire DVD, and there is nothing you can do but do a hard reset by holding the OFF button for 5 seconds (the remote buttons have no effect).  It even sometimes freezes the last frame on the TV, even if you switch back to channel mode (the audio sounds fine, but you have a froozen frame on the screen) until you reset the device.  <br /> <br />In fairness it does most of the basic things fine. It just doesn't implement some of its functions very well. I'd give it a 2.5 star rating.