Sharp VC-H965U 4-Head Hi-Fi VCR
Don't get a used Sharp unit without the docs - 0 web support
In fairness, I'm not reviewing the product described here, rather the VC-H982U, which is a previous model, and the company that made and sold it.  It was given to me by my daughter's husband.  Unfortunately, it did not come with the operator's manual.  Ordinarily, that wouldn't bother me, as I can usually finger things out, but this unit does some things that are so unusual, that one would like the book to figure it out.  <br />I'm absolutely agast and astounded to find that Sharp DOES NOT POST THE USER'S MANUAL TO ONE SINGLE VCR ON THEIR WEBSITE ! ! !<BR>see:  <BR>....... <BR> <BR>That is the web page for the manuals, but it is entirely blank of documents to look at.  There are other products with manuals on their respective web pages, but not VCR's.  Rather, they want you to call an 800 number and BUY the information.  Doing a global search on that model number comes up with \\"Sorry, no matches ...\\", so they won't even admit they ever made it, and it is only a couple of years old.  What kind of support is that?<br />All I wanted to look up is how to zero out the tape counter.  [there is no button on the front or the remote, unlike every other VCR I've seen in the last fifteen years - I'm stuck on zero being about halfway through a tape.  I suppose I could run it to indicated zero, take the tape out and put into one of the other vcrs and rewind it there, but really!].  Oh, yeah, and figure out what all of these extra options are for the programming - they have multiple screens for some reason, but the info on the screen doesn't spell out what they do or why they are there, and the button usage is, well, peculiar - I haven't figured out how to get down to the next program line yet.  I won't use it to program anything I really care about seeing...<br />To my mind, since there are so many good competitive products out there from companies that DO bother to make their documentation readily available on the web, this missing \\"feature\\" makes me disqualify Sharp from any future purchase.  And that notion DOES pertain to the current product.