Excellent picture, easy to use remote control, commercial & movie advance, S-VHS recording.

This is a great vcr, it's worth a lot more than the $220 that I paid for it. I originally purchased this unit because it had an s-video output and has received several good reviews. I've been using it for the past 5 months and have not had any problems.
I mostly tape shows off of a digital satellite and the videotaped material looks as good as the original broadcast.
I have also taped off of regular tv broadcasts, and have used the vcr to watch rented video tapes. The picture is very sharp on those materials as well.

After using this unit about 4 months, I can agree with most of the reviews on this site...the picture is great, I love Panasonic reliability (have never had one fail). The commercial advance feature is BLISS when it works (depends on program material)downgraded the rating slightly for this deficiency.

What a piece of junk. The picture is about the worswt I've seen and there are bugs galore. What a mess! What a mess of a company.

To the previous poster...Do you care to elaborate any on your comments? Nice review... Anyway, this is not a bad VCR for the price at all. I've not had any problems with mine in the 3 months or so I've had it. Plus I've always had good luck with Panasonic VCRs in the past. Too bad I can't say the same for JVC and some other brands...

Just purchased this VCR over JVC. I originally had a Sony Standard VHS VCR. It was the 799. I tried 2 units and it had interference in the picture. That was completely unacceptable for Sony's flagship VCR. I spent $238 for it. In comparison, I spent $285 for this one. That's only $47 more than the Sony.
Man is it better in Standard VHS, and S-VHS is just amazing, but not as much as I hoped. The Sony has those 19 micron heads, tape auto calibration, and reality generator. That reality generator is suppose to add detail without noise. It did look better, but had a real edge on the picture. This is nice on old, worn out tapes. The problem was that interference turned up on everything, including the composite outputs, inputs, and RF input/output, plus it showed up on pre-recorded tapes. It drove me nuts. I bought a Broksonic also for rewinding, heavy wear watching, and editing. It works fine. O.K., the Panasonic Picture quality using a S-VHS tape, and recording in Standard VHS, blew away the Sony, big time. Playing a pre-recorded Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back, also blew away the Sony in quality. The Panasonic in SP has virtually no noise, but does have some compared to Digital broadcasts, that's a story to follow.

I never seen a Super VHS deck before, so I really didn't know what to expect. My expectations were very high, so I was disappointed. Not with the VCR, but with the format. To start, S-VHS is basically the same recording quality as standard VHS, but with much more resolution and detail. S-VHS and VHS are in the same boat when noise and distortion come into the picture. S-VHS is less, but it still exists. The picture just doesn't have the very clean lines that a digital picture does from a DBS receiver or DVD player. I recorded a movie channel from DBS(with the S-Video connector obviously) in S-VHS in SP mode, then compared the picture with the movie channel. The resolution was the same. Great detail. What wasn't the same was the noise and colors. Edges of object has the same noise that is experienced with standard VHS. I must say that the Panasonic has the least noise from any VCR that I've seen. So the noise level on standard VHS, is much better than the Sony I mentioned. That's not including the interference. The colors are good in S-VHS, but not as vivid, or as flashy as on digital. What I mean is that when a scene has a women wearing a colored shirt, the light reflecting the color doesn't have the changes in brightness and color output, as the digital broadcast does. I can only think that is what reviewers call punchy or dynamic colors. How fast the color changes in moving scenes and its range of color change. The color on S-VHS tends to stay more of the same shade as compared with digital broadcasts.

To say the least, I'm extremely happy with this recorder. It makes the dull looking recordings that I've come to expect, full of life. It doesn't lose a lot of quality of the original source. I was really wanting a digital recorder, but JVC's D-VHS Dish Network receiver is so expensive. Plus, if I ever wanted to change service, I'm stuck with only Standard VHS quality. I thought about Replay TV or Tivo. They really are worthless for people who really "record". Those recorders are for mainly people who record daytime soaps for evening viewing. Movies and special programs are just wasted on this type of recorder. In fact, when you think about it, their not much better than S-VHS. Tivo's available time is something like 14 hours at the worst quality, and somewhere around 4 hours in the best recording. If your recording digital broadcasts already, the picture might be worse than S-VHS. Digital broadcasts have very minor artifacting. These digital recorders have artifacts, as they use compression with MPEG 2. So you start with artifact in the original source, then you add more from the recording process. Everthing else degrades as well with 2nd gen. recordings. The resolution for Tivo was the same as S-VHS. The resolution dropped to 230 lines in high capacity mode(14 hours). That 230 is the equilvalent of a "STANDARD VHS" recording in it's worst and longest mode, EP or SLP. The cheap cost, the archiving availability, and compatability with standard VHS VCRs that have the Quasi S-VHS Playback feature, makes this recorder the winner.

To point out, I originally was going to buy the Panasonic because of their excellent performance and reliability. I then noticed the JVC 4600 for the same price but with S-VHS "ET" mode for recording S-VHS on standard tapes, flying erase head, audio dubbing, jog dial, and S-VHS connector on front panel. I ordered the JVC. Years ago I had problems with a JVC HiFi VCR out of the box. It had the "shooting star" effect that causes horizontal bright flashing lines. Looks as if the heads are clogged. I didn't want a JVC because of that experience, but the price and features were right on the 4600. Later that night I did some web surfing. I found numerous reliability complaints on the new JVC line, including the model I ordered. Others talked about the shooting star effect, that I figured was corrected. Many others raved about JVC's excellent performance, but warned of their poor reliability. The next day I cancelled my order. With my previous poor JVC VCR and TV experience, and reading this, no way was I taking another chance on them. I don't have the time to screw with defective products. The Sony tested my patience already.

This Panasonic is replacing a 5 1/2 year old HiFi Panasonic that is suffering from misaligned heads and flickering picture. The flickering picture is on the tuner also, so it's not an affect of the head. I found the head misalignment problem when my new VCRs had to adjust the tracking all the way to one side with SLP recordings made on my old VCR. The SP recordings were usually O.K. Just that flickering. I was ticked about the defect, but I really abused(normal use for me) this VCR with enormous amounts of searches, rewindings, and dirty, sometimes taped together, rental movies. I'm still going to try to find the flickering problem, as this is strickly electronic and not mechanical, as the heads are.

This Panasonic is getting a 5 star rating for performance. It has abundant special features, but performance was the main purchase consideration. If I have any problem with this in the near future, I will readjust my rating with a new review.

Only have had it several days but I love this VCR! Almost cried when I saw Commercial Advance in action! Watched a 4 hour NASCAR race I had taped and all but 1 commercial was bypassed. I'm in heaven! Sure beats my old GE Mono unit!! Picture quality is amazing using S-video to the TV. I highly recommend this unit.

Tape Transport, Picture, Commerical and Movie Advance, Spatializer, Fast Rewind, One touch record

Lack of front S-video input, Pause, Remote, Rear panel jacks, Lack of S-VHS ET

I’ve compared this unit to other currently available S-VHS vcrs (JVC, Other Panasonic) Firstly I bought this unit as a floor model from Sound Advice. The features include two line level inputs (front and rear), spatializer sound processing, movie and commercial advance and indexing.

I bought this unit to record DVDs and as a stop gap until either DVD or Digital Tape recording become cheaper, and for playback of my existing tape library.

Recording
Using S-VHS tape recordings gave results that took my breath away, especially on landscape vistas, and although this machine does add a little noise, albeit with a soft pleasing effect, it was better than the JVC which did not seem to capture flesh tones as accurately. Even the 4820 and 4821 added more noise on playback. Although this unit doesn't have S-VHS ET which allows higher quality recording on regular tapes I get around it by drilling a hole in the body of the VHS tape housing. Results using this method were less brilliant than using true SVHS tape but well worth the extra effort. Initially, in trying to copy some DVDs this machine would either playback in black and white in SP or with horizontal bars in some scenes. I later found out that this is due to the copy protection and was able to get around it by upgrading my Sima color corrector to the Pro model (SSC)

Playback
Playback is very good and allowed me to see features on older recordings that I had not noticed. One annoying thing is the pause which adds distortion to the picture though I suspect that this may be because this was a demo unit since it only occurs on tapes made from other machines. Tried to find out if Panasonic was going to be upgrading this model since it seems to be discontinued but they replied that they were moving towards the digital format.

The commecial and movie advance work well enough though I haven’t had the time to really put them to the test.

The spatializer is intended to simulate surround effects on 2 speaker systems but I found that it can add to the output of the rear speakers in ProLogic mode and makes for a nice gimmick sometimes. Still it is usually set to off.

The remote is not very well laid out and is hard to operate due to the small buttons but it does have a one touch record button which is good for quick recording TV or sattelite programs. It also has an eject button. However if you loose or misplace the remote it it almost impossible to change the recording speed and activate the commerical and movie advance features.

Another nice feature is the onscreen display of program information (date time etc) when playing back material recorded on this vcr.

Overall 5 stars ; 5 for value

Similar Products Used:

JVC 4800, Panasonic 4820, 4821

Just purchased this VCR over JVC. I originally had a Sony Standard VHS VCR. It was the 799. I tried 2 units and it had interference in the picture. That was completely unacceptable for Sony's flagship VCR. I spent $238 for it. In comparison, I spent $285 for this one. That's only $47 more than the Sony.
Man is it better in Standard VHS, and S-VHS is just amazing, but not as much as I hoped. The Sony has those 19 micron heads, tape auto calibration, and reality generator. That reality generator is suppose to add detail without noise. It did look better, but had a real edge on the picture. This is nice on old, worn out tapes. The problem was that interference turned up on everything, including the composite outputs, inputs, and RF input/output, plus it showed up on pre-recorded tapes. It drove me nuts. I bought a Broksonic also for rewinding, heavy wear watching, and editing. It works fine. O.K., the Panasonic Picture quality using a S-VHS tape, and recording in Standard VHS, blew away the Sony, big time. Playing a pre-recorded Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back, also blew away the Sony in quality. The Panasonic in SP has virtually no noise, but does have some compared to Digital broadcasts, that's a story to follow.

I never seen a Super VHS deck before, so I really didn't know what to expect. My expectations were very high, so I was disappointed. Not with the VCR, but with the format. To start, S-VHS is basically the same recording quality as standard VHS, but with much more resolution and detail. S-VHS and VHS are in the same boat when noise and distortion come into the picture. S-VHS is less, but it still exists. The picture just doesn't have the very clean lines that a digital picture does from a DBS receiver or DVD player. I recorded a movie channel from DBS(with the S-Video connector obviously) in S-VHS in SP mode, then compared the picture with the movie channel. The resolution was the same. Great detail. What wasn't the same was the noise and colors. Edges of object has the same noise that is experienced with standard VHS. I must say that the Panasonic has the least noise from any VCR that I've seen. So the noise level on standard VHS, is much better than the Sony I mentioned. That's not including the interference. The colors are good in S-VHS, but not as vivid, or as flashy as on digital. What I mean is that when a scene has a women wearing a colored shirt, the light reflecting the color doesn't have the changes in brightness and color output, as the digital broadcast does. I can only think that is what reviewers call punchy or dynamic colors. How fast the color changes in moving scenes and its range of color change. The color on S-VHS tends to stay more of the same shade as compared with digital broadcasts.

To say the least, I'm extremely happy with this recorder. It makes the dull looking recordings that I've come to expect, full of life. It doesn't lose a lot of quality of the original source. I was really wanting a digital recorder, but JVC's D-VHS Dish Network receiver is so expensive. Plus, if I ever wanted to change service, I'm stuck with only Standard VHS quality. I thought about Replay TV or Tivo. They really are worthless for people who really "record". Those recorders are for mainly people who record daytime soaps for evening viewing. Movies and special programs are just wasted on this type of recorder. In fact, when you think about it, their not much better than S-VHS. Tivo's available time is something like 14 hours at the worst quality, and somewhere around 4 hours in the best recording. If your recording digital broadcasts already, the picture might be worse than S-VHS. Digital broadcasts have very minor artifacting. These digital recorders have artifacts, as they use compression with MPEG 2. So you start with artifact in the original source, then you add more from the recording process. Everthing else degrades as well with 2nd gen. recordings. The resolution for Tivo was the same as S-VHS. The resolution dropped to 230 lines in high capacity mode(14 hours). That 230 is the equilvalent of a "STANDARD VHS" recording in it's worst and longest mode, EP or SLP. The cheap cost, the archiving availability, and compatability with standard VHS VCRs that have the Quasi S-VHS Playback feature, makes this recorder the winner.

To point out, I originally was going to buy the Panasonic because of their excellent performance and reliability. I then noticed the JVC 4600 for the same price but with S-VHS "ET" mode for recording S-VHS on standard tapes, flying erase head, audio dubbing, jog dial, and S-VHS connector on front panel. I ordered the JVC. Years ago I had problems with a JVC HiFi VCR out of the box. It had the "shooting star" effect that causes horizontal bright flashing lines. Looks as if the heads are clogged. I didn't want a JVC because of that experience, but the price and features were right on the 4600. Later that night I did some web surfing. I found numerous reliability complaints on the new JVC line, including the model I ordered. Others talked about the shooting star effect, that I figured was corrected. Many others raved about JVC's excellent performance, but warned of their poor reliability. The next day I cancelled my order. With my previous poor JVC VCR and TV experience, and reading this, no way was I taking another chance on them. I don't have the time to screw with defective products. The Sony tested my patience already.

This Panasonic is replacing a 5 1/2 year old HiFi Panasonic that is suffering from misaligned heads and flickering picture. The flickering picture is on the tuner also, so it's not an affect of the head. I found the head misalignment problem when my new VCRs had to adjust the tracking all the way to one side with SLP recordings made on my old VCR. The SP recordings were usually O.K. Just that flickering. I was ticked about the defect, but I really abused(normal use for me) this VCR with enormous amounts of searches, rewindings, and dirty, sometimes taped together, rental movies. I'm still going to try to find the flickering problem, as this is strickly electronic and not mechanical, as the heads are.

This Panasonic is getting a 5 star rating for performance. It has abundant special features, but performance was the main purchase consideration. If I have any problem with this in the near future, I will readjust my rating with a new review.

I had to return this unit to the store. Talk about disappointing. I bought the machine based a lot on postings from here. Anyways, this unit disappointed in several respects. Video playback was too red (in case you wonder, yes I did adjust my TV set. That's not where the problem lies). The movie advance feature doesn't work on any movies I have or rented. Then there's the recording quality. Ugh! I taped off of a 8mm tape and the reproduction came out like neopolitan ice cream. Bands of orange, red, and green streaked across the screen. My old Panasonic which just went out of commission performed better than this so-called higher grade machine. I know other people have much better experiences with this machine. But I'm gonna take my chance next with a Toshiba 6-head.

I wanted an affordable VCR to keep me going till the digital market becomes more common place and affordable. I wanted S-VHS for the better quality above VHS for not much more money. So you have your JVC line up of various models in the recent *600 range and you have your standalone Panasonic. I am your typical user who records/playsback from broadcasts and also hires movies (and fails to get them back on time!).
Looking at what Pansonic offers in features, I think they are bag on the button. I would make little or no use of flyback erase head. I would make great use of commercial advance amd movie advance. I am also interested in the overall audio quality to tie in to my surround sound system (next purchase soon). The Panasonic has a better Audio sound than JVC in lab specs and ear test evaluations.
Looking at the JVC you get great editting and dubbing features on all but the lowest model which doesn't offer flyback erase. But that lower 2 model don't offer commercial advance. You also get jog/shuutle on all JVC which would collect dust for me.
The only feature I do like on JVC which isn't offered here is 'ET' allowing S-VHS recordings on standard tapes. But then again, the tape quality will impact the overall quality in S-VHS mode on JVC. I'm guessing if the Panasonic lets you attempt to perform the same than it would probably produce the same result (or better considering the dynamaphorous head) dependant on tape quality (but it won't let you). I'm not sure how it prohibits this attempt, but if it's a mechanical and not an 'electronic' bandwidth test then I may be able to convert some standard tapes into fooling the machine into believing it's a S-VHS tape. I'll soon see if this is possible when I check out the mechanics of a S_VHS tape cassette.
The final clincher for me was the reliability records for these 2 companys. I had one the original Super video JVC HK7700 circa 1982. Built like a tank, weighed more than an Italian Mother-in-Law but boy did that machine slog on and on. The function logic circuit finally gave up the ghost with the head performing as good as the day we bought it over 10 years on. Overall great reliability. But a more recent JVC machine in our household around 5 years old died with the same common head problem I've been reading on these boards. Seems that JVC designs a great product but wants to cut corners in where it sources the parts and where/how it assembles them in recent years. Panasonic on the other hand builds the quality into the product where it matters - great heads, quiet motors etc. Must admit that the JVC exterior is more handsome than the Panasonic in it's finish - But you pay for that and is it a top priority (not for me)?
On using the Panasonic I noticed that they have really done a well thought out job on the user friendliness, packing in features that I appreciate and delivering them in a manner that makes it a pleasure to use and not a chore.
I heard one posting complaining that there is no 'tape remaining' feature. From my experince, machines that have this feature need to be programmed before hand with that tape length being used - I for one never remember if I have a 160, 120 etc in the machine so the remaing time displayed is always questionable in it'a accuracy. But this is a minor quibble in what is overall a great quality/value product meeting my needs in almost every area compared against the JVC which doesn't quite hit the mark for me - especially on reliability and sound quality.
I have no problem in giving a firm recommendation for this model. Buy with confidence for years of reliable service.