scott@hou2g.UUCP (Mr. Berry) (02/05/86)
Here's the second part of the responses to my query about VCRs. Scott Berry <----------------------------------> I assume you'll get some more technical replies; I just thought I'd add to the chorus. I read up on VCRs in Consumer Reports before buying; their summation at that time (18 mo. ago) was that all VCRs were pretty much alike in quality, except for the much-more-expensive ones. Same for tapes, although I've heard there are a lot of new types. Beta is said to be the "dinosaur" of the industry, or supposedly will be. The only difference is in added features, such as a cordless remote control, programmability for more than one setting, etc. I went out and bought the cheapest VHS VCR I could find, and have been very very happy with it. I use it on the "extended play" setting, thereby getting six hours per T-120 tape (the cheapest on sale). No complaints at all. (I share your wish for Star Trek; I bought it because ST was going to be broadcast daily at 4:00 PM and I thought I'd go crazy if I couldn't see it! Now I have a complete set of all 79 episodes, on about 13 tapes. I did rent one of the released uncut episodes; it's true, some scenes are intact that had been cut by my station.) I do recommend reading up the latest Consumer Reports summary. By the way, mine's a Sharp. Love it! <----------------------------------> Scott: Like you I was interested in a VCR in the $350 range. My brother was pushing me to a $1000 hi-fi stereo Panasonic....but I resisted. I was leaning toward Panasonic because I feel they are good quality, but something in the 300 to 400 $ range. Electronics whizzes at the Labs were telling me "go for price and features and not worry about the brand". The claim being that the quality was pretty uniform among the different brands. Also, a glass physics colleague purchased a $250 Kroger bargain (no-name brand) and was very satisfied. The above freed me to shop, which is not normal for me. Most 350 VCRs I found were 2 headers and this turned out to be an important feature, at least in my mind. The 4 head feature yields far superior pause and search results. Most 2 heads produce searches in which the picture is not readily visible. With a 15 and 17 year old boys at home I felf that there would be no end of complaining so I decided on 4 heads. At Video Warehouse in Georgia I found a JVC with 4 heads and remote and many other features for $350. It was model HR-D151U and we have been very pleased with its performance. On New Years day I saw an ad for Circuit City with the same model for $330 so today you might be able to find it for $300. A friend and I purchased the VCR at the same time and he is also pleased with this model. That's two data points! I hope the above helps you out. <----------------------------------> In article <779@hou2g.UUCP> you write: >1. What difference is there (quality-wise, as well as in operation) > between Beta and VHS? Is any quality difference intrinsic to the > format, or does it vary solely by manufacturer? What about tape > availability (pre-recorded, mostly) The quality difference doesn't matter in practice. One advantage to VHS is that some tapes record longer (up to 8 hours, although in practice you can't buy a tape longer than 6 hours.) I can't tell the difference in quality between the 3 tape speeds, so I always use the slow speed (and my VCR defaults to this one.) Another difference is that it's easier to find VHS tapes, VHS seems to be winning. >2. Is there any difference between "stereo" and HiFi VCRs? I don't know. I would guess that HiFi is good quality mono. >3. I notice "4-head" models are invariably more expensive than "2-head" > models. What is the difference? (explanations along the lines of > 'One has 2 more heads' will be cheerfully flushed down the..er..head.) > Is this difference REALLY worth the extra bucks? I'm not sure here, but when you're recording you normally get what you are recording back out the output onto your TV. More heads might allow you to see what you just recorded OFF THE TAPE rather than just copying from the input to the output. >4. I have cable TV. Do I need a "cable-ready" VCR? What kind of > switching arrangement (black box?), if any, will I need to go > between TV, taping from TV, playing VCR. Does cable present any > problems with watching one channel while taping from another? This depends on how your cable company is set up. Try removing your cable box from the hookup and see what you can tune into. Our system puts the first 12 channels on the regular VHF stations (so you don't need the box) and the rest on special "cable channels" which are different from VHF or UHF. If you have 12 or fewer channels, they might all be on VHF. Or they might put the extras on UHF. Decide which channels you might want to record off. (In practice, we almost never record anything except NBC, which is on VHS.) If you are the same, you don't need a cable ready TV. For the rare case where you want to tape a special channel (perhaps HBO or TMC) or something that's scrambled, you can rearrange your wires by hand and record it without being able to watch something else at the same time. If you want to record from weird channels and watch something else (also on a weird channel) often, then cable ready is worthwhile. Note that if the VCR has little dials for each of the 12 channels (for tuning) and a 3 position switch (VH, VL, and U) you can adjust these to go between channels 6 and 7 (or is it 5 and 6?) to get SOME of the special cable channels (we can get 16 through about 22, but not 14 or 15.) You can get a fancy switch box for $60 or so, with 6 inputs and 3 outputs. An A-B switch (2 inputs, one output) costs $5 or so. A block converter (which converts all the cable channels to UHF as a block) runs $30. A remote control cable box can be bought for under $100. These are all alternatives to getting cable ready, so it's often not worth paying much extra for cable ready. >5. Which manufacturers (models too, if you're so inclined) do you recommend, > keeping in mind my stated requirements? > What about tapes? Any kind SIGNIFICANTLY better? Prices? We bought ours at Sears and found a good sale. I'll bet you'll do well at Crazy Eddies. Prices have gone down recently. Tapes all seem the same to me - we buy by price. >6. Are there any other questions I *should* be asking? Care to skip the > "middle man" and just provide the answers to them? Some things to take into account: A remote control is important, so you can fast forward through commercials. We have one with a wire and that's not much of a problem. Be sure to get "one button recording" which lets you start recording a one hour show by pressing one button twice (once for each half hour.) We don't have this and it's a big pain to start something recording and go to bed - we have to set on and off times or just hit record and stay up to shut it off (or let it keep recording to end of tape.) Get controls that will be easy to read/use in the dark. Chances are the light will be poor where you put your VCR (especially at night.) Some controls are OK in the store but confusing in the dark. If the VCR has a clock, what do you have to do to reset it after a power failure? Does it have battery backup? It's a pain in our house to reset every gadget after a power hit. <----------------------------------> I'm in the same situation as you: getting a tax refund (don't you love lending the feds money at 0% interest?) and looking for a vcr. I have done some shopping, and can reply to some of your questions: 1. As I understand it, Beta is a theoretically more reliable system since it does not withdraw and insert the tape each time stop/start is engaged as does VHS. Technically it's supposed to have an edge in video reproduction, though I don't see the difference, though it's probably measurable electronically. 2. Because of its longer playing time, VHS took the market share away from Beta, thus availability of rental tapes is largely in VHS, as are probably the tapes of your friends you may borrow. 3. 4 vs 2 head: As I understand it, 2 heads can only provide clear slow and stop action (special effects) at the SLP (slowest) speed of recording. Tapes sold (or available for rental) are recorded at SP (fastest) speed, so visual noise appears on special effects on a 2 head machine. The additional 2 heads are used to provide clear special effects at the SP speed. 4. Cable ready simply means that the vcr's tuner can receive the cable channels (typically A-1, A-2, A-W, about 27 total) directly from the cable, thus obviating the need for the cable box, which costs $4/month here. Note that the box may be needed to decode premium channels. Here, the cable box inside decodes Cinemax, Showtime, and Disney. HBO is decoded at the junction box outside, so the inside box is not necessary if one has a cable-ready vcr (or tv). In my opinion, cable-ready is an important feature, especially if you intend to use the vcr's remote control to tune it. I lean towards the 4 head machine, though I haven't decided yet. Two other features important to me are: 1. The number of channels that can be preset on the vcr. Most machines allow you to set (pretune) 12, 14, or 16 channels. If you get cable, they typically transmit on most of the VHF (2-13) channels. Thus the local UHF stations and some of the cable only (e.g. WGN, CNN, WTBS) channels are usually transmitted on a VHF channel. If you have 15 tv channels you watch regularly, or would like to have pretuned, and your vcr only has 14 channels, you're out of luck; you would have to choose 14, and retune the additional one when you want to watch it. Some vcrs (e.g. the RCA 385) have the capability to pretune up to 80 or 99. If you want to spend more, you can get a quartz tuner with a digital pad that can random access any channel. (I have seen a quartz tuner on a Zenith without a random access capability, a nuisance if you want to go from channel 4 to 24). 2. If you intend to do any recording using the timer, check how long, if at all, the vcr can save its clock and program data during a power loss. Some machines can only handle momentary losses, while others can handle up to an hour or so. Please let me know what kind of responses you get from the net. <----------------------------------> >1. What difference is there (quality-wise, as well as in operation) > between Beta and VHS? Is any quality difference intrinsic to the > format, or does it vary solely by manufacturer? What about tape > availability (pre-recorded, mostly) My understanding is that Beta is in fact better as far as picture quality goes. Our local rent-a-video outlets however seem to favor VHS. You should check your local stores, some stock each movie in both, some only in VHS. >3. I notice "4-head" models are invariably more expensive than "2-head" > models. What is the difference? (explanations along the lines of > 'One has 2 more heads' will be cheerfully flushed down the..er..head.) > Is this difference REALLY worth the extra bucks? I believe that the 4-head machines are really only for producing special affects (like fades and such). >4. I have cable TV. Do I need a "cable-ready" VCR? What kind of > switching arrangement (black box?), if any, will I need to go > between TV, taping from TV, playing VCR. Does cable present any > problems with watching one channel while taping from another? It's amazing how poorly VCR manuals explain this. Just about every new VCR I've ever seen is "cable-ready." What this means is that the VCR has 10-16 channels, each of which can be tuned to any of the 83 cable channels. Thus while sitting in your chair with the remote control, you can pick any of these pretuned channels. If you wanna see another one, you have to retune one of them. Or, there is another way around it: we have our "system" wired as such: cable----VCR----TV When the VCR is turned off, the cable passes through to the TV untouched, and we select the TV channel by using the TV channel selector. Our TV is "cable-ready", which essentially means it has a cable-convertor built into it. If you're TV isn't, you can set it up like: cable----VCR----cable.convertor----TV and use the cable convertor to select your channel as you do now. You lose the use of the remote control for the VCR this way... unless! You can put the cable convertor on channel 3/4 (whichever you set the VCR to put its signal out to), and then use one of the presets on the VCR. Our VCR actually has two outputs, a TV-signal output that connects into the TV's antenna inputs, and a direct output (not a TV-signal) that connects into the monitor inputs of the TV. The latter gives better resolution on movies that are prerecorded as such. Finally, the VCR has two "modes." VCR mode and TV mode. In the first mode, the output of the VCR is whatever it's doing. Thus if it's recording channel X, the output will be channel X, and so that's all you'll see on your TV. In TV mode however, it will pass the cable signal through unmolested, allowing you to watch channel Y while taping X. >6. Are there any other questions I *should* be asking? Care to skip the > "middle man" and just provide the answers to them? You might look at (1) Notice how many preselects are available (if you care). (2) What functions are on the remote control (some don't have channel selection--again you may not care). (3) Wired vs. Wireless remote. We have wireless, which everyone seems to think is better. Personally, from where I sit, it's a pain to aim it at the VCR. Depends how your room is set up I guess. (4) How you deal with scrambled pay-cable channels like HBO is tricky. Some companies do the descrambling at the telephone pole, in which case you have no trouble. Some have the descrambling in the box, in which case you have to use the cable convertor... unless you have a TV that has an output/input loop into which you can insert a descrambler. <----------------------------------> Some 6 years ago now, I used to work in a shop that repaired VCRs. My opinons are thus a bit old, but here goes: 1. There's no real difference between a plain vanilla VHS or BETA VCR. Yes, I know, the tapes are different sizes and the loading (threading) systems are different. In additon, there are some more subtle differences (e.g., the frequency of the downconverted color). However, both systems are essentially the same in that they are helical scan, color under systems. No reason why one should be inherently superior. 2. Because of the difference in tape threading systems, the tape in a BETA wraps around more of the scanner (the part with the spinning video heads) than in VHS. As a result, certain special features (e.g. noise-free single frame) require more than 2 heads in VHS. All BETA machines have only 2 video heads. 3. If you have cable TV and either (1)intend to watch one show while recording another, or (2) buy a VCR with a remote that can change the channels on your VCR, then you will definately want a "cable ready" tuner in the VCR (one that can tune those mid and super band channels that have letters rather than numbers on the cable box). 4. In this area (Chicago) there is somewhat better availability of VHS movies than BETA, although usually both can be found. Blank tapes for both formats are sold everywhere, usually for the same price. I never could see any difference between the premium and ordinary grades of VCR tape. 5. As you probably know, there are not really that many different manufacturers of VCRs; matshusita, for example, makes (to name a few) Panasonic, Magnavox, RCA, and probably quite a few others. 6. Last summer I finally bought myself a (Sanyo model 4400) VCR (for $180). I wanted it primarily for time shifting and wasn't interested in any special features other than the ones that are found on all VCRs. The Sanyos are quite reliable and come with a full year warranty (not 90 days) on both parts and labor; however, getting one serviced can be a problem as the manufacturer is not good about stocking parts and service info. BTW, those extended warranties (pushed so hard by salesmen) are a very poor value. <----------------------------------> I currently own a Panasonic OmniVision VCR that is now two years old. I originally paid $550 for it, but on sale I've seen it for about $350. I realize this may not be the exact MODEL you want, but I bought it partly because I've heard they are top-of-the-line VHS recorders, and it was also impressive in the store. This one has 14-day programmable recording, one touch recording (hit a button and it automatically turns on record for a preselected amount of time), 13 channels plus 2 user defined channels, 3 speeds of play/record (pretty standard on most), etc. You will need to ask your cable company if cable-ready VCR's make any difference--in my area if you have a cable connection (like mine) they won't use it anyway, so it could be a waste of money. I'd go with VHS format for maximum compatibility (almost nobody rents Beta format tapes, as far as I can tell). I've been told Beta gives a better picture, though. Don't buy cheap tapes. I bought some AVI (I think) tapes and they really sucked--an audible squeak can be heard when you play them, and the picture quality is poor. I've always had good luck with TDK, so that's mainly what I buy now. Last of all, look for sales! Don't be too quick to buy, because you can find some really good deals around, and the brand doesn't matter much (I've been told that only two or three Japanese companies make all those different brands, one making VHS (Matsushita) and the other Beta (SONY)). Good luck!