Panasonic PV-9451 VHS VCR

Shopping for a VCR is a lot different than it was 3-7 years ago. In the early 90s, people weren't looking for much in a VCR. Basically, it was fine if it played tapes and came with remote control. Stereo TVs and VCRs were just coming onto the scene and home theater wasn't commonplace. People were just starting to invest in stereos that made listening to CDs worthwhile, and 25" cost about 50% more back then.

Slowly, we started coming out of the dark ages. With more people investing in stereo VCRs, TVs and home theater systems with surround sound, we started looking for different things in a VCR. Picture and sound quality was becoming more important. As more people started buying VCRs in general, we wanted stuff like on-screen programming. Manufacturers got intelligent and started making the counters on VCRs show real time instead of some worthless set of four digits.

Anyway, there was a good 5-7 years where the VCR was an extremely integral part of your home theater system. Nowadays, I just don't see that as true anymore. When I got the Panasonic to complete another part in my grandmother's home theater(I have also reviewed a Hughes DSS system and Panasonic TV), top notch video and audio quality wasn't the biggest priority. DVD is now the standard for high quality video and sound in your home theater. Therefore, I didn't feel like it was worth it to buy a six head VCR, or a VCR with a special audio chip, or a VCR with special video heads. The VCR is going to be used less and less for movie watching in the future. We decided to go with Panasonic because the previous VCR was Panasonic and the new TV was Panasonic, so remote control clutter wouldn't be so bad.

So, a 4 head stereo VCR was the ticket. Since DVD rental is still another year from being popular, you still want to make sure your VCR is stereo and has 4 heads if you are going to use it for watching movies. VCRs are a lot like TVs in that manufacturers try and get away with charging you more by adding other features to the VCR to make you think it is better. You see a $50 difference in price, there has to be a difference in quality right? Not always. More likely the price differential is caused by convenience features that you find on a VCR. Now, my grandmother doesn't do a lot of recording, so she told me that VCR+ recording was not a big deal. Since she didn't do recording, the "commercial advance" feature that lets you fast forward commercials with one touch of a button wasn't important. So, when I told, or should I say convinced, the sales associate that the extra features weren't necessary, he then told me that most 4 head VCRs have comparable quality, and I agreed my grandmother probably wouldn't notice the difference. He told me to get one that had a fast rewind speed.

In use, the VCR performs well. It's quiet, has nice large buttons on the front and the buttons on the remote are laid out quite nicely as well. On screen programming is fairly easy to use, and if you don't have DSS or a TV capable of channel captions, the TV allows you to set the names of channels for those of you that can't always remember which channel is TBS, TNT, TNN, CNN or whatever. Last but not least, it rewinds pretty fast.

Get this VCR if you are looking to replace the older VCR in your home theater and aren't looking for VHS to bring you high quality recorded video and audio in the future. Like I said before, is perfect if you plan on doing more and more movie watching on DVD, which seems like a safe bet for most of the industry. Don't get this VCR if you do a lot of recording and want really simple recording, a model with VCR+ would be better.