Panasonic PV-V4520 VHS VCR
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- VCR Type: VHS
- Number of Video Heads: 4
- Audio: Hi-Fi Stereo
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Can't go wrong with this investment.
Pros
Excellent quality, price, reliability; robust construction; easily readable display and navigable menu system
Cons
Does not look as cool as the new Sony VCRs.
Recommended it?
Yes
The Bottom Line:
Excellent purchase if you want a VCR that's reliable, works great, is robust, and does not cost too much. Has pretty much all you need in a VCR.
If you have read any of my other opinions, you would know about my fixation on finding the sweet spot on the price-performance curve for any product I buy. When it comes to VCRs, this one really hit it sweet. Not extra-sweet, like a spoonful of saccharine - just sweet enough to make life a little easier for a graduate student, and open up the video world of Blockbuster and the local public libraries.
I spent quite a lot of my student life without a VCR - the cable on TV seemed good enough, and I did not want to go in for the extra investment. Then I was gradually conned into searching for one, more so because I discovered the huge stock of excellent movies my local public library would rent out for free. I surfed into an online store, and surfed away completely perplexed - Netmarket lists VCRs from as low as $79 all the way up to $1500, and I am talking only of the single deck VCRs, not the ones which have double decks and can record tapes in a jiffy.
I asked around, and got to know the buzz words - it seemed that the good VCRs would say "4-head Hi-Fi Stereo". People told me that I should settle for no less, and my budget told me to settle for no more. I walked into the local BJ's wholesale shopping club, found this on sale for around $90, and picked it up. I never had the chance to regret the decision to date.
Let's go over the product features, in my now-standard style of evaluating my new gadget.
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________________T_H_E_____G_O_O_D______________________
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What's good about this product? Let's see....
1. Excellent playback. I really mean this - just pop in a video tape, and you get as good a picture and as good a sound as your tape can give you. I've seen a number of tapes that behave funny when played back on some older VCRs that my friends have, but start being good once played in this one. Maybe it's because it's newer than the others. Maybe it's because Panasonic sees to it that the belts of rubber that link the motor to the drive train (or whatever it's called) is built of quality enough that it does not have to be changed every other semester. Whatever it is, playback is what a VCR should do and do well, and this sure scores that mark.
2. Easy to learn features - the menu items and the huge number of keys on the remote, though intimidating at a casual first glance, are very easy to accomodate to and use to one's power. I frequently find myself checking on the graphical tape position and setting up tags to rewind to without really having the need - I do it because I like the features.
3. Bright display, automatic clock. If there's one thing that I find irritating with all the electronic gadgets that surround me at home and everywhere, it's having to set the time on every other device when it runs through a power outage - be it running out of batteries for my palm, or a short scheduled power cut at my home. My answering machine blinks like crazy (because I never had the energy to put in the extra battery), and the microwave goes blank, and my clock forgets my alarm settings. But when it comes to my VCR , it's a-OK. This VCR senses the time out of TV signals, so all you have to do is to plug in the TV cable/antenna, and it will set itself to the correct time. What's more, the bright clear font of the clock is readable across the room, particularly at low light conditions, and is really neat.
4. Commercial Skip. I generally don't have much to do with commercial stuff - they are usually more powerful or more huge than I can cope up with. What this feature brings is nothing really commercial (as far as I see it) - just plain common sense. This allows the tape to jump forward in one of several steps, so that when you come back from work to see that someone has already rewound the tape and has inserted a different one, you can reach the position till where you had seen just so much faster.
Note to critics- yes, I know, you can set up tape position tags on this one, so that you can select the tag to jump to, and let the VCR position the tape automatically and fast. That's why I put in the added clauses of 'rewound and ejected', so as to disable the benefits of tags and bring forth the benefits of commercial skip ;)
5. Index search - read the note above - you can mark of indices as you are playing the tape, and then jump back and forth between tape positions by selecting the index to jump to. Something like creating your own table of contents, and jumping to the pages you like. Really cool.
6. Tape position display - OK, this is a feature that all VCRs show, right? Well, not quite. What most VCRs show is how much time has elapsed from the start of the tape, assuming that you inserted the tape at the start. What this shows is a graphical display (albeit, with a level of graphics that existed in MS-DOS programs) that shows you the 'tape timeline', a line with the start and the end of the tape at it's two ends, and a position marker that shows you your current position. What's even better is that you don't have to put in the tape at it's start - once the tape starts playing, this VCR picks up the approximate tape position for most tapes. Also, if left on while rewinding, gives you something to look at as the tape is rewound. That's not much, but it's better than chewing on your fingernails and wondering how much longer the rewind is going to take.
7. Rewind-and-shut-off - This is a neat feature. Once you are done watching a movie, stop the play, hit the rewind, and hit the power off button. The VCR will display 'rewind--power off' on the TV. Switch off the TV, and go to sleep. Your faithful VCR will rewind the tape and switch itself off all by itself. Saves you the energy of having to wait up for the tape to rewind, simply because you don't want the VCR to be up all night, and don't want to leave the tape un-rewound.
8. Auto shut off - A minor feature, but this machine will shut itself off if left idle for some time - something like 5 minutes, I think.
9. Nice remote. I read a number of reviews that said that the remote was too large and bulky. I don't think so. The thing with remotes in my living room is, they get lost 25 times a day. It's easier to locate one if it's slightly on the larger size. So long as it's not heavy, and fits neatly into the palm of my hand, I am up for it. This one is ever so comfortable to hold and use, with buttons placed in an easy to use layout. The buttons are lighted from within, so that makes it all the more easy to locate the right one and read them in the dark.
10. Ultra light weight - this is not as important, so I am listing it last - I don't expect you to think of carrying your VCR around every other day, but just in case you do, you'll be glad to hold this one up, and see for yourself how light this is. It'll make you wonder whether they really need that huge box, or can shrink the size of the VCR to a fourth of it's size.
_______________________________________________________
_________________T_H_E_____B_A_D_______________________
_______________________________________________________
I don't want to say anything too bad about this, because I have really grown to love this. But I can't leave this section totally blank, so I'll fill in the most obvious ones.
1. Big footprint. Read my opinion on the size above - if this thing is so light, why can't they make it more compact, and reduce it's footprint? Not that it looks particularly ugly, but that cool looks sometimes matter - who would not want the new cool iMac computers, though I would work on nothing but Unix boxes? The new series from Sony really looks good. Had I not gone through the process of selecting a cordless phone, and found Panasonic head and shoulders above Sony, I might have gone for that one instead.
2. Channel button on VCR is too small. If you are using your VCR to feed TV channels into your TV, and want to change the channels on the VCR, you'll find the channel +/- buttons much smaller than your liking.
_______________________________________________________
_______________T_H_E_____R_E_S_U_L_T___________________
_______________________________________________________
In all, I love this product. It won't kill you by it's looks, but it won't kill your wallet either. And you won't have to run to repair shops frequently (at least, I haven't). The metal case will take in a substantial degree of abuse. The remote will not break into a hundred pieces on it's first fall. And on top of everything else, you have the Panasonic assurance for home appliances (which I recommend over Sony for everything but music systems). Try it out - check out netmarket, it generally has this at much less than the retail price.
I spent quite a lot of my student life without a VCR - the cable on TV seemed good enough, and I did not want to go in for the extra investment. Then I was gradually conned into searching for one, more so because I discovered the huge stock of excellent movies my local public library would rent out for free. I surfed into an online store, and surfed away completely perplexed - Netmarket lists VCRs from as low as $79 all the way up to $1500, and I am talking only of the single deck VCRs, not the ones which have double decks and can record tapes in a jiffy.
I asked around, and got to know the buzz words - it seemed that the good VCRs would say "4-head Hi-Fi Stereo". People told me that I should settle for no less, and my budget told me to settle for no more. I walked into the local BJ's wholesale shopping club, found this on sale for around $90, and picked it up. I never had the chance to regret the decision to date.
Let's go over the product features, in my now-standard style of evaluating my new gadget.
_______________________________________________________
________________T_H_E_____G_O_O_D______________________
_______________________________________________________
What's good about this product? Let's see....
1. Excellent playback. I really mean this - just pop in a video tape, and you get as good a picture and as good a sound as your tape can give you. I've seen a number of tapes that behave funny when played back on some older VCRs that my friends have, but start being good once played in this one. Maybe it's because it's newer than the others. Maybe it's because Panasonic sees to it that the belts of rubber that link the motor to the drive train (or whatever it's called) is built of quality enough that it does not have to be changed every other semester. Whatever it is, playback is what a VCR should do and do well, and this sure scores that mark.
2. Easy to learn features - the menu items and the huge number of keys on the remote, though intimidating at a casual first glance, are very easy to accomodate to and use to one's power. I frequently find myself checking on the graphical tape position and setting up tags to rewind to without really having the need - I do it because I like the features.
3. Bright display, automatic clock. If there's one thing that I find irritating with all the electronic gadgets that surround me at home and everywhere, it's having to set the time on every other device when it runs through a power outage - be it running out of batteries for my palm, or a short scheduled power cut at my home. My answering machine blinks like crazy (because I never had the energy to put in the extra battery), and the microwave goes blank, and my clock forgets my alarm settings. But when it comes to my VCR , it's a-OK. This VCR senses the time out of TV signals, so all you have to do is to plug in the TV cable/antenna, and it will set itself to the correct time. What's more, the bright clear font of the clock is readable across the room, particularly at low light conditions, and is really neat.
4. Commercial Skip. I generally don't have much to do with commercial stuff - they are usually more powerful or more huge than I can cope up with. What this feature brings is nothing really commercial (as far as I see it) - just plain common sense. This allows the tape to jump forward in one of several steps, so that when you come back from work to see that someone has already rewound the tape and has inserted a different one, you can reach the position till where you had seen just so much faster.
Note to critics- yes, I know, you can set up tape position tags on this one, so that you can select the tag to jump to, and let the VCR position the tape automatically and fast. That's why I put in the added clauses of 'rewound and ejected', so as to disable the benefits of tags and bring forth the benefits of commercial skip ;)
5. Index search - read the note above - you can mark of indices as you are playing the tape, and then jump back and forth between tape positions by selecting the index to jump to. Something like creating your own table of contents, and jumping to the pages you like. Really cool.
6. Tape position display - OK, this is a feature that all VCRs show, right? Well, not quite. What most VCRs show is how much time has elapsed from the start of the tape, assuming that you inserted the tape at the start. What this shows is a graphical display (albeit, with a level of graphics that existed in MS-DOS programs) that shows you the 'tape timeline', a line with the start and the end of the tape at it's two ends, and a position marker that shows you your current position. What's even better is that you don't have to put in the tape at it's start - once the tape starts playing, this VCR picks up the approximate tape position for most tapes. Also, if left on while rewinding, gives you something to look at as the tape is rewound. That's not much, but it's better than chewing on your fingernails and wondering how much longer the rewind is going to take.
7. Rewind-and-shut-off - This is a neat feature. Once you are done watching a movie, stop the play, hit the rewind, and hit the power off button. The VCR will display 'rewind--power off' on the TV. Switch off the TV, and go to sleep. Your faithful VCR will rewind the tape and switch itself off all by itself. Saves you the energy of having to wait up for the tape to rewind, simply because you don't want the VCR to be up all night, and don't want to leave the tape un-rewound.
8. Auto shut off - A minor feature, but this machine will shut itself off if left idle for some time - something like 5 minutes, I think.
9. Nice remote. I read a number of reviews that said that the remote was too large and bulky. I don't think so. The thing with remotes in my living room is, they get lost 25 times a day. It's easier to locate one if it's slightly on the larger size. So long as it's not heavy, and fits neatly into the palm of my hand, I am up for it. This one is ever so comfortable to hold and use, with buttons placed in an easy to use layout. The buttons are lighted from within, so that makes it all the more easy to locate the right one and read them in the dark.
10. Ultra light weight - this is not as important, so I am listing it last - I don't expect you to think of carrying your VCR around every other day, but just in case you do, you'll be glad to hold this one up, and see for yourself how light this is. It'll make you wonder whether they really need that huge box, or can shrink the size of the VCR to a fourth of it's size.
_______________________________________________________
_________________T_H_E_____B_A_D_______________________
_______________________________________________________
I don't want to say anything too bad about this, because I have really grown to love this. But I can't leave this section totally blank, so I'll fill in the most obvious ones.
1. Big footprint. Read my opinion on the size above - if this thing is so light, why can't they make it more compact, and reduce it's footprint? Not that it looks particularly ugly, but that cool looks sometimes matter - who would not want the new cool iMac computers, though I would work on nothing but Unix boxes? The new series from Sony really looks good. Had I not gone through the process of selecting a cordless phone, and found Panasonic head and shoulders above Sony, I might have gone for that one instead.
2. Channel button on VCR is too small. If you are using your VCR to feed TV channels into your TV, and want to change the channels on the VCR, you'll find the channel +/- buttons much smaller than your liking.
_______________________________________________________
_______________T_H_E_____R_E_S_U_L_T___________________
_______________________________________________________
In all, I love this product. It won't kill you by it's looks, but it won't kill your wallet either. And you won't have to run to repair shops frequently (at least, I haven't). The metal case will take in a substantial degree of abuse. The remote will not break into a hundred pieces on it's first fall. And on top of everything else, you have the Panasonic assurance for home appliances (which I recommend over Sony for everything but music systems). Try it out - check out netmarket, it generally has this at much less than the retail price.
