Not sure if this is the right forum to post this in, but I just wanted to vent how CRAPPY my new VHS DVD recorder unit is. Doesn't anybody make anything worth a CRAP anymore? I suppose you get what you pay for tho, and since I got the cheapest unit I shouldn't be surprised, but still..... I bought a Magnavox MWR20V6 DVD recorder with Video cassette recorder. I am a TV junkie and have some stuff on VHS that I thought I'd transfer to DVD. These all in one units have 1 touch dub so I wanted to go the easy route. My complaint on the unit is that the VHS portion does not care for tapes recorded on another unit. It keeps going into auto tracking and the picture isn't that good. It plays back okay on tapes recorded on it. So for that feature what the hell good is the dubbing feature if you can't play back tapes that have been recorded on another unit? Also the remote control has to be the cheapest horrid design I've ever seen. And finally, it's a crappy FUNAI. Does anyone make a VCR now that is not farmed out to Funai? And finally..... is there a way to hook a VCR to a computer to dub?

Yes there are cards which you can input composite video and audio to and interface it to the computer. A friend of mine has recorded his home video tapes to DVD this way...I don't think my computers/hard drives are new enough to be up to the task though so I haven't done it personally.

Here is one that hooks up to the USB port (can't vouch for its performance but this gives you an idea of what is available)
http://www.costcentral.com/proddetail/Belkin_Hi_Speed_USB_20_DVD_Creator/F5U228/613978/froogle/

I would really vote for the computer due to the much better control you have over the video such as editing/cueing it up before burning to DVD as opposed to a stand-alone device.
The best VCR's are probably older HI-Fi units that have been refurbished with new power supply components/mechanical parts as needed. Pretty much all new VCR's I have seen have been the cheap funai design.
Have you tried adjusting the channel buttons if present to adjust the tracking...some of these VCR's will override the auto tracking if a manual adjustment is made.

Hey Chad! Thanks for the info. That Belkin device looks interesting and I may have to get it. It seems a tad pricey BUT is half the price of the unit I just bought. And yes.. it seems to work a bit better if I override the auto tracking but will still have "picture roll" on occasion. And I hear ya and agree on the older HI FI VCR's. Even the units that were made in the mid to late 90's are better than what's out there now. I have a few new Toshiba VHS/DVD combo units that don't seem too bad. I have an older Sony HI VCR and a Panasonic VCR that is fantastic. I also still have my first VCR. It's a mono RCA that I bought in the early 90's for $300.00. I used the hell out of that sucker and it just keeps going and going and going...... I have never had it worked on. I don't use it much now tho, but it is still hooked up on my basement tv and I have taped some stuff on it once in awhile.

Before going for a USB adapter such as the one linked above make sure your computer is fast enough to encode video in realtime in DVD quality. The system requirements listed on the box of those adapter are typically overly optimistic to say the least if you want to encode your video at the highest quality possible. The USB interface can be a bottleneck in some computers that are otherwise fast enough.

My complaint on the unit is that the VHS portion does not care for tapes recorded on another unit. It keeps going into auto tracking and the picture isn't that good. It plays back okay on tapes recorded on it.

Sounds like a classic case of the new machine leaving the factory (Oops; I mean Asian childrens' slave camp) with poor alignment. I'd return it for another of the same model, or take your tape to the store and try it in the demo on the shelf. I started seeing new out-of-alignment VCRs on a regular basis in the late 90s.

Charles

I have had good luck with video capture cards. The quality of the usb devices was never very good. If you have a firewire port on your computer Sony and Canopus have encoders that convert video to firewire. The computer will need to be fast, and have lots of disk space. The key to speed will be having the computer optimized for video. That means on a slower machine it should only do video. Most modern computers are fine for video. I however still use a 200mhz pentium box with 7200rpm eide disk drives (47gb) and have captured and edited video using a pinnacle dc10+ capture card. That computer is not fast enough for dvd though, I output back to tape.
I have a p3 800mhz computer here that came from the studio and it will edit video and author DVD just fine.

Bill R

You should be able to use your regular VCR to play the tapes. This would be best if it was used to record the tapes.

There's always the possibility that the machine the tapes were recorded on had tracking issues rather than the new machine, have you tried a tape from a different source? otherwise I would return it and try another.

I picked up a Panasonic this morning and so far it's working OK, autotracked for a couple seconds then was fine.

They all look like Funai inside, (including my 5 year old low buck Sony which still works fine) , one difference I noted was the LG and Samsung only had a 3 month warranty while the Sony and Panasonic had 1 year.
If they don't trust their product to last more than 3 months then neither do I. :no:

Funai supplied the tape transports for some Sony VCRs (although that was more than 5 years ago).

Eric, I tried tapes that were recorded on different machines and even tried a pre-recorded movie. It would either auto track continually or not play at all. I decided I will take it back for a refund, as I hate the remote on this unit as well. I'll have to look and see if they have some "higher-end" models.

I'd get a refund on the combo unit then get a stand alone DVD recorder and a good used VCR. These days the value of VCRs has dropped so much that you can get what were once expensive TOTL decks for almost nothing.

Last week I picked up a stack of VCRs for $9. A Panasonic, 2 Sanyos and a JVC. All made in Japan, no Funai (so they are still actually worth repairing) in sight. The JVC and one of the Sanyos are S-VHS.

Any one of them would better the VHS side of a combo unit.

New VCRs are CRAP!

I have not seen anything from the last 5 years that I would let in my house. I have people bringing them to me for repair when they are only 6 months old. I refuse to work on them. The only guarantee I can give is that they aren't going to work well. Nobody is willing to spend more than about $40.00 to fix them, because the combo machines are well under $100.00 now. It just isn't worth it to me to even try. I advise people to dig out their 20 year old machine and bring it it. If I can get the parts, they're usually worth fixing and they'll last. The problem is that the parts are getting hard to find. It is clear that the industry wants to stop making VCRs, whether the public wants that or not.

Am I ranting yet?

I have compaired the picture quality of my JVC VCR in 6 hour speed against my (I can't remember the brand!) DVD recorder in 6 hour mode. The VCR is better, NO QUESTION ABOUT IT. The compression to make 6 hours fit on a disk drives me crazy. 2 HR. speed is OK, about the same as my VHS.

OK, now I know I'm ranting, because I'm not sure where I'm going with this. But the new VCRs are almost useless.

1. this is why I never buy "combo" units.

2. I bought a $99 DVD recorded at Target. Worked great! For about three months. I just got a new Sony that so far is workng great. Thing I hate is I've already learned this lesson a dozen times.

well... I got this unit to dub VHS to DVD as the DVD side was a recorder. I do have a few combo units that I use on my vintage sets as they do not have inputs for a DVD player, I mainly use my vintage Panasonic VCR on my newer set....

I have to jump in on this thread. I recently went through the horror of searching for the "perfect" video digitizer for DVD transfers. What I wanted to do was take the VHS and Beta input and edit it using iMovie on my Macintosh. Turns out that most everyone has a "gotcha" with performance. Several had low actual resolution (anything by Dazzle), and others had problems on less-than-perfect sync (ie videotape. Laserdisc works perfect, but forget about VHS). I learned alot about the limitations about each of the vendors' products, and settled on a Canopus ADVC-100. Pricy for its size (I gave about $200 for this little 5x5x1 critter) but totally worth it. What it does it converts composite or S-video with audio to Firewire DV video streams. The computer thinks it's a featureless DV camcorder, so it works with no drivers, and works with every software product. I was able to use it on my Win2000 box and it tested well. Even works on Linux too! A good way to overload your brain with more than you ever wanted to know is videohelp.com. They have a great how-to section.

HA1156W

I have to say "nay" on the combo units too. Go with a good quality VCR and a separate stand-alone DVD recorder.

I will say that I find a stand-alone DVD recorder to be far more convenient for transferring tapes than using a computer/video digitizer card. I've had a Panasonic DVD recorder (a DMR-E30) for years now, and it's just been great, both for transferring old tapes and for standard TV tuner recording. As Geoff says, I agree that the 6-hour mode this thing has is just awful in terms of quality, but I think those "6-hour" and "8-hour" modes on DVD recorders are more of an advertising gimmick than anything else (and to make the recording modes seem more like the familiar VHS VCRs). At 2-hour mode it's quite decent (and the 1-hour mode is even better-- if what you're trying to record will fit in 1 hour) Plus, I would imagine that if anything, the quality of the encoding is better in current stand-alone DVD recorder models than my 3-to-4 year-old Panasonic.

I did buy a combo unit for Mom in 2002 for Christmas, a Toshiba. The VCR would not record anymore a few months later. The big thing there was I received nitification for signing up with a service agreement to fix or replace in January 2003 but at that time there was great confusion in my life due to me falling can cutting my left hand open, it getting infected with strep so I needed surgery. I was lucky, they got all the infection out but I do have some nerve damage, I came close to losing part or all of my left hand. Getting back to the story, the service agreemwnt went down the memory hole. Well, I took it back to Sears and explained my problem and they honored it anyways, I got the next model up and it has been fine ever since. Still, I see the idea of having separate units is better but to ach his own.

Chuck

DE KA3WRW

Sounds like a classic case of the new machine leaving the factory (Oops; I mean Asian childrens' slave camp) with poor alignment. I'd return it for another of the same model, or take your tape to the store and try it in the demo on the shelf.

Actually, yeah, as far as that goes, you probably just got a "dud". You might want to try just exchanging it for another of the same model.

Frankly, despite how people here generally dislike Funai-made VCRs, I have to say that I bought a cheap Symphonic VHS Hi-Fi VCR about 5 years ago to use as a secondary VCR, and it's actually been amazingly unfussy, and I've found that it will sometimes even play old worn-out rental tapes that stymie my nice ol' JVC. [I've got an older Zenith (JVC) VCR though that I've also found does pretty well with well-worn tapes too, though] That Symphonic/Funai even gets along a bit better with vintage TVs than most VCRs I've tried for that purpose. I don't actually use the Symphonic much, but when I have it's actually been kind of a trooper.

As far as build-quality goes, that Funai is super-cheap-cheap. Muntz would have been proud. :) It's actually quite impressive. Get yourself a Funai-made VCR made within the past five years or so (available for free at your local trash dumpster), and take a look inside. The number of moving parts have been reduced to such a minimum that it's actually amazing. Compare that with the complexity of a VCR made in the 70's or early 80's..! Also, the've reduced the number of internal connecting cables by having as many sensor switches and such as possible (including the IR LEDs for the tape sensor) mounted directly to the PC board, with standoffs and such positioned so that they'll be in just the right spot when the tape transport assembly is put in place. The remaining wiring is done with edge connectors built onto the transport assembly, so there still aren't any individual connecting wires between the two. Kinda reminds me of certain early IBM PS/2 computers that used plug-in riser boards and connectors to connect the disk drives and other internal components instead of cables, but cheaper in execution. Also, considering it's obviously designed as a "disposable" VCR, the PC board silk-screen printing is surprisingly detailed-- even many of the wire jumpers on the board are labeled with the signal and/or voltage that they carry.

Despite the mechanical simplicity, I would tend to doubt the overall *durability* of one of these Funai VCRs (most of the mechanical parts appear to be on the "flimsy" side, and most of the mechanical things that would be adjustable in an older/better VCR are fixed in place on the Funais), but the overall simplicity and compactness of the transport mechanism is pretty interesting.

It's weird, I have a 10 year old Symphonic/Funai VCR, HiFi Stereo that still plays great, and I've used it a lot, especially during the first 5 years. It was a Christmas gift back in '96. It actually has great tracking, and the transport handles the tapes well, and has some editing functions on it. Exception rather than the rule :p

Anyhow, combo units. My parents bought a Sony (rebadged Samsung) DVD player/VCR combo unit. The DVD player broke within 2 years time (and it was hardly used.) Right now they bought a Panasonic combo, which seems to work much better. For my one set of old TVs, I have a Go-Video (rebadged LG) DVD/VHS combo. It was one of the cheapest ones on the shelf, yet it works great. It is almost 4 years old, and haven't had a problem. I typically pop in a DVD and set it for repeat, which it does for almost 16 hours at day at times. Sometimes do the same on the VCR.

But overall I prefer standalone units myself. I also prefer 10-30 year old VCRs anyhow.

I have a 3 year old Sony DVD-Recorder (first generation). It has decent picture quality, at least down to the 3 hour mode. It makes decent copies of VHS, Beta, DV, CATV, etc.

But for the best quality, I use my PC. Like ha1156w said, that Canopus ADVC-100 is a great card. I don't have one myself, though I do have a Hauppauge TV and FM tuner card with S-Video input. I can capture raw avi or any type of compression format I choose with any software. I have my own little process that I'm working on to restore my tapes to DVD. Lots of filters and cleaning up the video and audio. I also have a entry level JVC SVHS pro grade VCR with a time base corrector and noise filter I use for this as well. I've had a friend give me a 3rd generation EP copy of something. When I was done, you could not tell it came from a tape of that quality.

I've had a few days to play around with this Panasonic and have to say it works very well!

Even in the 6 hour mode the picture doesn't look much worse than the original standard-def DirecTV picture which is pretty soft to begin with.

It also claims to upscale the VHS when copying to DVD, however like most it won't copy prerecorded tapes, maybe there's a hack somewhere to disable the Macrovision... :scratch2:

the model# is DMR-ES35V and it was $244 on sale at Circuit City.

I agree with Whirled One that those "drug store" VCRs are amazing in their simplicity. I had been looking at them in the local discount store, where they had stacks of them for about $20, and couldn't get over how lightweight they were. Finally I found one which had been left on the ground at the town dump so I took it home to explore. I compared it to our first VCR, a Panasonic from about '85 which had finally bitten the dust. (bad power supply, not something I wanted to tackle) I decided to take that Panasonic apart piece by piece, screw by screw. I bet it took me 2 hours! Very complex, and heavily built. Yes, Funai is the new Muntz!

I don't know much about the new stuff. My main VCR is a 6 year old Panasonic-the selling point for me was that it was made in Japan. Anything made there these days can't be too cheap. It has done well so far.

Despite the mechanical simplicity, I would tend to doubt the overall *durability* of one of these Funai VCRs (most of the mechanical parts appear to be on the "flimsy" side, and most of the mechanical things that would be adjustable in an older/better VCR are fixed in place on the Funais), but the overall simplicity and compactness of the transport mechanism is pretty interesting.
The best Funai VCR chassis ever made in terms of durability and reliability is the one made from 1985 to 1988. I personally have a 1985 Symphonic VCR, first Funai VCR ever made. Still works great, and it probably has outlasted over 10 million newer Funai VCRs by now. Such a rarity. The mechanical is not cheap cheap at all. It looks like to me that very very few people have seen the older Funai VCR chassis, so they have no idea about them.

The best Funai VCR chassis ever made in terms of durability and reliability is the one made from 1985 to 1988. I personally have a 1985 Symphonic VCR, first Funai VCR ever made. Still works great, and it probably has outlasted over 10 million newer Funai VCRs by now. Such a rarity. The mechanical is not cheap cheap at all. It looks like to me that very very few people have seen the older Funai VCR chassis.

I think that's the one Sony used briefly in the 90's.

I think that's the one Sony used briefly in the 90's.
No, it's not the same. Is it this chassis that Sony used in the 90s:

http://www.studiosoundelectronics.com/mbk-97.htm

It says that this chassis is manufactured by Shintom

This is the original, classic Funai chassis:

http://www.studiosoundelectronics.com/mbk-94.htm

You probably never seen one coming in for repairs, so I can safely assume that it rarely fails.

A few of these Funai VCRs are amongst the last stack of VCRs to be dumped on me. I've yet to open any, but as I loaded them I noticed several had broken plastic parts inside. Not exactly a sign of durability, but I guess it could be the effect of the previous owner trying to retrieve their tape rather than the original fault. These will be headed for the bone pile. I've probably got enough decks to piece together good decks from several bad ones, but I doubt I'll bother. There are a couple of 6 head hifi decks with better badges on them that may get a second look, but I'd be better off working on the pile of G series Panasonics that have been accumulating lately.