Sony SLV790HF - a good VCR
Dec 05 '99
I bought this VCR since my other two VCRs were starting to go downhill. If you need a good quality VCR I don’t think you can go wrong with a Sony, but I do have a few problems with some of the design decisions that Sony made on this model.
PROS:
This VCR does a nice job on picture and sound quality on all settings and I have had no complaints with it in this respect. It is far superior in quality to any of my previous VCRs (both RCA models), but they were much older models and I can’t comment on RCA’s picture quality now.
The auto clock setting is the greatest feature. I believe it’s becoming more standard now, but when I bought this model it was still a fairly new concept. It gets the clock setting over the cable and automatically sets the clock on the VCR. Although it’s sometimes a bit slow in updating after a power outage, it’s still great to have. Of course it also works for daylight savings time, so if you record a lot then you’ll never have to worry about the clock being set correctly.
The VCR has the ability to fast forward and rewind at different speeds. I believe it is anywhere from 1/5 normal speed up to 2x fast forward. You control this via a dial either on the remote or the unit.
If you have a cable box the unit comes with a cable mouse so you can set it up to work correctly with the box. I don’t have a cable box so I can’t comment on how well it works.
The unit looks nice and has a very simple front with hidden controls behind the flip down cover (this is also a negative – see below). It also has another flip down door concealing video and audio in RCA jacks. This is nice if you have a camcorder and want to transfer to a VHS tape. Next to the RCA jacks is also an easy setup button if you need to reconfigure the VCR for some reason.
CONS:
I think the biggest design flaw of this VCR is the flip down cover over the tape-loading bay. This looks cool in the store because it opens up automatically when you eject the tape (and you can even eject the tape from the remote). The problem is that my TV stand has glass doors that close in front of the VCR and there is not enough room on the self to get the VCR back far enough for the flip down door to open when the doors are closed. Also, who wants to have to flip down a little door to put in tapes or to access hidden controls on the VCR? Luckily, Sony has wised up and moved away from this design on their newer models. The only good part that I can find for this flip down door is that it cleans up the look of the front of the VCR and if you have little kids then it keeps them from putting their grilled cheese sandwiches in the tape bay :-)
The dial on the remote for rewinding and fast forwarding is terribly difficult to use, especially since it is at the bottom of the remote. It’s very difficult to do with one hand.
The ergonomics of the remote are terrible. The batteries are at the top of the remote making it top heavy. It just feels wrong compared to all of my other remotes and you always think you’ve picked it up backwards. The buttons are also tiny and hard to find. There are so many buttons on this remote that you have to squint to see what the buttons do and you have to be careful not to hit the wrong one. The number pad and volume and channel buttons glow in the dark, but that’s not terribly important to me since I usually have a light on when I’m watching TV.
I thought the “Commercial Skip” button would be excellent, but it turned out to be more trouble than it was worth. It only skips in 30 second increments and has no intelligence to detect commercials (wouldn’t that be some nice technology). I found that it rarely stopped at the correct point so you ended up having to rewind or fast forward anyway. I think TiVo has the right idea with 2x, 20x, and 60x rewind and fast forward with auto correction. What it does is that it expects you to miss the exact starting point of the show so it backs up a little (depending on the speed at which you were fast forwarding) and I’ve found I can hit the end of the commercials almost perfectly.
The on-screen programming is better than previous VCRs I’ve had, but still not terribly well designed. You have to use so many different buttons on the remote that if you don’t record very often you have to stop and think which button you need to use next (Menu, Arrow, Execute, Enter?) I’ve used the VCRPlus+ feature a couple of times, but since I don’t get a TV Guide it was pretty worthless to me. Now that I have a TiVo (see my glowing review on that) I have not used my VCR since.
OVERALL:
This has been a really good VCR and if I’m ever in the market for another VCR I will definitely make Sony my first choice. However, there are a few problems in design with this model that I would surely look out for on any new model that I might consider buying. I hope to never have to buy another VCR though because of newer technologies like DVD and PTV (Personal TV units like TiVo and ReplayTV).
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Epinions.com ID:
eGnome
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Location: Red Bank, NJ
Reviews written: 51
Trusted by: 172 members
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