It should be Yellow because it's a Lemon!
Written: Jan 26 '02
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Pros: Good quality picture, fast FFW and RWD, easy to use
Cons: annoying "tracking" bar, useless features, broke 2
The Bottom Line: I've replaced 2 in the last 5 months, it's junk, but if you don't need a "good" VCR, go for it. I'll give you details on it's features anyways.
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| angelet's Full Review: Toshiba W714 VHS VCR |
So I have a lot of friends that like the same TV shows as I do, but either don't get the right channel or don't get to watch the show, or miss an episode now and then. Whatever the reason I do a lot of copying of my TV shows that I tape for friends. I have 2 VCRs set up to do this.
The VCR used for recording is the Toshiba W714. I bought it because the guy at Frys said the quality was really good and pointed out this neat feature where you can control the speed at which the VCR rewinds and fastforwards while in "play" mode.
I took it home and set it up and five months later I'm regretting it very much. I'll explain the useless features below, but first I'll tell you how it screwed up on me. The first VCR was going fine for about 4 months and then I put a tape in and hit play and it played for about 30 seconds then started to play backwards in slow motion. Very odd thing for it to do, and when I tried other tapes it did the same thing with them too. In fact it had decided not to work right at all and I took it back. They looked at me really funny when I told them what had gone wrong, but were great about it and replaced it with a new one. I got the replacement on Dec 23rd and on Jan 21st I was back at Frys with a new fun and weird problem. I had discovered to late that this VCR had been broken from the beginning and everything it taped would not play with sound on any VCR that wasn't a Toshiba. The weird part was that it would play fine on that VCR and on the other Toshiba I was unfortunate enough to buy before realizing the problems with Toshibas. But it wouldn't play on my other VCRs that aren't Toshibas. I called Toshiba's help line and to quote the lady "you have us all stumped, no one knows what's wrong with it!" Thanks, Toshiba. They had given me several suggestions and nothing helped. I took it back to Fry's and bless them they replaced it without any fuss. However the damage was done. A hundred and twenty hours of copying was lost and I had to replace a lot of those tapes I sent to friends which cost a lot in shipping and all the time I wasted.
If you aren't already convinced to go for another brand I'll help you understand the different features of this one so you can determine if it is still ok for you. Who knows, if you aren't planning on dubing anything, maybe it'll be ok for you.
Here we go:
I'll start with what drew me to it, the quality. I admit, the quality is great. If you just need something that'll play and record good quality, you're set.
The other thing that drew me to it and made me buy it rather than a cheaper model was the "jog" feature I mentioned. This lets you control the speed that the machine fast forwards and rewinds a tape while in "play." Let me tell you, you NEVER use this feature!!!! It's completely pointless! I even got it on the remote because the guy pointed out that you'd never use it on the actual machine, you'd want it on the remote too. Well if I EVER use it it's with the one on the machine not the one on the remote and it is so hard to control that you might as well just hit fast forward or rewind the way you normally would!
Tracking:
Tracking on this machine is the worst I have ever come across! Most machines I've had will just track the tape and you never really notice. Well this machine has a visual bar it puts on the screen so you can see how it is tracking it and it has very specific setting that aren't very flexible and DON'T WORK. This is a problem with both my Toshiba's so is a big issue I have with Toshiba in general. The VCR likes to track the picture sometimes so that it is flipping all over the place and leave it there as if that were good! It's messed up MORE than a few dubs that way too! Not to mention the bar on the screen is annoying!
Fast RWD and FFW:
Ok, I admit it's really nice to pop the tape in the VCR when the tape is at the end and hit rewind and have it rewind to the beginning within a minute or so. It's very nice in that feature, but it's also hard to control. My other brand VCRs you have it rewind and though it doesn't go so fast, when you hit stop it stops dead where you clicked the button according to the counter. This one takes another ten minutes worth of tape to slow down, or a couple more seconds in real time, but this means you have to gain a bit of finess and a talent for getting it to stop where you want it to. Not something you'd think much of, but anyone else who tries to use my VCR goes nuts with this little quirk. It does this when rewinding and fast forwarding in the play mode too.
Display features:
I like the fact that this VCR will count the minutes on the tape and you can either look at it by how many minutes forward or backwards from where you put the tape in, or you can look at it by how many minutes are remaining on the tape. This is really nice because it has the ability to know exactly how much space is left on the tape no matter where in the tape you are when you put it in the VCR. It just has to run for a second or two to figure it out and you'll know if there's space for that last TV show. I really will miss this feature when I finally replace the VCR with a better brand. The Display will of course give you the clock and it can automatically set the clock according to what the cable tells it it should set at, but it's not very reliable that way.
Recording:
If you've used many VCRs you know they generally have a basic set up for how to program the machine to record. You have some way to get to the menu and to the programing set up and you select the channel, times, date, and speed and usually hit something else to arm it. This one was the first in a while that I had to check the manual. It has all the above mentioned features, but to arm it you have to press two buttons at the same time and I've had trouble explaining it to people who were going to use my VCR before.
If there are any other features you are curious about, please leave a comment and I'll be sure to add them and describe them for you. I hope I've helped and if you've made it this far you're either reading so you can give me a well informed review, or you're seriously considering this machine. DON'T!
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 120
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Epinions.com ID:
angelet
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Member: Aubri Webb
Location: Simi Valley, CA
Reviews written: 27
Trusted by: 3 members
About Me:
I'm an actress and a movie buff, as well a big sci-fi/fantasy fan.
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