AT LAST, A VCR NOT DESIGNED BY AND FOR IDIOTS!
Written: Apr 09 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: You can pop in a tape and go out to the kitchen for a snack without returning to find that the movie has already started.
Cons: Not intended for the apparently large segment of the population who are (in the VCR industry's opinion) too stupid to find the "Play" button on their remotes.
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| promethius's Full Review: Mitsubishi HS-U540 VHS VCR |
I bought my Mitsubishi HS-U540 on the basis of a single feature--or rather, the omission of a single annoyance. Since purchasing it, however, I have never ceased being pleased with my purchase.
The single feature I'm talking about is the incredibly annoying "Quick Start" included on nearly all VCRs made these days. This is the feature that causes a VCR to begin Playing a pre-recorded tape the moment you insert it, before you touch the "Play" button at all. Is there anybody at all who actually LIKES this "feature"? It drives me up the wall. So much so that I made it a point to look for a model that did not include it.
At first, I was also interested in other things like video quality, HI-FI capability, ease of use, a well-designed remote, etc. But every machine I looked at had that annoying "Quick Start". After looking at about 2 dozen different models and finding "Quick Start" on all of them my search began to take on mythic importance, and the as yet undiscovered Non-Quick-Starting-VCR became something of a Holy Grail Quest for me. After visiting a half a dozen stores and physically inserting a tape (which I carried around with me) into more than 50 different machines, I finally happened across a display of Mitsubishi VCRs. I inserted my tape into the first machine in the row, waited for the now-memorized opening credits of Star Wars (the tape that had accompanied me on my quest), to begin, and...nothing happened! At first I thought maybe the machine wasn't plugged in, so much had my once indefatigable optimism been battered senseless by the seeming vast evil conspiracy of VCR design engineers to drive me out of my mind. But no, the machine was plugged in, it was working, it just didn't have Quick Start. Nor did any of the other machines in the Mitsubishi line, I soon found out. Not only had my quest ended, but I now found myself in the once unhoped-for position of being able to choose between a number of different models for the particular features I wanted, because they all lacked "Quick Start".
I won't bother going into all the wonderful features that this machine has because most of them have been described in reviews of other Mitsubishi models (unlike many other companies, Mitsubishi actually includes their best features on nearly all of their models, anyway). Suffice it to say, I love this machine!
Mitsubishi has restored my faith in humanity, or at least in the subcategory of humanity known as VCR design engineers--a group I would have once insisted must all be denizens of Hell. Now if only some of them would think to paint the "in" and "out" labels on the jacks WHITE so that it would be possible to hook up a VCR without a flashlight....
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
promethius
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Member: Michael Noonan
Location: Boston, MA
Reviews written: 4
Trusted by: 0 members
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