Panasonic PV-V4621 VHS VCR

Pros: Price, ease of use, price, reliability, price, availability, price.
Cons: Backtracks tapes

I bought the Panasonic PV-V4621 VCR in November, 2001, at BrandsMart for $99.00 (after brief haggling). I've had it for two years now, and just recently bought the PV-V4623S, which I am pretty sure will turn out to be the same model with cosmetic changes ...

Pros: fast rewind speed; stand-up remote; fool-proof set-up menus; records in LP
Cons: poor picture quality; unable to sync tapes from other machines; recordings unusable on other machines

First impression was that it was extremely light-weight, not a particularly good sign in a physically large model. It is almost 17 inches wide, designed to match up with traditional "rack" components. Remote is pretty, but is poorly designed, with many...

Pros: Battery backup, commercial skipping
Cons: Only 8 program recording slots

When my old VCR started having problems, I took it to the repair shop before I realized how much VCR prices have come down over the year. I spent $120 on repairs that didn't fix the problem, before I realized that I could get a new one for less. Live...

Pros: Commercial Advance, Fast rewind
Cons: Lousy Playback quality on ALL tapes

After reading some opinions both here and elsewhere, I decided to give the Panasonic V4621 a shot. I found it at Etronics for 89.99 + $22.00 (!) S&H. After 3 days of attempting to watch what I had recorded, it was a genuine pleasure to pay $11.00 to...

Pros: Good tracking performance, limited control of satellite receiver
Cons: Grainy, poor picture on playback

I really didn't want to buy a new VCR. But tapes recorded on my old Hitachi did not play on my Sony SLV-N71 and vice-versa. So my purchase was an attempt to find a VCR that would be compatible with either one of the VCRs I previously owned. In that...

Pros: Easy Set UP
Cons: Intermittent Stereo/Surround sound.

I tried three different 4621 VCR's, all had intermittent Stereo/Surround Sound. The surround sound would cut out for several minutes then cut back in for ten to 15 minutes.

I didn't try it on a rental tape - it may work OK there.

I...

Pros: Great features, slick design, and well laid out remote.
Cons: Noise when it rewinds, some buttons on remote could have been bigger.

There were a couple of reasons why I am really happy with this VCR:

Firstly, it might be a little nit picky on my part, but I wanted my components to be fairly uniform in terms of both color and dimensions. Panasonic purposely made their VCR...

Pros: Commercial and movie advance are nice features
Cons: Its very noisy when rewinding and FF.

Being very indecisive about which VCR to purchase, the Sony SLV-N71 or the Panasonic Hi-Fi Stereo VCR PV-V462, I got both and tried them out side by side.
In terms of picture and sound quality, they are nearly identical. I'm going to...

Pros: Picture and sound quality, reliability, ease of use, looks, features
Cons: It would be nice to have buttons to control menus on the front panel

The Panasonic PV-V4621 is a 4-head Hi-Fi VCR that comes in silver color. The VCR has the same width as other stereo components, so you can stack them up, and the silver color matches the finish of hi-end TVs and some Panasonic’s DVD players (like...

Auto clock and auto channel set. Multibrand remote for TV and Cable/DSS units. Great picture and sound quality (depending on the signal strength of the channel you are recording on and depening on the quality of the tape. I give everything a 4 because as we all know, it could always be better.