Rating: 
Summary: Broke after two weeks
Review: A complete piece of crap! Stopped working after two weeks, wouldn't eject tapes and destroyed one of my cassettes. Do not consider purchasing! I thought I was safe since it was a pretty expensive player.
Rating: 
Summary: Great, but short-lived
Review: A friend of mine and I were both impressed with the features of this system and each purchased one. We used it for NTSC as well as PAL videos, hooked up to a US TV. It was very flexible and offered a great set of features for the price. The high speed rewinding was also a bonus I appreciated. Each of our VCRs broke within 2 years of purchase. It's never a good time for your VCR to stop working, but additionally, repairing the device would have been more expensive than purchasing a new one. I will not purchase this item again and really hope that these features will be available in a reliable VCR in the future. I'm still frustrated and VCR-less (basically we just play our DVDs now). My friend purchased a multi-system TV and cheaper multi-VCR. This item is NOT reliable. I strongly suggest that you not purchase this VCR, unless you are willing to view it as disposable.
Rating: 
Summary: The Good, Bad, Ugly and the secret solution.
Review: Bear with me I have the snow solution (AND AN UPDATE) at the end but, I need to vent my frustration. Ok, I read some glowing reviews about this VCR and really had little choice as most multisystems are PAL based to play NTSC, not the other way around, and need an outside converter or multisytem TV that converts to work. Samsung's site praises the video heads as life long and needing no cleaning. I don't live in a region that would have any of these for sale so it was online for me. Wow, this thing was expensive! However, I found a demonstrator model on ebay for half retail and grabbed it. The first few months were fine, although the PAL conversion to NTSC was understandably sub-quality (NTSC uses more scans per inch than PAL), but softening the picture helped. Then the snow began to fall. ALL of you have heard of this and believe me I was floored when it happened. It looked like a tracking problem so I manually adjusted, no luck. Maybe the heads so I cleaned them, ditto. Then I went to Samsung's site and quess what I found? That's right, this problem in their FAQ section! Lo and behold the answer. Play a pristine blank tape for an hour to clean the heads (?!). If that didn't work, get a commerical "WET" head cleaner and wait about ten minutes after cleaning to play another tape. Well, I went to the store and picked up both. Played the tape, aargh! Used the head, Yaaaaaaaaaaaaah! Samsung just made me spend $15 bucks for nothing. Their no-need-to-clean-heads VCR had dirty heads. I have a twenty year old RCA that played better and I never clean the heads on it.
Then I read the second page of reviews here on Amazon. Oh brother, were there a ton of complaints about this problem. I did notice that when I rewound a tape and played it the snow cleared up. But after a while it returned and I fast forwarded numerous tapes just to play them. I had hoped to retire my RCA, but there seemed little hope. Out of options I decided to call Samsung's support. Mind you, I read horror stories about getting complacent CSR's and getting the runaround so I prepared myself. I got the friendlist woman who really listened to my problem gave me the advise that the site already did and when informed those methods didn't work, gave me a case # and transfered me to the tech division. After 10 minutes of music I was cut off. Huh! Called back to second helpfull CSR, transfered and hung up on again. RRRRR! Called back third time and asked not to be transfered. Well this guy somehow accessed a tech page and told me to eject the tape, hold down the "Play" and "Stop" button at the same time for 10 seconds and turn the VCR off for 10 seconds. Turn back on and play tape. What does that do? It is a reset to factory standards that doesn't make you have to go through the user set-up again (you know that little reset button under the "record" button you should NEVER push). Nope! Well call back tomorrow and give case # to be transfered to tech help again. Right!
Pushed the play button for the heck of it and zoinks, a perfect picture. I really worked! Put in another tape. Yeah! Put in third, Uh Oh. Tried reset again and found I had to do it a few times but it does work. I won't be using this as my main player, just for imports and a few tapes that have surround (the RCA is mono).
I know this isn't the greatest climax to the story, but give it a try. It may take a few times but it will happen. One thing I did notice is that this thing gets as hot as the sun and takes a couple of hours to cool down. This may be a big part of the problem and though I've not tried it a fan blowing in the vent couldn't hurt. I really hope this helps everyone with this problem because this machine can play like a champ when coaxed.
UPDATE:
I recently moved and left this player unplugged for a couple of days. When I put together my system, Voila! No problems. Since then I've had absolutely no snow whatsoever. Hmmm? Could it be this unit needs a break every once and a while? My new place is a lot cooler too so I still believe that has something to do with the problem and not the heads because it only appears during playback and not recording. Yes I have actually recorded with it. Although I bought it as a player, it does a damn fine job recording.
One other thing, I highly recommend getting a video enhancer, such as Sima. This player does not like the older Macrovision tapes and the picture fuctuates between over and undersaturation. Not great for viewing older rentals.
That's about it. There isn't any other problem to be had, so enjoy your movies.
Rating: 
Summary: Great conversions, but only adequate playback.
Review: Conversion quality from this machine is truly excellent. Comperable if not better (in my opinion the latter) than both the Panasonic AG-W1 and the Aiwa MX-100, both of which I have had experience with using.However, where this product falls down is playback quality. Images seem dull and washed out. I'm especially having trouble with my almost 10 year old PAL tape collection. These tapes play back with visible streaks of "noise". New tapes do not show this artifact, so I don't know if there is degridation on the older tape stock or a problem with the unit. These same tapes show well on the yonks old Panasonic multi-system deck that I have, so I'm currently using it for playback and the Samsung as a standalone converter. An acceptible solution for now. Would get 5 stars from me if playback quailty was better. A nicely engineered deck with fabulous converson quality.
Rating: 
Summary: Great NTSC/PAL VCR
Review: I am former VCR tech. Own Panasonic AG-W2 (no tuner). This Samsung was with me twice in Europe. Tuner will pick up any station anywhere in the world. Wherever you plug it, it records,converts and plays flawlesly. I am using it daily for couple of years with no problem. I do not see any difference in pix quality between semi-pro AG-W2 which I paid long time ago $2,500. For this price, I may buy one more Samsung just for backup.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant
Review: I don't know about the long term durability of this product, but having owned mostly Sony audio and video units, this seems well built and does a fantastic job of playing our sometimes really old Pal videos. It's also useful if you need to copy Pal to NTSC or vice versa. The output quality is great and there are more features than we even need. We've had it for a year now and no problems at all. It gets used a LOT, and it seems to be holding up just fine.
Rating:
Summary: Pretty good ...
Review: I don't use it too much, but I think it has to offer more than the price.
When I thought about writing this review, I didnt know it has audio dubbing also. So much for the better...
So, it's a yes, buy it.. P.S.: In the future, maybe Samsung can work a bit more on the picture after conversion... There is still room for improvement...
Rating:
Summary: Worldwide VCR
Review: I got the Samsung Worldwide VCR for Christmas and am really satisfied with it. It's not just an excellent worldwide VCR, but it also plays video images in such a crisp and clear quality, much better than my standard VCR's. When I play a video from Germany the quality is exactly the same as when I play a video from the US or from any other country. However, we did have a little trouble trying to set it up. Since it's a worldwide VCR there was no TV channel that I could set it to ( 3 or 4). So the worldwide VCR had to have extra cable wires hooked up to my TV for it to work. And then my second VCR had to be set to the channel Line. It was also a huge inconvenience to call Samsung Technical Support, it took me two days to get someone to help. There is another item with the VCR that I noticed, when a program has to be tracked it will automatically track it. But for some reason the color goes black & white (for about a split second). Overall I really enjoy the VCR.
Rating:
Summary: Score based on Quality and customer support experience
Review: I got this device to view European PAL tapes on a NTSC TV set. With the price about 5 times of standard VCR it's obvious that one does not buy it to view NTSC tapes on a NTSC TV set.
The quality of the conversation is low and does not satisfy the high price of the device (the image is flickering and areas of same color seem to be pulsating).
Samsung customer support refered me to a repair location. I turned the device to the shop they recommended (back in July 2001) and I'm still waiting for a resolution (it's now mid Sept. 2001). Even though I contact Samsung customer support almost daily they do not offer a resolution or at least answers to my questions.
Rating:
Summary: Pal to NTSC
Review: I had seen mixed reviews of this product and was looking for a simple PAL to NTSC conversion soultion for tapes from England (family). I purchased this from Amazon and have been very happy. I am using a Sony HDTV to view, I have been more than happy with the quality of the conversion. It is very simple to use and I have used its nice frame to frame view to look at some NTSC videos. For the price its looks like the best option.
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