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Rating: 
Summary: A piece of junk!
Review: I bought this VCR, and RCA's DRD420RE DSS reciever and they are not compatable. The vcr will not control the reciever. The reciever demands a four digit channel number (or the "ok" button) and this VCR cannot do that. I called RCA, spoke to management and customer service and they offered no solution. RCA really dropped the ball on this one, they don't even list Philips as an option for recievers as I have one of those too, but they list Primestar which is out of business...The commercial Advance doesn't work very well either..I am going to return it.
Rating:
Summary: This VCR's DSS control won't work with RCA recievers!
Review: I bought this VCR, and RCA's DRD420RE DSS reciever and they are not compatable. The vcr will not control the reciever. The reciever demands a four digit channel number (or the "ok" button) and this VCR cannot do that. I called RCA, spoke to management and customer service and they offered no solution. RCA really dropped the ball on this one, they don't even list Philips as an option for recievers as I have one of those too, but they list Primestar which is out of business...The commercial Advance doesn't work very well either..I am going to return it.
Rating: 
Summary: Best for the money, but.....
Review: I think this is the best VCR for the buck. I have owned several VCR's since their inception, and RCA is my favorite. HOWEVER, although this one has many attractive features for the price, it does have some shortcomings. Can you believe the channel number is NOT displayed on the front panel? This is a major shortcoming. Add to this that we cannot get the remote control to communicate with our Sony TV and there you have it. Nevertheless, I am keeping the unit as a 2nd VCR because it has enough good features for the money to be worth it. One feature making the RCA standout is the "ShowSaver" which keeps my hard-earned programming intact during power outages. I wish all my electronic gizmos, clocks, answering machines, etc. had this feature.
Rating:
Summary: Best for the money, but.....
Review: I think this is the best VCR for the buck. I have owned several VCR's since their inception, and RCA is my favorite. HOWEVER, although this one has many attractive features for the price, it does have some shortcomings. Can you believe the channel number is NOT displayed on the front panel? This is a major shortcoming. Add to this that we cannot get the remote control to communicate with our Sony TV and there you have it. Nevertheless, I am keeping the unit as a 2nd VCR because it has enough good features for the money to be worth it. One feature making the RCA standout is the "ShowSaver" which keeps my hard-earned programming intact during power outages. I wish all my electronic gizmos, clocks, answering machines, etc. had this feature.
Rating:
Summary: non-Direct TV users-- beware
Review: I was given this VCR brand new still in the box. I hooked it up, set the time, the preferences, etc. The thing was awesome or so I thought. When you get to the end of the programing it tells you that in order to finish, you have to turn the vcr off and it will flash "down","load" over and over until it's finished. That's just great if you live in the city. If you live where you can't get any local chanels without Direct TV, it will never stop flashing "down", "load" as long as it's turned off. In other words,the only way it will display the time on the front is with the power on, which defeats the whole purpose of the "power save" feature. If you have Dish Network, like I do, the vcr won't communicate with the dish to even set the auto daylight savings time. That all is agrivating, but tollerable, but after less than 50 hours of playing &/or recording with it, It started the "Err" message any time you try to do anything with a tape. You set it to record a movie, turn the power off, think it's working fine, and when you check after the movie starts, it says "Err". I think this is the worst vcr I have ever seen in my life. I would strongly suggest you pass on this model.
Rating: 
Summary: Superb
Review: RCA vcrs have the very best user interfaces of any VCR brand. I've owned 3 RCA VCR's, and spent 2 weeks with a cassette tape visiting every store in my home town, trying out 2-3 models of every VCR ( Zenith, RCA, JVC, Sony, Mitsubishi, Samsung, Panasonic, Toshiba ). RCA is the one VCR that I could give to my 70-year old mother and she would be able to use it right away. In fact, I bought my RCA's with the express purpose that it had to be easy enough for my mom to use.The high speed transport is a pleasure the use. It gets to the end of a tape in about 90 seconds. The freeze-frame is superb; maybe you might want to hit the tracking button twice, but then the screen is FROZEN - DEAD STILL - like a renior painting. Friends visiting my house have been shocked by the quality of the special effects (to be honest, it's also my Digital Zenith System 3 TV getting helping out). There is no jog shuttle, but frame advance and variable speed "forward/reverse stepping" makes a job shuttle practically unnecessary. The index seek - to a time, or rewind/ff to zero, is very nice. The manual tracking on the remote is essential (and in this area, RCA beats several SONY and Zenith models in functionality). You really want manual tracking if you have old tapes or rent a lot of movies. This model can control a DirecTV or Echostar system, and controls a cable box. All very useful features. I bought a 4th RCA VCR for my sister., and they report that they are ecstatic.
Rating:
Summary: Superb
Review: RCA vcrs have the very best user interfaces of any VCR brand. I've owned 3 RCA VCR's, and spent 2 weeks with a cassette tape visiting every store in my home town, trying out 2-3 models of every VCR ( Zenith, RCA, JVC, Sony, Mitsubishi, Samsung, Panasonic, Toshiba ). RCA is the one VCR that I could give to my 70-year old mother and she would be able to use it right away. In fact, I bought my RCA's with the express purpose that it had to be easy enough for my mom to use. The high speed transport is a pleasure the use. It gets to the end of a tape in about 90 seconds. The freeze-frame is superb; maybe you might want to hit the tracking button twice, but then the screen is FROZEN - DEAD STILL - like a renior painting. Friends visiting my house have been shocked by the quality of the special effects (to be honest, it's also my Digital Zenith System 3 TV getting helping out). There is no jog shuttle, but frame advance and variable speed "forward/reverse stepping" makes a job shuttle practically unnecessary. The index seek - to a time, or rewind/ff to zero, is very nice. The manual tracking on the remote is essential (and in this area, RCA beats several SONY and Zenith models in functionality). You really want manual tracking if you have old tapes or rent a lot of movies. This model can control a DirecTV or Echostar system, and controls a cable box. All very useful features. I bought a 4th RCA VCR for my sister., and they report that they are ecstatic.
Rating:
Summary: A piece of junk!
Review: This VCR lasted only 4 months. Every time I try to play a tape the picture comes on in freeze frame mode! The machine will not go into PLAY mode. It will not fast forward, rewind, nothing...it's completely dead. For being one of the supposed top of the line models for RCA this VCR is anything but reliable. I used to sell electronics for a living and we received many RCA products back from customers. I took a chance because of the decent price and many features, boy did I make a mistake. I will not bother to repair this because of the cost, so I will end up trashing it and look for either a Toshiba or Hitachi.
Rating: 
Summary: Dead...
Review: We received this VCR as a gift 2 years ago. It worked well through it's first birthday, but now it's already dead (or at least dying painfully). Beginning this past May, it began to "ERR" everytime we tried to do anything...rewind, play, turn it on! When this happens it doesn't respond to anything...no remote buttons, no buttons on the VCR. We have to turn it off and back on again and cross our fingers that it will let us tape our shows. The RCA website was NOT very helpful. Their troubleshooting solution was to unplug it for 15 minutes and plug it back in. We left it unplugged for 2 days and it still has an "ERR". When we called to possibly repair it, the guy said it was most likely a computer problem and we were better off to just purchase a new VCR. The repair on ours was going to be pricey. My mom's Magnovox we bought in the early 1980's still works, but our new VCR is dead after just 2 years! How frustrating! If you need one that works well, but isn't guarenteed to last...this is a good one, but if you need it to work more than a year and a half, you may want to look elsewhere.
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