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Sony SLV-D500P DVD/VCR Combo

Sony SLV-D500P DVD/VCR Combo

List Price: $249.99
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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Decent for the Price, But...
Review: I just took delivery of the Sony SLV-D500P DVD/VCR Combo earlier today. Contrary to some other reviewers' experiences, my unit has no noise issues whatsoever. The picture quality with both DVD & VCR is decent, but I do have some quibbles:

1) The DVD output doesn't offer 3:2 reverse pulldown for watching DVDs of films [movies] (which have a different native frame rate than video, & require this feature to avoid nasty visual artifacts.) The Phillips combo offers this at the same price, but has gotten bad reviews for other reasons.

2) The VHS output doesn't offer an S-Video Out jack, so one is forced to use the lower-quality Composite or Antenna Out jacks.

3) To use the Component Video outputs (which yield the best quality) of the DVD player, you must turn on the "Progressive" setting, which, despite a button for it on the front panel, is frustratingly difficult to do, and often requires repeated attempts. (And the DVD output will be scrambled until you do.) And then you must turn it off again when using the VCR, or the VCR picture will be scrambled!

4) The remote is terrible! (32 buttons of the exact same size [tiny] and shape, which do eveything from selecting channels to controlling system settings.) Don't even try to use this in the dark!

If you can afford the space, buy a separate DVD & VCR - you'll be glad you did, & you can buy both for the same total cost. If you don't have the space, as I didn't, this will do.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Sony Quality on the Decline
Review: I purchased the first Sony DVD/VCR combo and it worked great, for about 4 weeks. Then half way though a movie it started jumping from scene to scene before it froze up. I tried a couple of different disks but all I get in return are error messages. I received a replacement unit and on this one the DVD player only works on half of the disks I've tried. The other half I get "can't read disk, clean disk, error", etc... These are the same disks that worked fine on my original unit until the crash that is, and they all work fine on my Marantz 6400. I really like the way the Sony 500P interfaced with my Wega TV but it seems like Sony is just interested in selling low quality DVD players

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Sony Quality on the Decline
Review: I purchased the first Sony DVD/VCR combo and it worked great, for about 4 weeks. Then half way though a movie it started jumping from scene to scene before it froze up. I tried a couple of different disks but all I get in return are error messages. I received a replacement unit and on this one the DVD player only works on half of the disks I've tried. The other half I get "can't read disk, clean disk, error", etc... These are the same disks that worked fine on my original unit until the crash that is, and they all work fine on my Marantz 6400. I really like the way the Sony 500P interfaced with my Wega TV but it seems like Sony is just interested in selling low quality DVD players

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: I like it!
Review: I'm a girl, okay? Not a tech-head girl either. The last VCR I bought was years ago, and it was going on the blink. So I knew I needed to get with the DVD program, but still had all these tapes! So I wouldn't look like I was buying myself a new toy, I bought it for my husband's birthday. Since it was a surprise, I had to wait until he was out of the house to install it. I ran home on my lunch hour, hooked it up, and learned most of the functions by the time I had everything straightened up and had to rush back out.
So - it's easy to hook up, it's easy to operate. No loud noises, everything works as it should. Yes, the buttons are tiny on the remote. It looks good and I would recommend this for anyone scared to buy. Don't be.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: I like it!
Review: I'm a girl, okay? Not a tech-head girl either. The last VCR I bought was years ago, and it was going on the blink. So I knew I needed to get with the DVD program, but still had all these tapes! So I wouldn't look like I was buying myself a new toy, I bought it for my husband's birthday. Since it was a surprise, I had to wait until he was out of the house to install it. I ran home on my lunch hour, hooked it up, and learned most of the functions by the time I had everything straightened up and had to rush back out.
So - it's easy to hook up, it's easy to operate. No loud noises, everything works as it should. Yes, the buttons are tiny on the remote. It looks good and I would recommend this for anyone scared to buy. Don't be.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Works fine!
Review: It works great as long as you don't play any scratch DVD's or messed up tapes. If you play like old tapes or messed up DVD/CD's it will ruin the thing. Just take very good care of it and you'll be okay.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Good DVD/VCR player.
Review: It's definitely better than my Onkyo dvd player. But one problem, can't seem to program my Sony Wega remote to control it.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Very loud unit.
Review: This unit is L-O-U-D. I bought it and returned it a few days later. My 5-year old DVD player was absolutely quiet when playing DVDs. But this new DVD/VCR combo unit makes a loud whirring noise as it is playing DVDs... it must be the noise of the DVD spinning inside the DVD player, along with whatever mechanical device is actually spinning the DVD. I was forced to turn up the volume to hear the movies over the "roar" of this DVD player... not to mention that this noise in the background really grates on your nerves after a while. Besides that major flaw, it does seem to be a feature-packed device, but I really couldn't recommend this unit to you unless you're really tight on space and need to combine your VCR & DVD into one single space-saving unit. It is nice to have them both combined in one.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Worst Sony product
Review: We have always stood behind Sony's quality and their products have lasted a long time, until now. After 3 months, the tracking on the VCR tapes would not work. First we blamed the tapes and discarded them. Upon trying the tapes in our other machines, they were fine. We removed/reinserted the tape as the manual suggested, but that didn't help. It started out that the tracking would not hold after about 3 hours, then 2 hours, now 1 hour. E-Mail to customer support has been futile. We keep being pointed to other sites. Why can't they do that for us? The cost of mailing the unit in for repair nearly pays for a new unit.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: I won't buy Sony again.
Review: Well I read the reviews and bought this VCR anyway because it looked like the one with the most features. Moreover, all of our VCRs recently died and our older Sony DVD player cannot play some of the video CDs from asia, so I went for what appears to be the cadillac model from Sony.

Five minutes after hooking it up to my Zenith System 3 (e.g. Sony XBR-quality) television, i started flipping the TV/VCR switch, and noticed that the signal reception for the sony tuner was very dim. This picture became noticeably dark with this VCR. What's more, my tv couldn't lock and hold several of the setup screens. My TV has the highest quality electronics that Zenith ever made, and it was also the best performing TV when purchased 10 years ago, with comb filter and a full jack pack. I'm going to buy RCA technology instead since that stuff works just fine with my TV and its really really easy to use.

I took the VCR/DVD back. If you have to own this unit, you might consider buying one from a local merchant because there's a good chance you'll need to take it back, and that would save you and Amazon a lot of hassle and $$$.


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