They still make VCRs? Weird. I would never willingly watch a VHS over a DVD anymore

If David paid with a credit card that offers an extended warranty, I would suggest calling the card company. Maybe they can work some magic.

One would hope that Pana would simply replace the apparently endemically-defective product with a similar, but different unit.

It's been a long time since I used a VCR, but I can tell you that my wife and I have decided that Pana phones are the only ones worth having. Essentially every other brand has poor range, poor sound quality, or just plain dies. Our Pana phones can range all the way from our house to our horse barn, which is, I'm guess, 500 feet away.

@Kyle: I still use one to record shows and watch them later. I'm not real picky about picture quality, so why not?

@tc4b: Now they make things called DVRs.

@tc4b: I had a coworker who does the same thing, except that now he can't find blank tapes.

@YouDidWhatNow?: We have a DVR/VCR combo and always forget the VCR part is there. The few times that the remote won't open the DVD player, and we thought it had finally given up the ghost and that we would have to buy a new DVD player....but then we realize that the DVD player isn't working because for some reason, it had set itself to VCR and was prepared to eject a video tape and not a DVD.

I've had nothing but grief with combination DVD/VCR players. I would rather buy a $30-$40 DVD player and a VCR seperate and know that if one broke, it was easily (And cheaply) replaced VS. having a broke DVD player on one side, with a working VCR.

This combo seems to be quite a fancy model, and this guy paid good money for those features. He went thru the proper channels to get a repair, replacement, anything just so he utilize the machine he paid for.

Give the poor guy a new unit already!

@MitchEvious: DVRs are so much more cost efficient and reliable. Plus you don't always have that blink 12:00 all the time :)

My mom always told me that combo electronics and other home devices had twice the chance of breaking. It's not a scientific analysis but I've stuck to it

@pecan 3.14159265: Which you have to buy first. Which = another expense.

I don't see a problem using older technology, if it still works. Running after latest gadget costs money.

@verucalise: Or 2 separate new units.

@pecan 3.14159265: I'm still looking for a decent DVR. My definition of "decent" means no subscription required. Of course it has to have a digital tuner in it these days.

@webreacher: DVRs are hardly the "latest" gadget...if you're recording television, presumably you have to have decent service...unless you get stunning quality from rabbit ears or an antenna, you can easily add DVR service to cable for $5 to $10 a month, or you can buy a Tivo unit for $200 or so...hardly more expensive than a really good DVD player.

It costs money, but blank tapes cost money too.

@verucalise: He needs more than a new unit. He needs one that actually works all the time.

@Skaperen: Get a tuner for your computer and use Media Center. Otherwise your options are to pay Tivo or your cable company.

@Kyle: There's a truly surprising amount of stuff you can't get on DVD. Granted, much of it us obscure or has its rights tangled up somewhere, but I actually had to buy a new VCR in 2003 when I started my MFA program in film, because there were a lot of movies we couldn't get on DVD. (And I had 12-15 hours' worth of film-homework per week.)

@pecan 3.14159265: If you're just timeshifting, you don't need to buy blank tapes. You just reuse the ones you've got. Plus I have old tapes that I like to watch, so it would seem silly to pay extra for a system that wouldn't actually completely replace what I already have and works fine for me. That's how I practice frugal consumerism :-).

My good, region-free DVD player cost me $39.95, by the way.

Maybe call up 1998 and get a replacement? I don't care if its snarky, its time to adopt technology or move to central Pennsylvania and grow a beard, people.

@Kyle: Reading the Amazon reviews, it looks like a lot of people buy this item because they have a lot of home movies and such on VHS, and past a certain amount it's more cost-effective to spend $250 on a device like this than to pay someone else to do it.

@pecan 3.14159265: Well, DVRs are practically vogue now, so that's close enough to "latest gadget" in terms of price, quality, service, and lifetime.

Still, $200 is not bad.

@Darrone: It should work as advertised. It was only bought a year ago.

@Darrone: That has nothing to do with anything. It's a new product that was sold about a year ago. It should work. Period.

@lannister80:

A VHS unit would have a purpose for older parts of a user's movie archive. It would be expensive to replace all VHS movies with DVD copies if the collection was extensive.

They may also have quite a few VHS home movies they want to watch.

@Laura Northrup: Yeah exactly, that's why I recently got another VCR (well, it's a VCR/DVD combo). I have a ton of tapes from my childhood/teens that I still like to watch on occasion, and some I can't find on DVD anywhere. I'd rather not spend the money on a DVD if I already have it on tape.

Well you will have to take them up on the offer of the repair. If it's some kind of part replacement, you have to do it. If it's broke after that call up your credit card company.

@Darrone: I've got plenty of VHS tapes that work just fine, and I don't really have the cash on hand to go and replace them all with new DVDs just because I have to "adopt technology". Hell, I have several tapes that haven't even MADE it to the DVD format yet. I'm not gonna throw them out just cause tapes are old hat.

The problem here isn't that the guy is still buying VHS players, it's that he bought a product that was fundamentally flawed from the start and he shouldn't have to put up with that.

@tc4b: Yeah, no problem with that. If you already have the VCR it makes sense. But who goes out and purchases a DVD/VCR combo for $250 instead of a really good VCR for $80 and a DVR for $200?

@Skaperen: Sorry, please get this guy a new unit THAT WORKS PROPERLY! AN UPGRADED, PROVEN MODEL!!

@Kyle: The key word is "willingly." I have several obscure movies that took me years to find on VHS. Very little chance they're coming out on DVD anytime soon.

Also, since it seems like the awesome TV show "Two Guys, a Girl, and a Pizza Place" is NEVER going to be officially released, I'll be making do with my taped-off-TBS VHS tapes for a long while.

@schmendrick12: That's funny, the other day I was looking at the DVDs I had and thought, "when the heck are they going to release 'Two Guys, a Girl, and a Pizza Place' on DVD?"

You know I have this exact model here. The ONLY reason I bought it was to transfer VHS tapes of recorded short track speedskating races. It's now sitting on the living room TV set. I think I'll have some future use for it.

@gparlett: I had to buy a combo unit (Panasonic, by the way, but not this model) because I couldn't find any quality VCR-only machines that weren't used or refurbished. I'm sure at some point VCR's won't even be made any more. Start hoarding now!

He bought a DVD/VCR combo for $250 a year ago? WTF? You could buy blu-ray players for that price a year ago. I've got a DVD/VCR combo the guy can HAVE for $5.

@korybing, Jesse, Nakedscience, Lannister80: I believe i said "i don't care", and again, copying them to DVD is cheaper than replacing the VHS player. Of course, you should have done that before the player died. It's called being COST EFFECTIVE.

Reply isn't broken so...

@bilups

It was a DVD Recorder/VCR combo, still a little high though. Panasonic has went to crap over the years and now their stuff is even worse than Phillips/Magnavox.

Argh... I meant reply is broken again... can't reply to even correct that part...

It seems that combination anythings (TV/VCR, TV/DVD player, DVD/VCR, etc.) are ALWAYS pieces of crap. I've never owned one where one piece or the other would fail prematurely.

@gparlett: None of the places near me stock plain VCRs. You'd have to order one.

Who really makes these, I've been having the same problem with two Zenith units from October 2008 that have suspiciously the same layout, and getting the same results from them, and the seller.

@Darrone: It'd cost me considerably more to copy all my tapes than to buy another VCR. And that's without factoring in the time. VCRs are cheap and my tapes are many.

@morganlh85: I don't really disagree that they're a bad plan, but the odds against them both breaking at the same time are pretty astronomical, so one of 'em's always going to break first.

@bilups: I was thinking that too. I think I got my dvd/vhs combo for under $70 bucks about three years ago.

I got rid of my VCR when I got me a digital TV, because the tape quality looked horrible. Now I'm slowly replacing the tapes I have. The older stuff I can get for a few bucks in bargain bins and I'm not above buying "previously viewed" from video stores.

It saves me a lot of room. All my DVDs now fit in my cabinet and I have room for more. The tapes are going in my garage sale.

I'm one of the reviewers for this device, on Amazon. On paper, it ought to be a real winner. And, except for TiVo, there's really nothing that comes close. This device can record on double-sided re-writable RAM disks, as an example.

The whole market for hard-drive-equipped, upconverting DVD recorders is strangely immature. But, Panasonic's customer service is truly, truly awful. It seems likely many of the problems with this device could be solved with a firmware update. But, with so few competitors in this space, it seems as though Panasonic is banking on not having to spend any more money on this awful product. I see it's now picked up by Costco; presumably Panasonic is cranking this out by the boatload.

I'm glad to see this coverage, here on Consumerist. Maybe Panasonic will come around. More likely, though, it'll just warn off some more potential customers for this device.

@edwardso: but it's perfect momlogic.

I didn't know they even still made VCRs with tuners in them. I replaced my VCR last year with a combo unit and it has no tuner in it.

Really? $9.99 for a brick of 15 tapes at BJ's isn't really an expense. Never mind the DVD/VCR unit I purchased before the digital requirement for $69.00 which still works, as does the Mitsubishi VCR purchased in 1997 and one from Costco my parents bought me for Christmas so long ago I still lived with them. I'm 42. Last I checked, I cannot record a TIVO in my living room and watch the TV show later in my office or bedroom like one can with VHS. Then again, the 13" Sony TV I use in my office was bought at Service Merchandise when I turned 16 with my birthday money...and it still works just fine.

As a rule, I don't let the technology dictate my television viewing. It's a TV show. It ends rather quickly.

Yeah the digital tuner requirement in order to record television on the VCR side has really driven up the current price of DVD/VCR combos. A $69 combo bought present day can only tape VHS from a DVD or play VHS tapes, it cannot record television as it has no tuner.