Video Reviews

Great product. The manual I a bit tedious, but the product is great. Picture is good and features are nothing more special than you would find if you bought a separate VCR and DVD player, but I love having them both in one machine.

Nice enough player.

The user interface is plain - nothing more than text, without the polish of Sony combo units.

Ignore the editorial review's comments on needing a receiver with analog inputs. This player does provide analog outputs for surround, but it also provides optical output for connection to a receiver that decodes its own surround sound.

The machine has one standout capability: when playing a DVD on progressive scan, the VCR/DVD line outputs are still active and correct! (Many current players will disable the line outputs when set to progressive scan [e.g. Samsung] or they will scramble and become unusable [e.g. Sony].) This is a splendid feature if you are driving an HDTV monitor and a "normal" TV (i.e. one in another room) simultaneously. (Admittedly, if you don't use this arrangement, this feature has little value; but for those who do drive dual monitors, this is a critical feature that is rarely found.)

I was very impressed with this combination. First, it is very convenient and a good way to intergrade old and new technology. You have the VCR for your older movies and the DVD with a clear picture. I really like the sound quality as well. It is easy to create a home theatre with more speakers.

1/31/04 I purchased this stand in December, 2003, with my new Panasonic 50 inch LCD. Appearance and Assembly are 5. Functionality 3 and Value 4. The stand is very well packed and the box is easy to open. In fact, my stand was fully assembled, with the exception of the center shelf. I purchased the stand for $300 (Actually, not a bad price for a custom stand, but I downgraded one point, since the stand functionality is only a 3). This set up works well in the center of a wall or in a corner of my room. The stand easily glides over a carpet, with the LCD TV intact. Also, the height of the TV on this stand is in the optimal position for viewing, from any sitting position in my room.

I like this optional custom stand, but the space for components is lacking. Stand drawback is the limited interior width of 29 inches and limited depth - my amp with all cables just fits within the depth and I can only fit my narrow cable box next to my 17 inch wide amp on the base shelf. My DVD player easily fits on the upper shelf, with room for the cable box on top if desired, but, there is not room for my large center speaker. There is plenty of room for heat release for my three components. If you need this stand for three components and a center speaker, measure carefully before purchase.

The TV is a perfect fit on the stand and is secured on stand pins and 2 rear clamps. The shelf is held in place with pin/set screws. Make sure that you place the shelf in correctly - - one end is rounded to match the front semi circle appearance -- The shelf placement can easily be put in backwards. If you do this, and tighten the set screws, there will be the screw imprint in the poly/heavy gauge plastic shelf.

The front and back of the stand is open. Cable/Wire placement is not a problem. The rear support of the stand has holes in place for cable transfer, but I prefer to run from the bottom shelf area and keep out of sight.

Recommended Purchase if you do not need extra space for more than three components, with a hearty center speaker. The custom appearance and secure attachment of the TV on this stand were my decisive factors. Enjoy. j.

I can hand this so easily,Its smooth and fairly big.19 inch is perfect size to have a lot of fun with,most of all when you are in bed.The slot is so smooth too,and so easy to slide my big,great videos into.

i purchased this vcr not too long ago for my 8-year son, he was very pleased and so was I. It works very well and what can i say a vcr is a vcr.

Hollywood FX Plus for Studio 7.x or higher is an excellent add on product.

Studio 7 and 8 are notorious for being unstable but if you can get them to work right, the addition of FX Plus will make your editing even more enjoyable.

You have many new affects with FX Plus. Some of the effects rival the Video Toaster or even broadcast quality products. You just have to see them to believe it.

One thing to note: you will really need a 3D Graphics card to help out with the most complex transitions. The software rendering on slower machines just causes most systems to crash.

If you have Studio 7.x or higher, you MUST get this add on.

I have used my DC10 plus for about a month after buying it used for about 80 dollars, and the money was well spent. This particular capture card has a very good reputation on the internet because it was considered almost professional quality when it was released a couple of years ago.

My previous experience with video capture was limited to an ATI TV WONDER USB card, which was great for TV viewing, but was only reliable for capture using no compression (2 hours on a 20 GIG disk using virtualdub) or using the DIVX codec(fastest mode). This card is much, much better at video capturing, in fact, most times you will only get 0-6 dropped frames using a fast hard drive. Keep in mind that this card is not a TV tuner, and you will only be able to watch TV with it using a VCR as a tuner.

I should mention that AVI files have a size limit wich limits the amount of video you can capture. using FAT32 the limit is 4 GIG. Fortunately, both VIRTUALDUB and the PINNACLE STUDIO software can bypass the limit by recording your video in several files. PINNACLE's software even does this automatically. So your only limited by your hard drive capacity and some weird errors that pop up when recording long videos.

The card can only record using a hardware MJPEG codec, with good quality but it produces files that can only be played on your computer and are to large to share anyway. Fortunately you can convert the files using virtualdub or the included Pinnacle Studio software (virtualdub is much faster). You should capture with the included software, and don't be affraid to use the lowest premade setting if your intention is to make VCDs, the quality is still TV like and I can save more or less 6 hours on a 20 GIG drive.

Now comes the bad part, the card only has reliable drivers for Windows ME and 98, the card works with LINUX but I haven't been able to test it yet due to lack of software. WIndows 2K drivers came out recently but there very new and I don't considere them reliable. Also the card doesn't like to play well with other software, I can't use it reliably with virtualdub. I've used it with VIDEOWAVE 3.0 but the quality is just not the same as the Pinnacle Studio software. Even if you use the Pinnacle software you might get weird errors if you try capturing very long videos (more than 70 minutes) or try to do some editing on your captured file. I usually use STUDIO to capture and VIRTUALDUB to edit my videos.

The card is great and it only misses the 5 star mark because of Pinnacle's questionable software support.

I purchased this receiver a couple months ago, and I have been very pleased with it's overall sonic ability. It offers a large assortment of connection possibilities with different sources. It offers both optical and coaxial digital connections (assignable). I was a little dissapointed when I tried to connect a digital source to the VCR2 connection and found that the digital inputs could only be assigned to VCR1, TV, DVD, CD, or MD. Another complaint I have is with the remote. It is a programmable remote, but it won't work with my Panasonic TV, Hitachi VCR, or General Instrument cable box. Overall, I am very happy with the receiver. It is an excellent value. I can't complain too much, it's an Elite receiver for less than $500!

The use of all the power generated by this machine was amazing. I think the design concept is lacking. The shape of the machine could have been more "modern". I think the performance of this particular receiver is second to none. THis is why I gave it four stars.