Home > Consumer Reviews > Panasonic PV-V4620 4-Head Hi-Fi VCR

I have purchased 4 of these VCRs for a special project and subject them to over 20 recording sessions per week. The VCR is packed with features. It is one of only a few VCRs that you can program a timed recording all from the front of the VCR. That is important if you have a deck of these VCRs in the same rack. Has many features I will probably never use. The on-screen menus are user friendly. There is one possible flaw of which I have not been able to resolve with these VCR's. This undesireable incident has occurred on all of the VCRs I have purchased. Out of over 20 recordings done during the week, perhaps one or two of the programmed sessons will terminate prematurely before the programmed end time. Most recordings I do are longer than 4 hours. Some of these recording terminations have caused a loss of 20 to 60 minutes. User error has been checked over and over. Times have been double-checked and documented. I even have put the rack of VCRs on a Power backup supply to avoid power line loss. Nothing seems to indicate what is causing the problem. I suspect either there might be a firmware or sensor problem, or a very sensitive tape transport that haults on an imperfect tape, or a really faulty VHS tape. Panasonic did not own up on the problem and recommended that I take the decks to their service shop. Other than this technical mystery, the deck is a fine machine.

I just purchased this VCR via Amazon to replace a seven year old Hitachi and I have to say that I am amazed at the features this thing has compared to my old one. First of all, the commercial advance is the best feature of the whole machine. Record your favorite program and when you come back to it on tape, as soon as you hit a commercial, the machine fast forwards past them all until right before your program starts again. Awesome! No more pressing fast forward and then guessing if that will be the last commercial before the show starts again. This thing does it all for you! My one complaint about this feature is that it doesn't do this on the fly. At the end of your recording you have to press a key to tell the machine to mark the commercials which takes a few minutes. That's not a biggie compared to not having to watch any more commercials!

Another cool feature is the way this thing sets up your channels and sets your time. You just press a few keys on the remote to begin and it does everything for you. You don't even have to enter in a time. It takes the time somehow when you either enter in your zip code or from a local channel in your area. It also has a 24 hour memory so if your power goes out, you have quite a big window to play with. Other VCRs that I checked out have a 4 hour memory limit max.

This machine also has a movie advance to fast forward through all those annoying previews at the start of a movie. I haven't had a chance to try this out yet since I watch DVD movies but if it works like the commercial advance, it should be good.

The only other thing that I really don't like about this machine is the remote. It's too small, especially the volume and channel buttons. I don't know about you but I like to use my VCR remote to control my tv and these buttons are way too small. The VCR control buttons like play, stop, rewind, and fast forward are nice and large but everything else is pretty tiny.

Overall I'm very pleased with this machine and all that it can do for the price. The ... remote prevents me from giving this five stars.

Although this VCR was highly rated by Consumers Report, I am disappointed with some of the features. VCR+ Silver - The channel auto set up works, but if you use the VCR+ code, the date, time and length are set correctly, but the channel is always 01. Timer Record - you must turn the VCR off for the timer record to work. This is a major hassle. If you happen to be using the VCR to watch another channel when it's time for a program to record, tough cookies. My previous VCR would switch over to the channel to be recorded while it was on. Set up / entry - You can not use the numeric keypad to enter numeric values in any set up option or timer record. You have to use the left and right arrow keys to decrease / increase number values. Remote - does not have a "last channel" button. The channel, volume, and record buttons are tiny. Only the device selection and power button are back lit.

This VCR is probably a good one if you actually get one that works. The first time I used this VCR the audio track had a loud vibrating noise on it. I asked Panasonic if they could just ship me a new unit, since this one seemed to be a lemon, and they told me I had to have it repaired. So I did, and after waiting two weeks I got it back and the problem seemed to be solved. I've used it exactly three times since then and on the second time it started making the humming noise again, unfortunatly the labor warranty had run out by this time and they wanted to charge me $75 to fix a problem they already were supposed to have fixed. I guess I should have used it more often and I would have discovered the flaw sooner, but since we bought a DVD player we just don't use the VCR that often. I think Pansonic should stand behind their product, nevertheless. It's a bad sign when the unit doesn't work right out of the box, they should've just given me a replacement since they sold me a faulty product. I'll never buy a Pansonic VCR again.

This VCR replaced last years top-rated PV-9662. If you liked that vcr you'll like this vcr. The only difference is the remote is now more compact and doesn't stand up like the old one.