Home > Consumer Reviews > Sony SLV-N55 4-Head Hi-Fi VCR

1) Like someone else wrote, I too get this disturbance at regular intervals when playing back with the SLV-N55. For me it occurs with some recordings made by other VCRs and pre-recorded videos.

Every 5 to 10 seconds, the picture will jitter vertically for a second. I played around with the tracking to no avail. If it's because of the condition of the tapes or the recordings are a year old, that's still no excuse because these same particular tapes play perfectly stable on my other 3 Panasonic VCRs, and it should have no problem with pre-recorded tapes ESPECIALLY.

(Side Note: I have a Panasonic PV-V4522 that makes recordings with a severe vertical jitter on older tapes, leaving you with a bad recording, but if I re-record over the same tape at the same speed, that recording will be stable... go figure)

A hyper-sensitive VCR that requires mint condition tapes to play a decent picture (in the Panasonic's case, to record one) is not very useful then, because you'll WANT to watch and use your tapes and videos in the future, and you can't store your cassettes in a vacuum, electro-magnetic and gravity free chamber or something.

2) While so far the SLV-N55 has no problems playing back recordings made by itself, the quality of those recordings is not to my liking. It seems to record with more color bleed than other VCRs. Also there is this noticeable outline to the right of every object in the picture, resembling a slight "ghost" effect like with poor reception on a TV with rabbit ears or turning the sharpness too high on your set. (I get digital cable)

If this is what 19 Micron quality is all about, then no thank you. I had an Optimus 19 Micron VCR long ago and while playback of it's recordings were fine, playing back of those same recordings on another VCR was very grainy.

They should just keep everything the standard 26 Microns and all will be fine. So from now on I will avoid the feature "19 Micron Heads" like the plague. : P

I have this for about 8 months now and it's not working anymore. Didn't work after first 3 months, I had to call sony and they helped me do channel auto set up and it worked. ( still it's hard to believe why that happened in 1st place without changing setup) and it happened 2nd time now. Doesn't play. Called Sony and can't get it fixed over the phone. It's out of labor warrenty. Was never satisfied with this one. I am big fan of Sony but I didn't read all reviews before I bought this one. Never Buy this product.

I own another Sony VCR (SLV N-71) which is nice. This one was for the kids, but it's going back. The VCR is noisy - very distracting. Picture is fair. I expect more from Sony products.

I have two other Sony VCRs...but except for two short comings are no better. These two failing occur in the pause and slow modes in which there is too much video noise. All other features work quite well, with the flash rewind a dream. The remote also deserves high marks for its ease of use.
Best of all is the picture quality which ranges from very good to excellent... I'd rate it a best buy.

Sony SLV-N55 VCR

*Record and play quality is great.
*Search, commercial skip and replay are very welcome features.
-It rewinds & fast forwards very fast but greatly over shoots every time.
-Can not use the numbers when seting timer recording, forced to use the up down buttons only.
-Counter zeroes every time a tape is put in so if you take a tape out then put it back in you loose the index, annoying but not a big deal.
-The one feature that is horrible is the display. It shows only counter while recording or playing. Can not see what channel you are taping to see if it is the right one, and can not see the time of day while it is recording either. Basically the display yeilds amlost no usefull information at all.
-You pay a slightly higher price, but not too much more, for the Sony name and you do recieve a quality product. But I expected a little more in the way of features for the this premium.