Home > Consumer Reviews > Sharp VC-H965U 4-Head Hi-Fi VCR

I got this VCR to replace another (older model) Sharp VCR, the only reason I did was because I wanted to upgrade from mono to stereo sound, as you might guess I have confidence in this brand, as my older model has been with me for the past 5 years and has never even hinted on malfunctioning although I have taken it on the road time and time again.
I like to shop around, so before I finally settled for this model, I considered all my options until I was sure this was the best I could get; well I am one VERY satisfied customer, this VCR is awesome, it does everything that's advertised and does it great. It is nice looking, and runs very smoothly and quietly (except when rewinding but even then it won't get in your way and keep in mind that it does rewind at a very high speed). The remote control might take a little getting use to, I'm talking 1-2 days at most, but for me it wasn't a problem as it is almost exacly the same as my old models'. It has been upgraded though as the buttons are much softer and the plastic casing is better looking.
As far as the sound and video portion, it is flawless, this VCR has even better image quality than a 6-head Toshiba that I owe, and the sound reproduction is top-notch. Finally, if you are one of those people that has trouble programming a VCR than this is the one to get as it is a hassle free job, is incredibly intuitive. Among all the great features, one that stands out is the one touch recording, which allows you to start recording inmediately and with each press of the button you make aftewards the recording time increases by 10 minutes, this allows you to record anything you see right away and know that at the end the thing will turn off by itself unlike other brands' where you have to turn it off yourself (great for when you are watching TV late at night, half asleep and suddenly you wanna record something but don't feel like going through programming the timer function).
Finally for those of you that care about this, and I know many people do, the VCR is made in Malaysia. I personally stay away from electronics made in China and secondly in Mexico but have had very good experience with products from Malaysia. I know many people are conscious about this so I hope this as well as the rest of the review is helpful.
There are several reasons why I decided to write this review:
1- Give credit where credit is due. I owe several Sharp products and have never ever had one malfunction, it is a nonexpensive brand with top-of-the-line quality. No reviews where available at Amazon for this particular product.
2- As a way to thank Amazon.com for carrying such a great product and at a good price (next time you go out to Best Buy, Circuit City, etc try to find a Sharp VCR... good luck. They don't carry them!
3- In hopes of helping people make up their minds so that this model will sell well so that Sharp won't discontinue it.

When one of my 2 Sony VCRs died I decided to buy a non-Sony brand. I did a lot of research before deciding to buy this one. In part, some of the other reviews mentioned facts that I thought would be plus points for me. Sadly, after trying out this VCR for almost a month (and really wanting to try and keep it) I decided to return it back to Amazon. Here's my experience:
Pros:
1) The video quality is superb. It recorded and played back very well, even with old tapes. It also played tapes recorded by my surviving Sony VCR with no problem at all. And the picture was always great.
2) The display on the VCR can switch between 'Tape Counter', 'Clock' and 'Channel' anytime you want (while playing a tape, or even if you're just using the VCR as a tuner). To me this was important and, in fact, the biggest reason I decided to try out this VCR. I can't do this with my Sony VCR - it will only show the tape counter on the display when a tape is in, and I find that annoying.
3) Great search feature. It has this 'DPSS' feature where you can search for the start or ending of a recorded program on the tape. Most VCRs have this, but I must say that this one worked very well and was very intuitive to use.
4) Two speeds for fast forwarding and rewinding. I quite discovered this by mistake. While playing a tape, if you push the fast forward (FF) button once, it forwards at a slower speed. If you push FF again, it forwards faster. There are only 2 speeds and it toggles between the 2 when you push the FF button. Same for rewinding.
5) It can play S-VHS (Super VHS) recordings - doesn't give S-VHS quality (400 line resolution), but it can play it back in Standard resolution (230 line).

Cons:
1) The display. I know I've mentioned it above as a plus that you can change the display on the VCR. But the display itself is quite unattractive. I really don't know why they didn't stick to the standard green LED display that most VCRs use. Instead, they use this yellow light in the backgroud - has that old look to it. My wife just couldn't stand it. I'm not usually picky about the looks myself, but even I thought it was rather unpleasant.
To add to the display problems (and another review mentions this) - the display is practically invisible when you turn the power OFF. It's showing you the time, but you can't see anything! You'd have to shine a flashlight, or put this VCR in a very, very bright room to see the display when the power is OFF.
2) Auto clock didn't work for me - and I think I know why. When the power goes off for more than 5 minutes, this VCR turns to its default settings. The default setting for the channels is 'AIR', not 'CABLE'. Since most of us will probably have cable hooked up to this VCR, it almost guarantees that Auto clock will NOT work.
You can get auto clock to work once you set the channels to 'cable', but this would require manual intervention.
3) Tape jumps forward before rewinding (also mentioned by another reviewer). If you're playing a tape and decide you want to rewind a little, the tape first jumps forward before it starts rewinding. It's annoying, especially when you fast forward through commercials and then want to rewind after going too far.
4) There's no download for manuals on the Sharp website. Better make sure you don't lose the one you have! Certain things like setting the VCR output to channel 3 or 4 have to be done in a special sequence and you'd never guess it unless you had the manual.

Miscellaneous notes:
I thought it would also be beneficial to mention facts that are neither bad nor good. Since there's little information on the Sharp website, these notes may come in handy.
1) Tape counter does not reset to 0000 when you remove a tape and put in a new one. I don't think this is so bad really, especially if you push the eject button by mistake.
2) The manual says that there's battery backup for 5 seconds. However, I found it to be more like 5 minutes when experimenting with this. The good thing is that all your timer recordings stay in memory for those 5 minutes. After 5 minutes, everything is lost. Also note that the time remains the SAME during those 5 minutes (E.g. if you lose power at 9:00am and it comes back at 9:04am, the clock will still display the old time of 9:00am). So again, Auto clock is very important - if it works, then the time will correct itself eventually. If Auto clock doesn't work, you'll forever be off by 4 minutes (in this example) until you change the time manually.

Hope this review helps. I really wanted to try and keep this VCR. Perhaps I was a little too picky, but I just didn't like how it looked. That, along with the Auto clock problem were the main reasons I decided to return it. If you can live with the drawbacks mentioned, this is a great VCR for $71.

We've now had this Sharp VCR for about 4 months now. The Sharp VC-H965U 4-head VCR is a good no-nonsense, dependable quality machine. I would NEVER have thought when I had to replace my Panasonic VCR (after just two years) that it would be so difficult to find a good quality VCR. Apparently it is getting harder and harder to find well-engineered ones, even those made by the more well-known manufacturers. I had always been told about Panasonic's quality in regards to its VCRs, and how "JVC had invented the VCR tape", and therefore I reasoned that my first Panasonic which died prematurely must have just been a lemon, or something of a fluke. So I (unfortunately) bought yet another Panasonic. After buying it, we had to return it within a week since it mistracked every tape I put into it almost immediately out of the box. Same with a "super-high quality" JVC "S-VCR"; I didn't even have it for 24 hours before I saw permanent tracking lines on everything I taped & watched. (Those tapes were forever damaged by that VCR and my second Panasonic.) After trying a VCR/DVD combo which ALSO didn't work properly, I purchased this Sharp unit and a Sanyo VCR hoping that ONE of them just might work. To our surprise, both units work flawlessly, were easy to program, and played all of our older tapes without any problems. And the price was less than half the price of the JVC and Panasonic units.
This VCR is not by any means perfect, but it is a very, very good and a safe bet. As someone here wrote, it does sound a little louder during the rewind function than some VCRs, but it is not unreasonable to live with. There is a slight problem in programming cable stations where the picture went out after the process, if you happen to have a live signal on channel 3, but the manual does address this. And the very polite customer service staff walked me through the problem after this first happened when I used the Auto-set feature. (This contrasts dramatically with JVCs "Customer service number" which was just a voicemail box, with no option to even leave a message) And the Hi-Fi recorded sound on this VCR is very clean. When viewed on my digital set, and the recorded picture is also clear, though an improvement it could use is that the Sharp is just a tad darker in the shadow areas than my two Sanyo VCRs. However, all around it is a solid performer, and exceptionally easy & reliable to program your favorite shows. I would buy another in a minute. Yet another winner from Sharp, whom I've come to respect more over the years...

I had thought at first that this VCR did almost everything well, but was worried because of a dark picture during playback. As it turns out, though, it was the copy protection interfering with the picture on the TV. Because I have a TV/VCR combo, it would darken everything from the new VCR. On other TVs without a built-in VCR, this Sharp model works perfectly.

So it's got a great picture on any normal television, the sound is crisp and in stereo, which is a big plus. And its features are all clearly explained in the directions and easy to figure out on the remote. I was nervous about the backlit display being distracting or too bright, but it's not at all. Automatic tracking is good, but the option to manually track is nice to have. The fast rewind and fast forward are good about being careful with the tapes and slows them before stopping or playing them.

This Sharp model was the clear winner in my shopping research, and my only complaint in the first place was the dark playback - but upon discovering that the problem doesn't lie with this VCR, I would recommend this unit to anyone interested in a good, solid, quality, and featured-packed VCR for a reasonable price.

It's getting harder and harder these days to find VCRs with any features. Although I use more DVDs and record on DVD, I still needed a good stand alone VCR. Over the years I've owned many, mostly Panasonics and Sonys. The Sonys, with more features, all have gone bad. The Panasonics seem to live forever but have the least to offer. I specifically needed VCR with a tape counter (hours:minutes:seconds) on the front panel, and this is the only one around. I've been very pleased to find that this VCR plays tapes 10 years plus in age with no problem. My Sonys would not only not play them, but were pulling the tapes and ruining them. This VCR is able to play the semi-ruined ones (tapes with edges made all ragged by the Sonys) with a nice clear picture. The set up is easy, they just label the remote with different labels for familiar things. I'm copying my old tapes onto DVD -- and I feel the picture and sound this Sharp is getting is as good as its going to get. I was so pleased, I got another one to replace another old Sony. The audio options are little more extensive than on most, for outputs you can choose mono, stereo or L mode / R mode -- meaning the left channel comes out of both speakers, or the right channel comes out of both speakers. It gives you the option of leaving the black and white static screen, or the blue one that covers it. These odd little features come in handy for different uses. I don't mind at all that the screen is extremely dim when not in use -- I can't stand all the bright buttons and lights on my other equipment, especially in the bedroom. I gave it 4 stars only because I really don't like the double FF and RW feature. I want it on the fast speed only and find the constant double pressing very annoying. I find myself constantly switching them. All in all, if you need a decent VCR, I would get this while you can.