Buyer's Guide to Smart VCRs

by Alice Patterson
Fall 1997

Tired of wasting valuable time programming your VCR to record your favorite programs? Ever wished you could scan past those obnoxious commercials? Well, you're not alone, and VCR manufacturers have taken notice. Even though 89% of us already own a VCR, we'll purchase 7.5 million new sets by the end of this year. One reason for the big sales surge is that manufacturers are finally starting to build products that the average non-engineer can use. Hallelujah.

When home VCRs first appeared on the market over 20 years ago, they were such a boon to the home video consumer that most people gave little thought to their cumbersome controls. We gradually got used to the red, blinking 12:00 on the control panel, and finally gave up on trying to set the darn things to record some future program. In a nutshell, it was just too much hassle. Now, manufacturers are trying to out-feature each other to bring you timesaving, foolproof VCRs. Many units feature remote-controlled, on-screen menus for setting functions, program guides like VCR Plus+ and StarSight, automatic channel setup and power backup. Let's take a glance at a few of these new and improved features, and what you can expect from them.

Sit back and relax, because "automatic" is the key word to describe the functions available on the VCRs you'll see listed in this guide. These automatic functions take the guesswork out of setting up to record. Auto Speed Set checks to see if you have enough tape-time remaining for the program you've set to record, and automatically switches to extended play (EP) if necessary. The Auto Tracking function gets rid of unwanted tracking lines for you--letting you stay where you are instead of having to get up to manually adjust a dial. The automatic channel setup feature will set the VCRs tuner to scan through your local broadcast frequencies and automatically store the active channels into memory. Some units will even do the same thing with your cable and DBS channels. If you use this feature, you'll be able to use the VCR to select the TV channel you want to watch or record.

On-screen program guides are another rapidly-expanding feature you'll see on these "smart" VCRs. StarSight is an interactive, on-screen program guide that allows consumers to tune into programs, gather information about the shows and record current and future programs through the touch of a button. VCR Plus+ is the world's first VCR taping method that lets the user tape a cable or broadcast program in one step--by entering a PlusCode number featured in most printed TV listings. This feature is also available in televisions, and was first introduced in the United States in 1990 as a hand-held remote unit. Now, it's built into just about every major VCR brand on the store shelves. You'll find VCR Plus+ on every VCR included in this guide. Viewers should also keep an eye out for TV Guide Plus+, an on-screen guide that lets viewers easily obtain information about current and upcoming programming on broadcast and cable channels.

Ever wanted to skip through parts of a recorded program or--better yet--those pesky commercials? Skip Search lets you get forward your tape in 30- and 60-second intervals, while Commercial>>Advance, allows users to identify commercials while recording TV programs, and skip them automatically upon playback. An enhanced version even allows users to detect, mark and skip past commercials on tapes recorded by a VCR without Commercial>>Advance.

Nearly all VCRs on the market these days are hi-fi stereo models. This means that instead of the standard two heads (one for video, one for audio), they have two heads for video and two or four heads for audio. This makes for sharper pictures and good quality audio reproduction in stereo mode.

Technology has brought us a long way from the days of bulky knobs and programming frustration. What the future holds in terms of innovative feature development is anybody's guess, but hearsay indicates that voice activation could be part of the lineup. Check out the models listed here for a taste of these new, smart VCRs.

Alice Greany is Smart TV's editorial assistant.