GoVideo VR4940 Progressive-Scan DVD Player/Recorder with VCR

The good news is it does make good quality recordings onto DVD-R. The XP (high quality mode) beat the best I got using encoder software on my PC, and the resulting disk played better in standard DVD player. That would be worth 5 stars, if only it were accepted as usable by my family (including me).

It does have some problems reading S-VHS tapes from my video recorder, which it is spec'd to do. It seems to take a few seconds to get into the correct mode so I lose the first few seconds which is irritating, but after that it works fine.

There is no S-Video input at the back, only the front. Rather odd, but maybe they reckon the only S-Video device in a normal household is a camcorder.

The bad news is it is complicated. The remote has dozens of small buttons and is modal. The modality is very confusing when dubbing from tape to DVD or vice versa, since at that time both devices are in use and you have to wonder which one is being controlled by the buttons. It is not really a...Read more

I finally decided to get in the "digital world", and convert hundreds of VHS tapes (mostly recorded from HBO\Showtime over the years) to DVD. The first thing to understand is: If you have bad VHS (low sound or picture quality)...you will have a bad DVD. It simply transfers the contents of a VHS direct to a DVD in the same manner it was on VHS. You just change the type of media it's stored on. It does not improve the quality of the original VHS. With that being said, most of my tapes are recorded from satellite dish in standard 2 hour play and are in dolby stereo. My DVD record quality has been excellent from this player. I have copied several dozen hi quality VHS tapes to DVD, and they play perfectly on my other 2 DVD players. No skips, etc. But this is only on -R DVD's Note: It will ONLY record on DVD -R & -RW DVD's (not + R or +RW's), so buy the correct DVD format. I have noticed that some copies I've done on -RW DVD's (even in the 'compatible' Video format) will not...Read more

There are certain key things you need to know before you purchase this product. First of all, let me explain that I was extremely excited about receiving this product because I thought it was going to eliminate the need for me to buy a PC with a dvd burner and editing software. I currently own a Sony Handycam digital camcorder that uses a IEEE 1394 DV input (firewire). Since my PC does not have a IEEE input, I looked into ways to upgrade my PC to accommodate this; however, in the process, I discovered that my PC did not have the minimum requirements that it needed to edit videos and was going to take even more upgrading than I had originally planned. Therefore, when I saw this product on Amazon and read the product description, it sounded as if it fit perfectly with what my needs were, so I decided to purchase. I was very happy also because I have home videos that are already on VHS tapes that I have been wanting to convert to DVD, which this product has the...Read more