I came thisclose to buying soemthing from one of those home shopping channels tonight. It was a combo DVD player/VCR made by a company called “Go Video”. Anybody heard of this manufacturer? They claim to be the only one to make such a thing. I would think this product would be a hot item as I’m sure most people have a bunch of stuff on VHS.
What is involved in having both a DVD player and VCR on the same TV? Some type of switch? Is it a big hassle? I’ll post a link to the model and would like your feedback on the supposed bells and whistles. I’d like to get a DVD player soon and want to know what to look for.
Most manufacturers would probably shy away from such a product because of the obvious potential for abuse, so you probably wouldn’t see one from a well known vendor. Also, all the macrovision and copy protection stuff built into DVDs would mean recording from DVD to video probably wouldn’t work well anyway.
Go Video caused a bit of a stink about ten years ago by marketing the first commercially viable (read: affordable) double-deck VCR. In other words, they’re a legit firm, and their products are pretty good (my boss had the aforementioned VCR).
They were able to hardwire the VCR to bypass copyright protection – I’m not sure how they did this legally – so I would imagine their DVD/VCR combo is similarly outfitted. I wonder if it’s code-free.
Anyway, as far as how it all works on your home entertainment center, DVD players and VCRs are simply two pieces of input for your TV and audio receiver, like cable boxes, satellite dishes, and camcorders are. Most recent TVs have sVideo ports for optimal DVD images, but they also have standard RCA plugs. Low-end models have coaxial cable connectors, too, for older TVs.
Usually, the high-tech things they sell are close-outs.
Don’t expect to get the warranty to work after a couple of months. Most 1-idea companies die young.
God I hate VCRs. Always have. Always will. Crappy output quality and complex tape path requires Rube Goldberg mechanical complexity and questionable reliability. All this and no random access. Only saving advantage is that it can record but when affordable DVD RAM gets going this advantage will also vanish.
Just forget about VCR’s or weird VCR/DVD combo units. DVDs are the way to go!
I’d sure enjoy having this - my DVD player (Panasonic A110) has RCA out, my VCR has RCA in and RF out, and my TV only has RF in. I can run the DVD player through the VCR, but the Macrovision signal screws up the picture, and as far as I can tell there’s no way to hack that out of my DVD player.
Does the combination unit have RF out?
Also, about Go Video’s double-deck unit… perhaps the VHS license only requires players to perform automatic gain control (which makes Macrovision work) when they’re producing a TV signal. This would also let the DVD/VCR combo copy DVDs to tape while still implementing Macrovision on both ends.
Go Video does a copy by doing a perfect copy. Its like doing a sector by sector copy of a disk. The resulting video has macrovision on it, if you can believe it. It’ll copy ANY video. You can get macrovision strippers for about $25.00, they are useful in that they can make the closed captions show up better. Most of you won’t need to concern yourself with that.
FYI, the macrovision is not encoded on the DVD, it’s added by the electronics in the player. If you have a DVD player with component outputs, macrovision is not added to those. Of course, there are no VCRs with component inputs (at least, not yet) so that still wouldn’t help you tape a DVD.
Mr2001, since you already have a DVD player and a VCR, I think your money would be better spent on a new TV - I’ve seen 27" sets selling for $250-$300 with video inputs. Likely cheaper than the Go-video dual deck. If your current set only has RF in, it’s almost a given that any modern set would give you a better picture. However, this desk does have an RF output.
The product’s web site does not mention that the VCR is capable of copying DVDs, so my guess is that it is not. The advantage is that you have one chassis rather than two. However, the numerous disadvantages would seem to outweigh that: can’t tape a DVD, even with a macrovision removal gadget; if the product breaks you’re out a DVD player and a vcr, plus price is probably higher than buying each separately.
Handy, I’m not sure what you’re trying to say. If you’re talking about their dual VCR decks, what you’re saying isn’t possible. It couldn’t do an exact frame-by-frame copy since this is an analog medium; it’s essentially the same of connecting the output of one VCR to the input of another. If you’re talking about the copying of DVD to video, we haven’t yet established that this product is capable of that. However, even if it is, it would still need to convert each frame to analog before writing to the tape, so it wouldn’t be much different than the aforementioned dual VCR deck.
But… Most, I’d go so far as to say virtually all, DVDs are protected. If duping DVDs is important to you- and I don’t know why most people would care, but it’s something I need to do- you can buy a “color corrector.” Supposedly its primary purpose is to allow you to adjust colors between the out and in, but, of course, the real reason to get it is to defeat macrovision. It’s been a while since I bought it, but it’s from Sima, and I think I bought it from videoguys.com. I think it probably works with VCRs, too, but I wouldn’t know since I bought the above-mentioned Go Video dual-deck VCR.