Price Paid:  $150.00 from Return Buy - online

Summary:
I bought this from a vendor selling returned products. I was tired of 4 hour programs that played 2 or 3 hour movies. In general the commercial removal feature works adequately. Not foolproof but pretty good. I have had movies that still have commercials in them but that is rare. If the commercial break is very long (all too often these days) the commercial advance feature can get confused. Most often there is a slight flicker of something or at worse 2 or 3 seconds of a commercial and the playback goes on from after the commercial. The programming is not at all intuitive for me but after several miscues I now think I can enable whatever features I need for what I want to do. The manual is comprehensive but could be a bit better. It's above average for what I've seen in the audio, video and computer field but likely was written by an engineer (I ARE one.) and not a well trained consumer oriented technical writer. Some examples of specific configurations you want and the settings to make them occur would be helpful. There seems to be no simple way to record something on Deck 2 and then remove the commercials. You must record it on Deck 1. I will sometime try recording on another VCR then sending that to Deck 1 via the RF input and see if it'll treat it as an off the air signal and remove the commercials. That would involve a 3rd generation copy to have a commercial free copy though and quality would not be very good.

Strengths:
I can now (usually) sit down and watch a less than 2 hour tape of a commercially broadcast movie that was in the TV listing as 3 or even more hours. The price was "right" when I bought this and I see the price on this unit dropping even more. I got a "returned" unit and so far have been satisfied with it. The copy of a copy that you need to make to have a commercial free tape produces respectable quality. I'm surprised and had expected more degradation. I'm using SP always and play back on a 32 inch Sony Wega. If you're a real TV addict you could record up to 20 hours using the longest tapes and both decks. If you don't mind waiting for an automatic commercial advance you can watch the first generation recording and the comemrcials will fast forward automatically.

Weaknesses:
On dark scenes there is a definite image of a vertical area that will go from left to right across the screen. Light bright scenes don't show this. The setup involves multiple nested screens and when you return to the previous screen there is no placeholder so you always end up at the top of a long list of options. The manual isn't all that clear on how to enable all the option combinations you might want to use for a specific action. You can't use the automatic feature to fit a program onto a tape if you use other than T-120 tapes. There is no provisionf or the longer tapes that are now available. I usually tape anything over 2 hours onto an "8 hour" or "10 hour" high quality tape at SP and use a good quality T-120 "2 hour" tape for the final destination. You tie up the VCR for more than twice the length of the original recording. Thus if the program is 3 hours long it takes 3 and a half hours or so EXTRA to produce a commercial free tape. There seems to be no simple way to record something on Deck 2 and then remove the commercials. There is a loud clicking sound whe the Commercial Adavance is going through the tape.

Similar Products Used:
It seems to me likely that this Commercial Advance technology is now in the Replay TV boxes since SonicBlue now seems to own GOVideo and its technology and produces the Replay TV commercial free boxes