What to get even if you have lots of room.

Our baby girl likes to watch her Baby Bach and Elmo videos over and over again after her bath and right before bed time. It tends to calm her down before we leave her to sleep. Unfortunately, most of the good stuff is coming out only on DVD these days, but some of the good stuff that we used to let our older boy watch is still on VHS. So rather than limiting her to just DVD’s (could get boring because of limited family selection & budget), or to scratchy deteriorating VHS tapes that her brother had almost worn out when he was a baby, we decided to invest in a DVD/VCR combo.

Three pleasant surprises when we started looking that came as bonuses to us: these combo’s are actually cheaper to buy than two separate machines, so it freed up the VCR for another bedroom; the DVD player also played VCD’s; and, the progressive scan model was actually cheaper than the lower tech model!

We bought our SONY SLV-D300P Progressive scan DVD/VCR at the Good Guys in the midst of a Sony Sale. MSRP $199.99, we got it for $179.99. As usual, we skipped the extended warranty. We also looked at the more expensive Panasonic PVD-4752, and the less expensive Samsung V3500, but decided on the Sony because we liked the picture the best, and it would be remote control compatible with our TV set. Although, for the record, we almost bought the Samsung based upon price since we could have also bought an extended warranty for the Samsung out of what we paid for the Sony. We also took a hard look at a Toshiba TV/VCR/DVD combo for about $400, but it was out of stock, and we wanted to take advantage of the SONY price break.

Features

This particular machine has both a VCR and DVD/VCD player in a space flatter than a large VCR, but covering a slightly larger footprint and styled according to the WEGA theme

The VCR is a 4-head stereo recorder with flash rewind, plug and play easy setup for the clock and tuner, and includes an automatic head cleaner. The DVD player supports DVD, CD, VCD, SVCD, CD-R, and MP3 playback formats. Cool stuff includes progressive scan, frame by frame, slow frame, 2x play forward, screen zoom, and bookmarking. Sound is digital audio, Dolby, surround, and dts. Output is in component video, composite RCA and S-video. It also has convenient front mounted AV jacks, making it easy to plug in and watch the home video camera.

Like most units, it is multilingual in English, French, Spanish and Chinese. The remote control is sleek, long, thin, multi-brand, multi unit, meaning it can control a bunch of equipment, although it doesn’t seem to work on our Toshiba TV, and the layout is relatively easy to figure out. It would be great if it could be backlit, then we can become true couch potatoes and not ever need to turn on the lights. The WEGA design is also cool and compares favorably to Bang & Olaffson designs that cost 10x more.

Buy It!

We have had great experiences with Sony, and this machine continues that tradition. The pictures are crisp, and the machine is reliable. It even seems to work to maximize the remaining life of our 5 year old worn out video tapes by easing the picture without jamming the tape. It looks great on our 21” Sony TV. Our only gripe is that prices keep falling. I thought we got a great deal, but now, looking online, it looks like you can buy this for close to $167.