Customer Reviews

Toshiba SD-V296 Tunerless DVD VCR Combo

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(17)

 

 

My review is a lot different from most of the people here.

I saw the reviews others wrote, which were very negative, and one or two that felt it was a good solid basic machine.

I have used toshiba in my profession and it is generally a solid, quality brand. Not schnazzy and spiffy, but solid. A few quirks, but it gets the job done.

What I have done/intend to do with this machine:

1--Replace my old vcr which my son destroyed
2--Play old VHS tapes that have been given to us by friends/family, mainly children's videos
3--Play DVD's (for the children and for us--playing them on my laptop it's too quiet).

On these three points, honestly, I couldn't have asked for a better deal. the price was under $50 when I purchased it last week, and it's brand spanking new, not a refurb, and everything works good. The sound quality for the VHS side is not extra quiet for my tv. In fact, I had to turn it down some. DVD worked great too.

What I have NOT tried to do/don't intend to do:

1--record old vhs's to DVD
2--Hook this puppy into a state of the art audio/visual home theater
3--set the timer for recording programs automatically.

In these more advanced digital age things, probably this is not the best tool. All I wanted was something that could play both vhs and dvd's mainly to entertain our kids and sometimes for me and my wife. Our TV is not enthroned in honor in our house, it is just a tool. Our life doesn't focus around TV programming, so all we really needed was something to play VHS and DVD when we need or want.

Now it's possible if you have a nice nice system, you've already spent hundreds of $$$ on HD stuff, then maybe you need something that is more compatible. Check carefully on brands and make sure they have the exact connections you need, or you can end up spending a lot of money.

Also, if you have a TV that only goes through Co-ax, you'll need a special box to convert the RCA to Co-ax, and the manual says you might find reduced quality if you do.

So if you just need a basic solid piece of equipment to play your vids, I think you can't beat this one. The price has raised since I bought it, but it's still the most affordable one as of today, and I'm glad I got one for well under $100.

There are so many things wrong with this unit that it's unusable and I have to buy another, different brand. It's the worst VCR I've had in 35 years.

Connectivity is limited, as noted by the previous reviewer. In my case, the hookup is RCA only so I can't connect it to an older TV with an RF coax.

Timer recording is so convoluted (actually, EVERYTHING is so convoluted) and you can't watch TV through the VCR while it's recording - it locks you into the DVD mode. In other words, if you set the timer, you can't watch TV or spot-record in the VCR mode. You have to shut off the unit to watch TV.

The sound level drops *depreciably* from the sound level of the TV, not only when playing VHS/ DVD tapes, but even when you just turn it on.

There's no auto-tracking and the tracking buttons do nothing to adjust the picture. The sound drops even lower playing VHS and you can't get rid of those rolling tracking lines. I haven't checked to see if this also happens on tapes recorded by this unit or if it just happens on tapes I've recorded on another unit.

The open/close button on the remote doesn't do what it's supposed to do. It either stops the action or else it cycles back and forth between open/close. I have to get up from the couch and manually press open/close from the unit itself.

Moving through/selecting the menus is primitive and so counter-intuitive. It takes forever. And the manual is totally useless.

The remote is convoluted and not user-friendly. It's also cheaply made - there are several spots where the plastic is splitting and I've only had it one month.

Rewind is excruciatingly slow.

I'm sure I'm forgetting some other really annoying problems. This unit is almost as primitive as VCRs/DVD players when they first came out. I bought Toshiba to get away from the SONYs I've been buying that die within a year, but it looks like I'll have to check out other brands now.

I bought this recorder to replace my Sony VCR that went bad after 8 years. This was probably one of the worst purchases I have made. Amazon got me the VCR in 2 days and the setup only took minutes but that is the last good thing I have to say. The remote control is extremely poorly designed. The rewind is slow under both modes. The search function was very difficult to use due to poor documentation. There is no slow playback function in either forward or reverse. The buttons on the remote are not in logical places causing a lot of hunting for the right keys. The lettering on the remote is very small and hard to see. The function I really miss is the one to let you know how much tape is left to be recorded. All in all, I am sorry that I bought this and will probably never buy anything from Toshiba again.

I purchased this yesterday at Best Buy. It (thankfully) was the last unit they had in stock. It won't load the tape properly. The tape loads crooked, with the left side sticking up in the machine. Needless to say, it won't play the tape in that position. I'm returning it this evening. I can't seem to find a "decent" VCR for dubbing my tapes to DVD anymore. I just want to dub from the VCR to the computer. :(

The Toshiba SD-V296 DVD/VCR combo is the perfect product for those of us who still have a collection of VHS Video we want to be able to watch from time to time as well as DVD's. The price is right, it's great looking and very simple to attach and use. I am ecstatic with the purchaseToshiba SD-V296 Tunerless DVD VCR Combo

I was tired of replacing DVD players that often skipped or stopped playing, and I have a bunch of great old VHS titles, so I took a chance on this unit. So far, after 2 years of light use, I'm pretty happy with it. I'm not the most tech-savvy human on Earth and the instructions left a little bit to be desired, but when I got it all hooked-up I was quite satisfied. So far, the DVD function has RARELY skipped and has NEVER stopped playing, even with battered rental disks. The VCR function works about as well as the units we all used in the "good old days".

I think that some of the previous reviewers must have expected something more modern and whiz-bang . . . but hey, just the fact that it plays VHS cassettes indicates that it's not meant to be the latest or greatest anything. The remote has way too many little buttons that are impossible to see at movie-viewing light levels and it is not very intuitive.

For a basic player that plays DVD and VHS, it works well. It has never failed us yet in either format. It seems solidly built and I expect it too last another 2 years at least. Cue sound of knocking-on-wood . . .

This worked fine under light use for 5 months, then started eating tapes. Full warranty is for 90 days, so I figured I'd have to send to service center and pay something for Toshiba to repair or replace. Could not find the service center going through the Toshiba site, so I called Toshiba customer service between 9 and 5 as directed and got the runaround for over an hour ... could access how to get my tape out, but never how to get Toshiba to honor the partial warranty for months 4-12. Finally threw the thing away. I will not buy Toshiba again.

I have had this unit for about two years now and use it in my classroom often for both DVDs and VCR tapes. I don't know what the other people are talking about. It works fine and I have had no problem with it. Great price at Amazon.

I am currently on a major government contract that requires a DVD/VCR player that the soldiers can use for projecting training material. This product has been very easy to operate for both the government and contract installers. The quality of the video has been very good. We have and will continue to purchase a great deal more of this product.

My favorite VCRs were Toshiba. I thought that this device could not be that bad; after all, Toshiba would surely just downscale some of their existing technology into it. I attributed negative reviews to poor quality control in manufacture. However, I was wrong, and this device was so bad that I had to return it to the place of purchase even though I really needed one.

The VCR technology bears no resemblance to prior Toshiba products, so forget any past positive experiences you may have had with Toshiba. A Chinese company bought the rights to use the brand name. The DVD player was quite good, but I was buying this to replace a broken VCR, so I did not really care about the DVD.

During playback of tapes made on other machines, many played back with a white streak down the middle. Most tapes made on other machines played with severe flashing, rolling off the screen, or snow. Tracking controls helped with playback on a few of them, but not many.

When the Stop button was pressed in Forward or Rewind operation, the tapes stopped with a bang noise. When forwarding or rewinding, the tape time counters only worked for about 2 minutes of tape, so when forwarding or rewinding more than 2 minutes I could not tell how far the tape had traveled. After forward or rewind, some tapes had bunching/crinkling and blue screen upon pressing Play. Index search function did not work on most tapes.

As others have noted, the lettering on the remote is very small and gray (rather than white), so very hard to read. I guess after awhile you can remember button positions, but still inconvenient.

Some small positives. Unlike others, I found rewind very fast. Also, the device I purchased was quiet and not noisy as others have noted. Timer recording had a few oddities, but I did not find it too bad.

I did not want to buy one of the other brands of cheap VCR/DVD combos, because they sound just as bad. Instead, I purchased a good used, older VCR from when VCRs were still made well and am very happy with it.