Word: vcr
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...whether to buy a so-called cable-ready machine. Cable-ready, or cable-capable, as it is now called, describes VCRs that have electronic tuners capable of receiving more than 100 channels directly from a cable-TV system. Buying a cable-capable machine, however, does not mean that the VCR will automatically receive cable programs, only that it may not need an extra cable box or a complicated switching system once cable has been installed. Actually, this feature will eventually become a thing of the past. As more and more basic-cable operators scramble their signal to prevent video piracy...
Before buying a machine, consumers might do well to figure out whether they want a VCR primarily to record television programs or to play prerecorded movies. If the latter, a VCR with "multievent programmability" is unnecessary. If the primary use is to be time shifting (recording a television program at one time for viewing at another), then multi-event programmability is desirable. The most advanced machines will record as many as eight programs over a 21-day period. RCA has a couple of models that will even program up to a year in advance. As a rule, the fewer...
...remote-control device. It generally allows a viewer, without leaving the LaZBoy, to stop and start the tape, pause, fast-scan in forward and reverse, or watch in "double speed," which is slower than fast-scan but faster than normal. Two types are available: those connected to the VCR by a long wire and the detached, infrared devices, which are less cumbersome and more expensive...
...last year, high-fidelity stereo came to the VCR in the form of Beta hifi. The VHS version followed this year. Both are capable of extraordinary sound and their prices are accordingly high (list prices usually start at $1,000). Moreover, now that TV stations are beginning to broadcast programs in stereo, the machines can record in stereo as well...
...Whatever VCR equipment the consumer buys, a final challenge must be faced before the machine is hooked up and ready for use: the instructions. Many VCR manuals read as if written in a difficult foreign language. Printed in Japan, where most of the VCRS sold in the U.S. are manufactured, and replete with technical jargon, these booklets often contain such impenetrable prose as the following: "Never connect the output of the [recorder] to an antenna or make simultaneous (parallel) antenna and [recorder] connections at the antenna terminals of your receiver...