I'm going to buy another VCR. The one I bought when I moved into my current apartment some five years ago is pretty much toast. It doesn't record well and doesn't show tapes well. I've been hanging on to it a bit longer because I didn't want to buy another VCR. In any case, I was looking at the Sony and Panasonic VCRs. A comparable VCR is about $300. I bought this VCR for $500 and another VCR a couple of years ago (similar model) for $500. So at least the prices have gone down.

I was thinking of maybe getting a DVD player, but you can't record with those. Actually, Panasonic has a DVD-RAM machine. It can record standard DVDs on single sided 4.7 GB DVD media. Four hours in LP, two hours in SP, one our in XSP mode. Beats me what the quality is, although I'm assuming about standard quality as a VCR for LP and SP, which is good enough for me. It's still a couple of years away from consumer prices as right now it's $4000. Media looks to be in the $20-30 range for a blank DVD RAM, so that would also be quite a drain. Oh well, a guy can dream...

So I bought the VCR, a Sony SLV-N80. (Notice how companies name their products with these weird acronyms? I'm sure SLV stands for something technical like Sequential Linear Velocity. I guess this is more of a problem for a product that has different versions. That way N80, N70 and N60 are differentiated from the other SLV models. Note that everyone seems to use higher numbers to mean better products -- more functionality and features and/or better parts and quality.)

The VCR is the top of the line for a standard VCR, costing only $200 (ok, it was also on sale, but I was going to buy that model anyway). The next tier of Sony VCRs have SmartFile technology, which is some sort of tape labelling system that is pretty much useless for people who organize their tapes well in the first place. I don't think there are any new features besides SmartFile for those VCRs.

The SLV-N80 has virtually the same features as my other VCR. Strangely, Sony renamed some of the features, I guess giving them catchier names. But my old remote still works the same so the codes are the same. I think the only better features are it's second A/V-in ports in the front and the Reality Regenerator. Beats me what RR does. It's supposed to make the picture better for old tapes.

The interface is worse, in my mind. Mostly it's the smaller type. Other than that it's a pretty standard VCR. 4-heads, HiFi stereo, VCR+ and VCR+ Gold (beats me what Gold does, I never used VCR+ since I'd rather program the VCR myself and not trust to someone else's heuristics), 2 A/V in ports, 1 A/V out port, cable ready (I think that just means it handle more channels, 125, but it can't descramble scrambled channels), cable box control (you have to have a cable box that you can attach an S-Link cable to so that the VCR can control the cable box) and a bunch of other features that I don't care about.

This brings up a problem with buying consumer electronics: too many models. It's confusing trying to figure out the differences between one model and the next of the same brand and the same manufacturer, much less of different brands or different manufacturers. Worse is that different manufacturers have different names for the same features. Just trying to stick with the higher priced items is a wasteful solution, but it does seem to work for me.

Macintoshes have gotten the same way. I can barely tell the difference from one iMac model to the next. It's hard to tell which are the current models and which ones are discontinued models. Whatever happened to the good old days with names Plus, SE/30, IIsi, IIfx? Or later on with PowerMac 6100, 7100? Now it's just PowerMac G4 400 which doesn't differentiate it from the other PowerMac G4 400 models out there.