I think I've finally convinced my parents to get themselves a dvd player, however my dad is still fairly committed to his vcr. I know the simple solution would be for them to just get a dvd player and have a separate vcr, but for some reason they seem to want a combo.

I haven't really been looking around, but are there any good combo's out there?

Since your parents aren't home theater fanatics, I'd say any combo would be fine. DVD players have advanced far enough in terms of quality that for the most part, all new players are more than adequate. Unless you're spending the $$ where you have all high quality components, I don't think your parents will notice the difference between a high priced model and an Asian low-priced one.

I'll echo raytseng's comments.

For the most part, I think any model you choose would be fine. If you wanted to get a slightly higher end model, I believe Sony makes one. Toshiba, too, maybe? I'm really not sure.

Ya, they definately aren't home theatre anythings, I'm still trying to convince them that widescreen is good. Thanks for the advice!

I would advise staying away from combos. My parents thought this would be a really cool idea, but it just wasn't worth it in terms for reliability. Separate units is the way to go.

Nekobus, what combo did they get? and what sort of difficulties did they have? One of the concerns was that if the dvd half broke, so did the vcr half and you were left with nothing!

Best Buy has a few name brand ones (Samsung, Toshiba, Sony) in the $140-200$ range. If space isn't really an issue, you could definitely buy decent seperate DVD and VCR's for that money and not have to worry about losing the whole unit when one part dies.

The two big reasons to get an all in one unit is if space is very limited and you are using an old tv set with only one input.

I see dvd units in Fry's electronics ads all the time for as little as $35. If you just want the ability to play dvds, I can't see how one of these units would be a bad buy.

NikePenguin, thats the funny thing, they just got a brand new JVC AV-32D104 32" TV, and really have tonnes of space. Maybe I should look into the psycholgical reasoning behind this combo desire!

They bought three different Go Video units and all died within a week. Then they bought a Samsung and the dvd player part broke in less than a month.

Even Consumer Reports advises people they would be better off to buy separate units.

As for saving space, combo units don't really save that much space when you consider how thin dvd players are these days. A VCR with a DVD player stacked on it will have the same or even smaller footprint than a combo unit and not be that much taller. You can usually buy better quality at the close to the same price with separates.

GoVideo...what crap. I bought a dual deck VCR from them a few years ago and that too died within a week. Got home with the replacement the damn thing didn't even turn on. Went back for a refund this time.

Bestbuy this week has three of them in advertised in the circular for the $149 to $169 range. Although I have a dedicated DVD player for the home theater, I also have video distribution throughout the house for my DVD, Satellite, and VCR. I'd like to replace the current VCR with one of these units so that I can use just one source to distribute both DVD and VCR. This way, the kids can watch their DVD on whatever else TV in the house, I can watch a DVD (on my dedicated player) whereever else in the house, epscially on the HT. Also, the dual setup gives allows me to hook up the VCR with S video or Component...this I found is only available on more expensive VCRs....as we barely watch VCR stuff, the combo is a good fit in my situation. Most likely I'll pick up the Toshiba combo unit that's on sale at Best Buy this week.

I recently got a combo a few weeks ago. I was not looking for high end, just something for the bedroom that would play dvd, cds, cdr, and vhs. I found that in the JVC HR-XVC25U. It was an open box model at Circuit City and I got it for $89.99. For my needs it is great. So far it has played everything I wanted it to. I have not tried vcd yet, but according to a review it does play that although it is not listed in the features. The regular price of this model is about $170, I believe.

I ended up bying the Zenith XBV343 for $129 ($149 - $20 DVD promotion from Best Buy).

It's progressive scan, has front AV jacks, plays all formats including JPEG, has 1 Optical audio out, and you don't have to switch between Component and S-Video signals from the back of the unit like I saw on some of the other brands.

I'll be putting it in today...will update this post later to let you all know how it turns out.

The Zenith is in and I have to say that so far, I've been impressed with it.

It plays all types of media, including discs with JPG files...which was a very neat feature that I didn't think I'd like but when I put in the CD back up of my digital pics, it played them all! Even though it says that images should be in a 8.3 naming convention, etc. The slideshow function was great and the images were pretty decent, even on a 65" projection TV.

The DVD player has both Component and S-Vid outs as well as Optical and RCA audio outs. The VCR is confined to just RCA for everything.

The front of the unit has a switch that lets you toggle between VCR and DVD as well as having a button on the remote.

As for the progressive video and sound....not bad. I like my SONY DVD player's progressive output a bit better but the diference isn't as big. Audio wise its fine, nothing special, but nothing bad either.

I got the Samsung DVD-V1000 (they have newer models now)about 21 months ago and it has worked flawless thus far and I would highly recommend it.