The Philips VR740 has been put together to put people off vcrs, my second one has packed up just over 12 months from receiving a replacement one for the original one I had bought. This had only lasted 6 months and I had hoped that Philips had relised what a poor machine this was and that I would of got a better one, but no such luck. Philips used to be a company I use to swear by; but after my experiance with this and the TV I bought at the sametime they will be the last firm I will buy from.

Do not touch with a barge pole, and if you should be mad enough, do not buy from PRC Direct. I have hardly used mine, it has been for repair 3 times under warranty and it still has the same fault. Shame on Philips, who do they not have their own repair service, it is farmed out to others!!!

The list of missing features of the Philips VR740 Nicam is much bigger than the list of features it actually has. Philips obviously want to get out of the VCR market and this is a good way of doing it.
I can't understand how the picture quality on the video outputs is worse than that on the UHF.
Why do I have to enter the date when I want to use the timer? Can't it assume something here? Why can't I use the numeric keypad to enter times but have to use the up and down arrows? Biggest gripe though is that the display on the video only ever shows the current time meaning that in order to do just about anything with this machine (such as rewind the tape to a specific point) you need to turn on the TV. Even a channel number indicator which I previously thought all VCRs had is missing on this heap of rubbish!