FAULTY SONY SLV-E720UK VIDEO RECORDER (TRADE IN)

Sony SLV-E720, £400

The SLV-E720  is the replacement for the E710, and Sony’s cheapest NICAM VCR to date. It’s not a budget model by any stretch of the imagination but compared with other machines in the £350 to £400 price bracket, it has a rather modest assortment of features. The styling is rather plain too, dull even with none of the characteristic flair associated with many of their other AV products. The only touch of novelty is reserved for the remote handset, which has a neat joystick button for the transport functions and making selections from the menu-controlled on-screen display. 

The closest it gets to a luxury feature is OPC tape tuning, which optimises recording and replay according to the type or grade of tape used, and the condition of the heads, by making a short test recording whenever a new tape is loaded. The auto installation system starts by assigning the RF output channel, then it moves on to tuning in the five terrestrial channels. The instructions seem to imply that stations are sorted into a logical order, though for some reason our sample insisted on placing BBC 2 on channel 1, and BBC1 on channel 5.  The RF output channel adjustment is software controlled, from buttons on the front panel.

It has a useful set of trick-play functions, and there’s a handy ‘replay’ button, that winds back and plays the last ten seconds of a recording. Other little extras include a display dimmer and off switch. The remote handset has a full set of TV controls, including colour-coded fastext buttons, but this only works with Sony TVs. Picture noise levels are very low and the picture contains plenty of detail, resolution is spot on 250-lines and colour fidelity is good. Background noise on the stereo soundtrack is about average, otherwise the response is reasonably flat with a solid bass line.

Features            NICAM, hi-fi stereo sound, Video Plus+ with PDC, NTSC playback, auto tuning, auto clock check, tape tuning, replay, switchable RF modulator, software control RF output

Sockets            2 x SCART AV, stereo line audio out (phono)