Being the former owner of an aging Go Video dula deck VCR circa 1996, I was somewhat loathe to move up to the newer one. However, I looked into and saw that a significant amount of improvements had been made, and the technology had obviously gotten better. So I dove in.
The pool is more shallow than you'd think. Most of the 'improvements' that anyone would really use are on an ergonomic level. They touted to new user friendly remote control. Now I had no problem with the old remote control but wanted to see what the fuss was about. Tiny little "play" and channel up and down buttons, which are consistantly the most used, always seem to stick and annoy. Now maybe it's my regular adult sized digits but unless you're four years old, it's bound to frustrate. The fun part is I discovered that they still use the same frequency so I simply use my old remote control.
Other issues that I have are reliability factors. About one out of every ten or so times I set up the timer, the VCR seems to tape what it wants. Not what I told it to.
Also the commercial advance seems to subscribe to no logic at all and I have long since turned off that function.
The one other big factor that had me in the Go Video Dual Deck arena is it's dubbing feature. Now I know it's illegal to copy or 'dub' certain media. But with my old Go Video system, I did on occasion make copies FOR MY OWN PERSONAL USE mind you. A back up so to speak, we all know how tapes can wear.
I come to find out that the FCC put into law in 2000, a measure which negates that function. Now when I tried to make a copy of a tape I owned (no one even rents tapes anymore, it's all DVD) the VCR shut down talking about how it designated the master tape as copyrighted.
That was very unfortunate. It was also most of the reason why I went with Go Video. However it did explain the price difference. Whereas, this unit cost me around 200 dollars. The previous one ran about 600 dollars. I just thought that's how things go. Remember how much camcorders and cell phones used to be? Now they give them away at McDonalds!
It turns out that because of this ruling one of the only companies with the technology (patented) that 'ignored' all the macrovision measures had to , by law, recognize them.
Which kind of defeats the purpose. Of course, they don't advertise this fact, because if they did, I would have purchased another model by another company.
All in all, a good vcr for the money. But I bet you can find a better model with better and more reliable features for the same price.
Now as for the double deck aspect, I haven't really had the opportuity to 'dub' anything yet. the sequential record is nice to but haven't had the occasion to need to tape 12 hours worth of TV either.
I'm glad it's there I suppose, but I haven't used it yet.