I try to reserve bad reviews only when they are truly deserved. Note that I was very happy with the customer service of overstock, but this product is very poor. I had read the reviews and seeing that someone has always trusted Phillips to deliver reliable quality I went with it. I will NOT buy refurbished electronics anymore. I purchased the dvd/vcr recorder combo to transfer a large number of vhs home videos to dvd and many mini dv's to dvd. The first dvd/vcr recorder that came successfully recorder half the vhs to dvd, then the dvd would no longer load and it said it was unable to record to the dvd. I was even using the manual recomended dvd.I exchanged with Overstock for another recorder combo and the service was great, but now the machine I have and am stuck with is a lemon too. The vhs deck ejects tapes in the middle of watching and then when the tape is out it continues to try to eject the tape while making a loud cranking sound and then shutting off. This is only corrected by unplugging and then plugging back in . Totally unhappy with Phillips and refurbished electronics.