I have always been pretty into electronics. I have never had a tremendous amount of money, but I have invested wisely and done my homework. I had an old VCR that I wanted to upgrade and was looking forward to getting one unit to replace my functional non-recording DVD player and an old VCR. I chose the Emerson DVD/VCR recorder and I am regretting it now. I watched the price fall from $300 to about $240 and decided the time was right. At first I had absolutely no trouble and loved it. Then, all sorts of problems occurred. I too experienced inconsistencies with time, but only a couple minutes when I had it set to auto-set. I changed it manually, and it seems to work fine. I've had trouble playing some movies that are Region 1 -- even though my old player was region 1 and they played fine. One time I put a VCR tape in, and it got stuck. I had to unscrew the screws on the side and back and pull it out. (Not recommended, but the warranty sucks. Past 6 months we are responsible for labor. It's cheaper to get a new one). Also, I set the timer to record to VHS and the tape will advance, but the show won't record or record on a different channel. In addition, the picture quality is very poor with the VCR recordings. DVD recordings are a lot better. Lastly, I do not like the cheapness in the remote. If I want to watch VHS I sometimes have to switch to DVD on the remote and then switch back to VHS in order to hit play. Overall I am disappointed. I expected the quality to be a lot better for a name brand. I am anxiously awaiting the newer technology that allows for recording to a hard drive that can then be copied to a DVD or erased. Also, a function called time slip is appealing. This allows the viewer to record, yet watch the program from the beginning while still in record mode. There are many options beginning to hit the US market again. I won't make the same mistake twice.