Wow! I have to hand it to you on this one chuj666. Over the past 30 plus years I must have owned or fixed dozens of VCR's, all brands, all price ranges. Up until this moment I never heard of a six head. I immediately did a little Google research and sure enough they are real. Now I surely know what purpose the four heads serve, but I couldn't find what the two "extra" heads do. If you don't mind me asking, why the interest in "dead" technology? I didn't think anyone actually bought those things anymore.
I ordered awhile back some old horror movies that aren't on DVD, I wanted to get a collection of movies on VHS which haven't been produced on DVD due to their unpopularity, but I don't have a VHS player. It's weird because I have 3 DVD players and a Blu-Ray player, but I wanted to buy a VHS player
About 20 years ago, 6 heads (reputed to be) were better than 4 head, although 4 heads were the rage of the day. Memory serves that Toshiba made the 6 headed variety, although they seemed no better than the 4 head variety (as told in surveys). That's all I remember
A good reason indeed. For a few more bucks you could buy a combo VHS/DVD recorder and transfer to disc. Because they are old movies there's a good chance the manufacturer didn't bother with macrovision copy protection on the tape.
For playing All 4 or 6 heads were not used. Depending on quality of the unit itself. 4 or 6 heads should make no difference For recording I’ve not seen much difference in either 4 or 6 For VHS transfer I use a 4 head Go Video unit and it works better than many so called high end units I have a Toshiba 6 head but rarely use it. Edit The use of a combo unit has merit, BUT Even if the tapes are not CP protected many units MIGHT feel they are and refuse to copy
A 6 head VCR has a pair of heads for SP, a pair of heads for EP plus a pair for thew hifi sound. The SP heads are bigger (58 micron) than the smaller (19 micron) heads. The 4 head deck has a pair of EP heads which work fine for SP plus a pair of hifi sound heads. By the way SP looks better on screen than EP does. A few VCR's will record on LP (4 hour mode) speed & all VCR's will play back LP speed tapes. I went to LP from SP on a VCR that would record that speed for my home made tapes. It looks better than EP & almost as good as SP. Still a VHS tape will never look as good as a DVD does because it only has 240 lines of resolution where a DVD has 400 lines which means a sharper picture than VHS. Some of us (like myself) have large collections of VHS tapes so it's a good idea to stock up on VCR's while they can be found in order to play back those old tapes. I've found DVD's of most of my movies on VHS (But I still keep the tapes) and some of my VHS movies are not on DVD. As to VCR's I've got 6 of them. 4 I bought & 2 were given to me. Others I wore out which is why I bought more of them. They should last my lifetime since I don't play VHS that often. By the way some of my VHS tapes are 25 years old & they still play.
