Since then, the replacement unit has snapped one tape, which I attributed to a power outage problem. But last night, with a brand-new tape, it recorded only the audio for Scrubs and plenty of static where the video should have been. Since pressing the record button in a test later that evening recorded the same source in a perfectly normal way, I'm now a bit annoyed and trying to figure out if this unit is going back as well.
Then I read today in the newspaper that Comcast will be "upgrading" us to digital cable at "no cost" within the next year, which means that none of our cable-ready devices that record programs for us will work worth a damn going forward. *sigh*
So I'm getting a bit annoyed...