K, I got a remote control off of ebay that works well enough. Once I got a look at the menu options I saw that the default setting were fine. I tried engaging auto channel set and auto clock. Neither one worked. Which is what I figure. VCR playback works fine! A newer combo player has no clock and no RF connections so I'm not really missing anything.
VCR in the HDTV era
Can either the auto clock or auto channel set functions of a VCR work in the HDTV era? I'm wondering if cable has any sort of backdrop signal that that VCR can use.