How do I set SLP on my VCR?

A VHS cassette contains a ½ inch (12.7 mm) wide magnetic tape wound between two spools, allowing it to be slowly passed over the various playback and recording heads of the video cassette recorder. The tape speed is 3.335 cm/s for NTSC, 2.339 cm/s for PAL. A cassette holds a maximum of about 430 m of tape at the lowest acceptable tape thickness, giving a maximum playing time of about 3.5 hours for NTSC and 5 hours for PAL at "standard" (SP) quality. Most cassettes have lower recording times because they use thicker tape, which helps avoid jams; careful users generally avoid the thinnest tapes. More recent machines usually allow the selection of longer recording times by lowering the tape speed: LP mode (for PAL and some NTSC machines) halves the tape speed and doubles the recording time, while EP mode (for NTSC and some newer PAL machines, aka SLP mode) drops the tape speed to one-third, for triple the recording time. Of course, these speed reductions cause corresponding reductions in video quality; also, tapes recorded at the lower speed often exhibit poor playback performance on recorders other than the one they were produced on. Because of this, commercial prerecorded tapes were almost always recorded in SP mode. The only exceptions were "discount" tapes, usually containing children's cartoons or older shows, usually recorded at SLP speed but sometimes including Hi-Fi audio to help enhance sound quality. An unofficial LP mode with half the standard speed exists on some NTSC machines, but is not part of the VHS standard.