Bread maker for home

As I stated- the Morphy Richards breadmaker I mentioned does in fact allow you to programme your own bake cycle. In order to get a good idea of the features I recommend taking a look at the manuals on the websites. 

I'm from the UK and we always make bread with bread flour and have no such thing as 'all purpose flour' but I believe that  'all-purpose' flour can be used for bread making, wholemeal plain is probably usable for that also. You do not usually use baking soda to make bread, or anything involving raising agents that aren't yeast.  The basic things you need for bread in a bread maker are white or wholemeal bread flour (or all purpose flour), water, fast action dried yeast and salt. Sugar and oil or butter or milk may also be added depending on the recipe. Bread maker recipes have a tendency to also include skimmed milk powder and vitamin C tablets but neither are essential to producing decent bread in them. You can safely omit these from breadmaker manual recipes, I have found. 

Take a look at the kenwood manual here, produced for a UK market but giving an indiciation of ingredients, features and methods. 

http://www.kenwoodworld.com/Global/Instruction%20books%20(User%20manuals)/Cooking%20Baking/19123%20Iss%202%20BM450%20English%20only.pdf

As an aside on a more Artisan-bread-ish note- at the moment, I am rather stubborn personally in sticking to my breadmaker as a mixer for bread that requires kneading for the simple reason that it can deal with bread no matter how wet the dough is. When kneading by hand I find the process frustratingly messy unless I add too much flour.  I know there are methods that require very little hand kneading, and have used the Artisan Bread in 5 minutes recipe to make bread without it. But in general, I figure why not have it do the work of mixing the dough into a cohesive mass? Wet dough is glue like, it sticks to your hands, to the table, to everything.  I do not have to let it do the whole dough cycle for it to make the dough into something nicely manageable. Mind you I have yet to produce plain white bread in a method that I find truly excellent, though sad as it is to confess it, the breadmaker's 'french bread' setting provides one of the better attempts I've made if I let it bake it itself.  The Artisan Bread in 5 method produces a far far tastier loaf but I'm not sure that the flavour is exactly 'right' even if it is actually sour-ish and sort of well textured.  

Active dried yeast

Be sure whatever you buy says "for bread machines". The right stuff is more likely called "instant yeast" than "active dried yeast". (Here on TFL, it's common to see the abbreviation "IDY" for "instant yeast" and "ADY" for "active dried yeast".)

Note that yeast is tremendously less expensive in larger quantities (jars or even vacuum packed bricks). We're talking factors of tens! The cost of those little packets will add up to be close to everything else put together! Be sure your yeast stays completely dry (not even fog nor evaporation), and doesn't get hot. A good way to do that is to keep your yeast in a screw-top jar in your refrigerator.

All purpose flour
Plain white flour

"Flour" often assumes (rather than explicitly stating) "wheat flour" (rather than "maize flour" etc.). It's milled from just the endosperm (which is by far the largest part) of the wheat grain. The endosperm doesn't have much color (and no bran at all), so you get "white" flour.

Most good brands of white flour come in two strengths: "all purpose" is the lower, and "bread" is the higher. Despite what you might surmise from the name, "bread" flour is not necessary for bread. The "White Lily" brand has significantly lower strength than other flour brands, which is quite useful for biscuits and for certain styles of bread, but is probably not what any bread machine wants. Use whichever strength the bread machine you choose recommends (some want one, some want the other).

Baking powder
Baking powder

Used for pancakes and "quick breads", but not at all useful for yeasted breads and hence probably not used with a bread machine.

Bi-carbonate of soda
Pure baking soda

The same thing (I think). I doubt you'd ever need these for a bread machine (but I could be wrong:-).

Selfraise white flour

NO! This is a pre-mix of white flour and baking powder. It's supposedly "more convenient" for some things, but I can never imagine using it. Think of grabbing in the cupboard for flour and getting a box of Bisquick instead:-) Very occasionally in a few countries you will find this sort of thing called "plain flour" - beware!

Wholemeal plain flour

If you like "brown" bread, you'll need Whole Wheat flour (often abbreviated WW). It's milled from the entire wheat grain (not just the endosperm). It's probably more nutritious. It contains some "bran", which will tend to interfere with gluten development a little bit by "cutting" (at a microscopic level) the developing gluten strands. And it will probably absorb a little more water than white flour. Of course none of this matters when using a bread machine, as the bread machine's recipes will have already accounted for all the oddities. As you've found, this is sometimes called "wholemeal".

I also found Zojirushi ... It is more expensive than other brands.  ... Any advice on their feature and performance compared to other breadmakers?

It depends.

The Zojirushi is the cadillac  ...and has a cadillac price. If any of the items in the video clip really really appeal to you, give the Zojirushi serious consideration. Other bread machines will work just fine though.

Probably the main thing you'd notice is its infinite programmability. If you foresee getting frustrated with the limitations of a bread machine, but want to put that eventuality off as long as possible, then the Zojirushi is for you. If a less flexible bread machine sounds quite acceptable to you, and you're a bit cost sensitive, then you don't need the Zojirushi.