S-VHS players a waste of money?

I have a ReplayTV hard disk recorder, a JVC 7600 S-VHS and 6 other VHS units. The replay unit produces the best recordings followed by the JVC 7600 using S-VHS tapes. After that the JVC using the ET mode. Then the JVC in the regular VHS recording modes. Followed by the other various brands of VHS VCRs that I own. However, I would go with a hard disk recorder like Replay or Tivo if you don't necessarily need tape.

 

Ditto on the 7600, I have one and recording from satellite is the best. I've always felt, if you have good HT gear then I think you short change yourself by getting a regular VHS vcr or even the lower model S-VHS machines. 7800 or 9800 from JVC is the best way to go.
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ONCE, I CONSIDERED SPARING YOUR RETCHED LITTLE PLANET CYBERTRON, NOW.., YOU SHALL WITNESS IT'S
DISMEMBERMENT...
MY HT PIXS

 

A S-VHS player will make your VHS tapes look a little better too, thanks to an S-Video connection.
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Sean
"I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates who said.......I drank what?"

 

I say go for the s-vhs deck! I have one and it's great, it will give you the best recording possible from tape.
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To the men and women of the N.Y. police and fire department
God bless you.
To the victims and their families
God keep you.
To the dirtbags who caused all this
God help you!!!

 

Mark, you need a VCR that has a flying erase head to get clean edit points when connecting sides. To do justice to the discs you need a better VCR with Time Base Correction. The JVC Conclusion: JVC 7800/7900 or even better 9800/9900. Mitsu had a model last year that was very similar to the 7800. Sorry, I can't recall it's model #. Best wishes!
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Rachael, the big disc cat! "...in a democracy it don't matter how stupid you are you stille get an equal share..."
I survived the AFI top 100 Film Challenge! I've seen them all.

 

The cost difference for SVHS is not that great and the quality difference is very easy to spot.
If you really want to keep your costs down for tapes, you can always use a soldering iron or something similar to burn a hole in a plain VHS tape in the proper place and the SVHS VCR will record on it in SVHS mode. Not quite as good as using proper SVHS tapes, but definitely beats the ET mode.
I have a JVC with the TBC and noise reduction circuitry and it is a massive improvement over my old VHS machine for not too much more money.
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/Kimmo

 

Definitely NOT a waste of money here! You want to archive your LD's to tape I take it. There is a very definite leap in luma resolution when you go up to S-VHS. It is not a small change to go from about 250 TVL to nearly 400 TVL on the tape recording. Chroma resolution isn't that great with either VHS or S-VHS, but there is no doubt at all that the S-VHS format will represent the LD better. On a screen larger than 40 inches, the resolution difference between S-VHS and VHS gets more and more critical.
S-VHS decks have become cheaper over the last few years. However, this also means that some really low end S-VHS decks are available which don't do as good a job in preserving detail as the better decks such as the JVC 7000 and 9000 series machines. Within that same make the 3000 series is much lower cost but produces recordings and playback of appreciably lesser fidelity. I would strongly recommend getting one of the higher models. The inclusion of digital TBC (time base correction) in the upper models really stabilizes the timing of each scan line. Without TBC, the scan lines are not tightly timed with each other and you see vertical lines showing horizontal wavering. With a TBC, that problem is gone. The upper end decks also have digital frame processing which improves noise and allows cleaner playback during fast forward, reverse, and still modes.
You'll also see some decks advertised as being able to record in S-VHS mode on standard VHS tape. This does work, but if you pay critical attention you notice that the signal to noise ratio isn't as good on VHS tape. Real S-VHS tape is now about half the price it was five years ago and yields the best in terms of noise free images. In a similar vein one can fake a VHS cassette to look like a S-VHS tape to decks which lack the S-VHS mode on VHS feature. If you do that, you should be remain aware of the signal to noise issue. The brand of tape used for faking S-VHS makes a tremendous difference and you'll have to experiment to find a suitable result. I really think that if you are backing up LD's you should use real S-VHS tapes.
How long do you expect to keep the tapes? That's a whole issue unto itself as video tapes autoerase and deteriorate even with good storage and without playback. Fifteen to twenty years is possible with some expectable loss in fine details. Permanent archiving on tape isn't quite permanent. If longevity is needed, perhaps archiving to DVD would be an option. Price of admission for that is probably a little prohibitive if whether or not S-VHS is a waste of money is an issue.
My question here is how small the displays were or why they degraded the signal so much that S-VHS looked like VHS during testing. It's a pretty huge and obvious difference that shows up on decent resolution displays.
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Guy Kuo
Ovation Software, The Calibration Tool Source
[Edited last by Guy Kuo on November 11, 2001 at 06:09 AM]

 

I have been making a collection of a very important show in the past two years. I had a really crappy TV knowing that I was going to upgrade "soon." This is using a JVC SVHS model 4500 - last cleaned on 02/01. There has NEVER been a rental VHS tape in this machine. I have used it tape approximately 60 -80 hours on brand new tapes.
I finally did upgrade the TV several days ago.
I was VERY disappointed with the quality of that and the quality of some other tapes made from a much more professional setup.
I dashed out and bought a new JVC 3800 just to see.
Video quality was much better...but not quite what I had hoped.
So I have an issue with the 4500. I either get it cleaned again (or repaired) or I buy a new unit. What truly annoys me is that I don't think that it should be exhibiting such poor playback quality after so few hours and given what I've put in it (fresh, clean, new tapes.)
Advice?
Also - my new Toshiba 61H71 seems to have difficulty with the S-VHS going into Video 1 or Video 2. Although the visual clarity was far better with the "new" JVC, the picture on the TV jumps around a bit, and I see flashes of the bottom corner in the upper left quadrant. It's like the TV is strugging to adjust the image on the screen and just cannot. This is true on the old and new JVCs. I have not yet calibrated with Avia or VE. I plan to.
Also, my TiVO is grabbing what I want in Surround Sound. I am NOT getting surround sound on playback. I have a set of older tapes that I know are in Dolby because on my old setup dialogue would drop out because I did not have surround. But I don't hear surround on those either.

 

I'll add my support for the s-vhs player. I got a mitsubishi s-vhs and even on cheap tapes... there is a big improvement... the most improvement I saw was copying my digital camcorder to s-vhs tapes... well worth the xtra dollars.
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So far, So good, So what
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I bought a JVC 7800 and the picture quality on regular VHS alone was amazing. I highly recommend this player. I bought mine for $359.00 CAD plus tax. You should be able to find one for less than $250.00 USD.
The 7800 has TBC digital video noise reduction and it works great.

 

if you are serious about the quality, stay away from the entry level svhs units. they lack several features of the more expensive units that make the big difference. i'd skip the JVC 3800/4800's and go up to the 7800 or 9800. the GO-VIDEO 650 is a rebadged JVC 9800 and can be had for less money.

 

The 7x00 does have autotracking. What it's missing is echo cancellation, which can be important for OTA and some CATV systems. The 9x00 also has twice as much TBC memory, but I've never seen any mention of what the additional memory is used for (maybe the echo cancellation?).
The primary difference between the 7800 and the 7900 is that the 7800 is last year's model -- there's no real functional difference.
You've found some amazingly low prices. I'd be concerned that they might be "grey market". Make sure JVC's warrantee is included.
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Selden

 

S-VHS is great, but laser disc is noticeably better, so don't expect the tapes to look as good as the discs did. Be aware of that going in.
Another situation, the best S-VHS picture is with the fast speed (SP), but that only gives you two hours of recording time. Most movies are a little more than two hours, so you will have to use the T-160 tapes, which will record 2 hours and 40 minutes at SP. However, these tapes are hard to find, not to mention they cost even more than regular S-VHS tapes. I have always had to mail-order the T-160s.
Have to ask, Mark, what’s the point in achiving laser discs? Like CDs and DVDs, they theoretically should last forever.
Regards,
Wayne A. Pflughaupt
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My Equipment List

 

Yes, you can tell a S-VHS deck to record in plain old VHS format for those occasion that you need to make a tape for someoone without a S-VHS deck. Again, go for at least the 7000 series JVC. I don't understand how anyone managed to "test" the 3800 and decide it was close to the upper end machines.
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Guy Kuo
Ovation Software, The Calibration Tool Source

 

The 7900 is just the next latest version of the 7800. I don't know much about it. Anybody else? I guess the website explains the feature differences. If you can get a 9800 for not much more than the 7800 or 7900 I'd go for that instead. My 7800 is excellent. I watched a VHS tape bought from a store, and it does look almost as good as my Laserdisc player CLD-79. Not quite the resolution, but very close and great colour. S-VHS recordings should be great from your LD player.
[Edited last by Chris PC on November 11, 2001 at 05:30 PM]