A couple posts back, I mentioned having some leads on good decks. Well, a lead paid off. :)

Earlier this year, I acquired a stash of nice SR-MV45 units. It was hard to turn down, the decks really were nice, not your average eBay/Craigslist junk. I know members here are always seeking quality decks, so I grabbed all them for us. However, even being nice decks, I saw these could be better. After a quite a bit of time and expenses, I refurbished several of the decks to minty like-new condition, and those are now starting to become available.

(Worth mentioning: Several perform/function below my expectations, and those are parts fodder if/when needed. Good parts, not eBay junk decks "for parts".)

Back in December, I honestly thought I was done with VCRs. :2cents:

So if you want a good deck, get it while I got it!

Added some decks, including another A+ 7800! :)

Hi, Lordsmurf! On my other forums, when there is a smurf, that is always the go-to gal or guy! Funny, but true. Anyway, I have been reading here for a bit and I would be interested in your jvc 7900. Is it in great working condition? I stupidly sold my jvc, I believe it was the 9600 or 9900, a few years ago and now ant it back. I understand from your ratings that this one is a good one. Please let me know if it is available. I first want to use it to watch home videos made on the compact cassette (I still have my adapter thing) and then will watch movies. I do not need to record excessively, but would like that as a future option. If you suggest a different deck, please advise. Thanks so much!
Laura (guadgirl)

Updated the list. :2cents:

All of my nicest A+ and A++ decks are now gone. But I still have some A-/A+ available (not quite A-, not quite A+). If you've been on the fence, now would be a good time to act. This may be the last year I sell VCRs, still undecided. What that means is this: what I have available now is the end of my small stash of decks. So if you want a known-good VCR, now is the time to get it. Aug/Sept, try not to wait until Oct-Dec.

Very few decks are now remaining. :2cents:

This past fall, after the above update, I did manage to refurb a pair of SR-V10U decks into astonishing A+ condition, surpassing my expectations of the refurbs. Shot for B+/A-, got A+ instead. Nice! But that took months of work, and I will not be repeating that. Ground-up VCR rebuilds take a lot of time, more than I want to invest this year.

Would be interested in a 9000 series if/when you come across a good one. Would also love for a write up on refurbishing these things. I think that would be a worthwhile guide on this site.

I have 3 final decks available.
And at the moment, I have no plans to refurb any more VCRs for the foreseeable future.

I have two decks again. And I'm not sure if I'll be doing others this winter.

Getting good decks is getting much harder AND more costly. It's insane when an eBay "parts only" (fully fubar) deck is $200+, and a "tested"/"works" (which is neither tested nor working) deck is $300+. My offline sources are drying up, online sources limited. I refuse to buy from eBay, where the question of "what's wrong with it, exactly" (ie, to see if it can be repaired, or even still has good parts inside) is "duh".

When I had a deck available, my suggestion is to get it while I got it! ;)
Or better yet, a whole workflow.

What is the deck in question?

JVC S-VHS models with line TBC.

How many tapes?
What recording mode are your VHS tapes?
- SP, LP, EP/SLP, or a mix? If mix, % of each?
- If not known, guestimate. (What you don't want to do is put these tapes in a ratty old VCR, and have the tapes get damaged.)

I've been looking for a JVC with TBC but have been striking out as far as finding one that is in good shape or in a condition that I feel confident in my ability to fix. I am also a younger single, college student living alone so I don't have the large amounts of cash that others do which puts me at a disadvantage as far as something like eBay goes.

I have nearly 100 blank tapes and have more readily available if/when I have the room or interest for them.
Quality is generally unknown but the contents are primarily old TV broadcasts e.g. cartoons, sitcoms, news, etc.

That's a lot of tapes. You don't want to skimp on the VCR, for multiple reasons: reduced quality, eat tapes, decks failure, etc.

eBay isn't buying, it's gambling. All those "tested" and "working" decks rarely are actually tested or working correctly, as sold by video know-nothings. They see lights, it works! They see any quality picture, it's tested! There is a huge difference between what I do, and what an eBay seller does (which is almost always nothing). Same goes for Deter and TGrant and VCRshop/Branko, and a few others.

All hobbies have costs. When I started the video hobby seriously almost 30 years ago, I barely had two nickels to rub together, those were lean times. But it's something I really wanted to do, so saved, and that's where my funds went. I still have my first S-VHS deck from the mid 90s, still remember buying it at Circuit City in the ritzy part of the metro (only store that had one local for sale), and it wasn't cheap.

As a cartoon/TV hobbyist, I have to ask ... what shows? :) (PM me, let's not OT this thread any more)

What's the cheapest reliable VCR you'd recommend with a TBC?

What tape standard? PAL, NTSC, SECAM ...? Pretty much any S-VHS VCR with line TBC is already decent, I don't remember if VHS ever has a TBC with the exception of some DVD combo's that had component and/or HDMI for the VCR section. Such machines are in the range of $500 plus and you're lucky if it doesn't have any problems.

On the cheap try a combo like I mentioned above, even those are getting expensive since demand is rising for them.

As prices get cheaper, understand that it means that condition is degraded some from optimal -- and that means it may not play slower speeds (EP/SLP, LP) well or at all.

This is why I grade decks: http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/news...g-grading.html

And these are the models suggested: http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/vide...ing-guide.html

JVC is far less costly to maintain that Panasonic.

Beater VCRs that may not work at all are in the $200-400 range on eBay. It's not suggested. You're more like to get screwd by a bad deal that not -- especially when you don't really know anything about the VCRs. eBay is truly a VCR dumping ground.

That really doesn't matter as much. Valuations are in the same ranges.

The only thing that's more true (currently, and wasn't always the case!) is that PAL decks tend to be a bit easier to locate within Europe, but that's about it.

Not accurate. There are many undesirable models, such as "medical VTRs". That's why I created the suggested list. Being S-VHS, and line TBC being present, isn't the only consideration to finding a good deck.

Remember: This is a marketplace listing, not a general discussion topic. :wink2:

He wants model recommendation so the standard has to be known.

I'm looking for a PAL S-VHS model with TBC.

In the buying guide it lists a handful of PAL JVC models. Is this intended to be an exhaustive list of all the JVC models considered reliable? And if so, do those all come with TBCs?

Also I'm a bit confused about the VCR's TBC along with an ES15 - if I was using an ES10/15 as passthru would I still have the VCR TBC enabled? Only I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that it's best to disable the VCR's TBC if using an ES10/ES15 as passthru, and if that's the case and I'll be disabling it anyway then it obviously wouldn't be worth me investing in a VCR unit with TBC in the first place, so I wanted to clarify that.

The first TBC takes ownership of the signal, and no further downline TBCs have any effect.
DO NOT MISUNDERSTAND THIS!
It refers to like TBC, ie line>line, or frame>frame, and NOT line>frame

So JVC line TBC > ES10/15 line TBC means the ES10/15 does nothing if JVC TBC is on. 100% inert.

The ES10/15 is a crippled line TBC (arguably not a TBC at all, because of it), and is not a TBC itself (obviously, it's a DVD recorder). With the standard DVD recorder weak frame sync. The original intended use by Panasonic was to make homemade tapes look less bad from a low end VCR. But I discovered that it worked on passthrough (signal passes in, processed, processed signal passed out) back in 2005 immediately later the unit came out. And the main usefulness was the strong line nature to correct anti-tearing. The ES10/15 adds noise/artifacts, and is not transparent. Therefore it was suggested to be used "as needed", for tearing only. Not as a TBC replacement, because it doesn't truly have that ability.

The tearing workflow is:
JVC S-VHS VCR (TBC off) > ES10/15 for anti-tearing > DataVideo/Cypress frame TBC > quality SD capture card

The reason anybody even know about the ES10 is because of my early findings. At the time, I was known for doing in-depth DVD recorder reviews, down to the chipsets. Somebody else saw the ES15 had it (and it does). But then claims were made about other models, all of them false (for NTSC) and valid only for with-HDD PAL variations using the same chipsets. Some Sony and Toshiba have some weaker performance as well, but it's not the same. So there's the myth out there that DVD recorders act as a TBC.

The ES10/15 alone is minimalist, weak, has a larger fail rate acting as TBC. To fortify it closer to an actual TBC, it needs the DataVideo DVK afterwards, which has an actual frame TBC (though weaker than normal).

The reason for the better VCR is not just TBC.

TBC is just part of it. Transport, mechanics, history, etc -- those matter too.

(History, you ask? Expensive decks were far less likely to be around kids and pets, and more likely in a serious hobby or business setting. That can matter. The offset is how worn it may be from business use. And how well both business and hobby maintained it, but maintenance is a general worry for all VCRs.)

So then if I'm understanding you correctly, I can afford to get a JVC S-VHS VCR without TBC because it won't be used anyway in a chain that involves an ES15 as a makeshift TBC, and that other factors like condition matter more.

It's not that simple, some tapes behave different than others, It's an analog technology and there is no specific rules govern it, Mostly it's trial and error unfortunately due to different tape formulation, different recording hardware, different VCR processing ...etc.

And to be honest a DVD recorder will never replace a line TBC inside a VCR for a simple reason, The VCR reads the raw RF signal coming out fresh from the video heads and knows exactly where each scan line starts and ends. While in a non line TBC VCR, by the time the signal has been processed by the VCR circuitry and gets thru to the DVD recorder a lot of things can go wrong plus the added noise so the DVD recorder circuit can no longer knows where each scan line exactly starts in terms of true signal vs noise, It can however correct tearing and flagging because the line position is so drifted that it can obviously detects it.

I've never used a DVD recorder and never will, but I do this as hobby not as a need or necessity.