Deciding between two pro S-VHS decks?
 

I need some advice about equipment for capturing S-VHS tapes. I will be digitizing hundreds of S-VHS class recordings from a school that is closing. The school has two S-VHS decks, a Sony SVP-5600 and a JVC BR-S622U, and I am considering buying one or both for this project. Neither deck is on the recommended list that saw in this forum. I believe these were the decks that were used to record and duplicate the classes (as an aside, the SVP-5600 is connected to a JVC BR-7030UB duplicator), but I have personally used only the BR-S622U for capturing to DV a while back.

Which deck would be better, assuming that both are in good working order? I expect that both could use some servicing, since they have been sitting unused for a long time, but I believe that they are otherwise in good condition.

Also, does anyone know what speeds these decks can play? I thought I had seen a mention somewhere that the Sony could play only SP, but I can't find the comment now. If that's correct, I wonder if the JVC is the same. The speed is only important for a few home videos that I would like to transfer at some point.

Thanks in advance for the help.

I can't offer much advice here, but both will only play SP. Same goes for all of these giant "broadcast" decks.

I have a BR-S525U. VideoTechman does also, and a BR-S822U. I'm not sure how the 622 really compares, but the more closely I look at my 525, the less pleased I am.

Check to make sure the JVC deck includes the TBC board. I don't recall offhand whether the Sony includes one.

About the TBC, that's a really good point. I'll check for the TBC board. I do have an external TBC (a Prime Image Excel 6.5) because some of the masters are on U-matic tapes, and I needed a TBC that could also transcode the player's dub output to S-Video.

The Sony SVHS deck has built-in TBC. I doubt it has the component-out card, but if it does, I wonder if there would be any quality difference between digitizing from component rather than S-Video.

Anyway, thanks for the help.