Added an Admiral JSJ 20451 - audio question

[spokenward]

I found a clean Admiral JSJ 20451. It seems fine. It is clearly labeled as a Montgomery Ward unit. Based on what I have read, I believe this unit is from the Sharp family but I don't know how old this unit is.

Question 1: Do we know when these machines were sold?

I also have an odd compatibility question. Do we think that this unit would support SQPB? I know that Sharp at some point began to feature SQPB. I recall that Panasonic, JVC, Sharp, Toshiba and Philips branded players used that badge on some VCRs.

Question 2: Do we know when SQPB badging was introduced? (I recall that it was principally used with the marketing of S-VHS camcorders.)

Why does he want to know this?
I have some S-VHS tapes featuring audio tracks that were dubbed in a public access cable environment to convert.

[dpalomaki]

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/...hich-Sharp-VCR
for some info.

You can find some posts on this model here on DFAQ as well. LordSmuf apparently has owned them.

Audio dubbed? Is that to say the audio was added to the tape after the video was recorded to the tape? If so, that audio should be on the linear track.

[spokenward]

Quote:

Originally Posted by dpalomaki

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/...hich-Sharp-VCR
for some info.

Audio dubbed? Is that to say the audio was added to the tape after the video was recorded to the tape? If so, that audio should be on the linear track.

thanks,

from that thread LS estimated - "It's the SHARP that was sold by MONTGOMERY WARD'S in the mid 1990s."

Since both Ward's and Sharp 'as we knew it' have passed I wasn't able to find specs or sell-sheets online.

The "audio dubbing" refers to brief fad of using video cassettes for audio recording. They used a cable studio to produce a radio show. I don't have the tapes in hand yet. Based on some disappointing experience with audio track compatibility I was wondering if this deck would be an alternative. I have Panasonic and JVC units that are badged SQPB.

[lordsmurf]

This specific model was sold around 1998. I probably still have my receipt. It was an excellent VHS VCR, good tracking range, decent recording and playback both. Not soft, no chroma offset/bleeding. It had a "detail" mode than sometimes actually helped, though sometimes just made grain worse.

It does have SQPB, but SQPB was craptastic. It usually made S-VHS tapes look worse than VHS tapes. It simply made the S-VHS tapes viewable, but not with any degree of quality.

SQPB is from early/mid 90s that I can remember, maybe 1994.

I still have one of these. All of the others got zapped over the years, even ones on UPS.

Lovely VCR, worth keeping, just not for S-VHS. Go ahead and try, but odds are you're going to see black streaks in the image. That's not normal. Such issues are not present in good S-VHS decks.

If you only have a few tapes, consider outsourcing the conversion work to somebody reliable (like us, Contact Us). Sometimes DIY isn't the ideal way to go.

[spokenward]

Thanks! Good to know!

That 1998 vintage would be just about ideal. I was video-centric from 1980 to 1991 and then largely out of touch for 10 years until 2001.

I suspect that there is no real video content on these tapes outside of a Slide / Slug and that they would have been recorded on pro / industrial decks. I was thinking about using the Admiral for spotting in this project. Might work - might not.