My inital obervations of the JVC SR-VD400US DVHS machine

[NJRoadfan]

1. It tracks EP tapes way better then my HR-S7800U. Tapes that gave me fits played flawless in this machine.

2. It tracks Hi-Fi audio without any issues from the tapes I tested. No static or dropping back to the linear track.

3. The firewire works fine with Windows 7 x64's built in drivers. Plug it in and go, perfect for capturing and viewing DVHS tapes.

4. The analog to firewire pass through rocks! Besides outputting DVHS content, it WILL encode VHS/SVHS playback directly to firewire or any video source you have connected into the line inputs... of which there are 3 (2 back, 1 front). This looks like a viable alternative to DV bridges considering that it likely uses 4:2:2 chroma sub sampling. Firewire video output is MPEG2-TS, audio looks to be MP2, I'll confirm the details later.

5. It looks like the Digipure TBC works on all sources you pass through this unit. I have to do more testing with this to confirm, but I inputted video directly from my HR-S7800U with its Digipure off and the output appeared to be timebase corrected by the SR-VD400US (if anything its a side effect of having to encode all input to FW, might as well clean it). It also looks like this machine may indeed have an upgraded full frame TBC that provides continuous sync signals. Once again, I have to test and confirm this.

Overall this machine is likely worth having in your pile of video transfer equipment. Note that the SR-VD400US is simply a professional series re-brand of the consumer JVC HM-DH40000U and Marantz MV-8300. They should all operate and perform identically.

[deter]

Kind of interested in this testing.

When you say tracks better? Does that mean cleaning up rips & tears in the picture due to damaged video?

(Have seen hundreds of EP tapes some of them are just loaded with random pulse tracking lines that run through the video, it normally lasts about 4 frames and the picture itself just rips, normally ripping top to bottom.)

Last week saw a few rips that went bottom to top, that was weird.

This is pretty much the biggest problem I see on VHS tapes and one that drives me nuts.......

What is a Digipure TBC? What does it do different from the 7800U TBC?

Does is work with a signal/picture from another VCR?

[admin]

Interesting. Very interesting.
I've long been familiar with the 40000 deck, and this has always been the kind of review it received.
Maybe it's time I hunt one down.

@deter
DigiPure Technology is just the name JVC gives to the TBC/DNR unit. It's in the HR-S7800U, yes. That name has existed for probably 15 years now. I know it's mentioned in the 9600 and 9800 manuals. Some of the VCRs also have it labeled on the deck itself, such as on the tape insertion cover flap. (Looking over my shoulder at the HR-S7965EK, I can see it in black letters on a holographic background stripe.)

[NJRoadfan]

Quote:

Originally Posted by admin

Interesting. Very interesting.
I've long been familiar with the 40000 deck, and this has always been the kind of review it received.
Maybe it's time I hunt one down.

The good news is that there is a broken one on ebay for cheap (the flip down door is missing). Lack of remote isn't a problem if you already have a JVC MBR unit from a SVHS unit, it operates the menus fine.

The only nitpick I have with this VCR is that JVC began to cheap out on the little things compared to the SVHS units and the 30k. The status panel is a simple segment LED display that you can't show the tape counter on (doh!). The SVHS/DVHS indicators are similarly cheesy, they are simple LEDs. The OSD and menus are quite spiffy and modern however. One curious behavior of the machine is that it fast forwards and rewinds about 10 seconds of tape after insertion... I presume its to accurately calculate remaining recording time by testing tape tensions.

deter, the problem I have with the 7800 and EP tapes varies. Usually on most tapes I have a noise bar somewhere on the screen moving up and down due to the auto tracking continuously hunting and getting nowhere. No among of manual tracking completely eliminates it. The worst tapes you can barely see any video. Its normal for dropouts to cause severe rips on EP as slower tape speed means more picture data squeezed into one area of the tape.

[NJRoadfan]

An update: This VCR does provide continuous frame sync, even to devices connected to the inputs. The only time it breaks sync is when it changes output resolution, but thats only a concern with D-VHS content.

Some interesting notes about Macrovision. Its enforced on the SD outputs, and the firewire output will shut off if detected. Component out is a different story, I can get a picture on the AVer HD DVR's component input, but with a nice skew error at the top of the frame. Some Macrovision is bleeding through, but not enough to trigger the card's internal warning. The trusty AVT-8710 takes care of it otherwise so its no big deal. Further testing shows that Digipure processing (line TBC, chroma NR, details here: http://support.jvc.com/consumer/prod...ry.jsp?gId=140 ) is working on the external inputs as well, at least from what I can see on a CRT TV. I need to pull out some of my sloppy Betamax tapes and put it to the test to truly see if this machine can be used as a pass through line TBC.

The only other annoyance is that most of the HD D-VHS tapes I have refuse to play properly on this machine. I get audio, but no video from the built in decoder, firewire output works fine however. I'm guessing its some incompatibility between the way the Mitsubishi HS-HD1100 recorded these tapes and what JVC's internal decoder expects.

[admin]

Quote:

This VCR does provide continuous frame sync

Nice.

Quote:

Some interesting notes about Macrovision. Its enforced on the SD outputs, and the firewire output will shut off if detected. Component out is a different story, I can get a picture on the AVer HD DVR's component input, but with a nice skew error at the top of the frame. Some Macrovision is bleeding through, but not enough to trigger the card's internal warning.

It's not wiping the vertical blanking interval with clean data, which destroys a lot of signal errors (including Macrovision, which is an artificial video error). That's a function you generally only find in the better TBCs.

From wikipedia:

Quote:

Most consumer VCRs use the known black level of the vertical blanking pulse to set their recording levels. The Macrovision copy protection scheme inserts pulses in the VBI, where the recorder expects a constant level, on videotapes to disrupt recording.

Maybe not the best definition, but it will suffice.