I just had a cracking bit of luck. Seriously right place, right time stuff. I dabbled in video capture a several years ago. I already had a few bits of hardware: an ADVC-100, an AVT-8170 and a Panasonic NV-HS830 VCR.
I'd recently come across a bunch of PAL VHS tapes which I have decided to archive onto DVD. So I started browsing around for up to date information and came across LordSmurf's excellent article,
VCR Buying Guide (S-VHS, D-VHS, Professional) for restoring video. So somewhat speculatively, I had a brief look on ebay.co.uk, just to see what sort of money this kind of second hand gear was going for. I came across
this listing for a JVC HR-S8965EK. Given that these things are as rare as rocking horse poop and that the listing and seller did check out, I decided to go for it; probably foolishly given that I couldn't go physically check out the item personally.
Anyway, I have received it, had a play with it and it seems it really was "as new" as advertised. Astonishing. Furthermore the difference between the captures from my old HS830 and the HR-S8965EK is like night and day. There's so little noise and picture is so crisp, I'm gobsmacked. Anyway, enough about my trivial little story, let's get onto the question.
I have been going through the various 'picture quality' menu options (TBC/NR, Video Stabilizer, Picture Control) and I believe I have a reasonable grasp of them, what they do, how they work together and what to use when, not least because I've read most of your recommendations here.
But I'd like to understand your view about one JVC feature that I can't seem to find mention of on digitalfaq.com. It's called B.E.S.T. And it's description paraphrased from page 36 of the
HR-S8965EK's manual is "The Biconditional Equalised Signal Tracking system checks the condition of the tape in use and compensates during recording and playback to give the best possible picture quality possible." This seems to be something additional to the automatic tracking, but isn't in itself automatic tracking.
So, my questions are: What is "B.E.S.T."? Does it have any use? And what are your recommendations regarding it?