Best PAL SVHS player with frame TBC for PAL LP playback?
 

Hi everyone, hope the world is being kind to you.

I think the title says it all. I want to find the best PAL SVHS player that has an internal frame TBC that can playback LP speed tapes.

I currently use a Sony SVP-5600 for PAL SP tapes and the quality is absolutely phenomenal. The frame TBC in this beast works miracles, unfortunately its SP only.

I have tried the Panasonic NV-HS860 and was very underwhelmed. Poor tracking and a line TBC I believe. I got better results using a JVC and an ES-10.

All recommendations greatly appreciated.

See VCR recommendation thread.

I've looked at that thread Countless timesbut it doesn't specify what players have a frame TBC or are there any sample videos.

I don't particularly want to buy 10 machines to test which is best for me. If that thread was more detailed then you wouldn't get 100 people asking the same question every month.

No VCR have frame TBC except for very rare prosumer ones that may have field TBC, VCR's have line TBC and I think the thread specifies that.

But no one can give you the answer, because no one knows your tapes. For example, with which video recorder they were recorded, the quality of the video tape, how old the recordings are, to name just a few points.
That's the reason why some people have several recorders to choose from for capturing.
I recently had a tape with bad tracking that only one of my video recorders (and I have many) could play back correctly and that was a device without TBC.

You're getting advice on which decks are best, and the list specifies that all have line/field TBCs (unless noted).

What you cannot get is "which VCR is best with my tapes". That's not answerable online. However, for mere SP/LP playback in PAL, most JVC and Panasonic models will be fine. I'd probably suggest sticking to the JVC SR models, not the HRs. And then the "PAL AG-1980P" Panasonic models (which is often argued as being both HS-NV1000 and NV-FS200, noting that most of us fall into the FS200 camp).

You will never find a VCR that plays 100% of your tapes (unless you just have a tiny # of tapes, all from the same camcorder/VCR from a short window of time). We don't own multiples VCRs for the mere joy (ha!) of owning VCRs

The main trouble with LP is that it's not especially well defined, it's not a complete standard like standard play. It's quite wooly how machines did it and interchangeability, whist machines will almost certainly reproduce a picture from any given machine the quality is usually best on the machine that made the recordings (or something similar) when it comes to LP.

Some UK (the only machines I have experience with) did some pretty thrifty tricks to record in long-play (ahem, Alan Michael Sugar Trading machines were notorious for that in the UK). Without wandering into a tedious technical discussion LP can be a right pain in the helmet to make consistent.

I would wager (on naught but my own experience, this is mere conjecture) any inbuilt TBC is going to get itself in to a right mucking-fuddle trying to make sense of an LP tape, especially from another type of machine and it's probably a touch of preservation of behalf of the machine manufacturers to simply turn it off than try and straighten out a 'nearly the same' signal from another machine.

I second that, the jvc SR-TS1U worked fine for me whilst the Hr-8600ms or even the 7700 didn't despite their tbc's

But the TS1U is a non-TBC model, right? Therefore not suggested in this thread.

I'm far more partial to the SR-V10E or SR-VS30E.