So I managed to snag one from Ebay while on my search to find something that could play PAL-M tapes from Brazil since I offered my wife's family to digitize their media when I go visit.
The seller listed it as "For Parts/Not Working", but after talking to him, he said he just listed it as that since he wasn't entirely sure how to test it since only the NTSC > NTSC flow worked, but when he tried pressing the other formats to convert to like PAL or SECAM, etc. then the image wouldn't look right (Which I mean is expected since his US based TV wouldn't be able to read those different outputted formats). So he didn't want to assume it was working just in case it was actually broken, he just had no way of figuring out if it was or not since he didn't have other formatted tapes/TV's that he could test them all out on. I offered him $150 and he accepted, so here I am.
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Anyways, I just received and before opening it up/cleaning it, I decided to just test a disney VHS I had lying around. As expected, it works great when I do NTSC to NTSC since that works with my TV, but clicking on PAL-M just makes the image go black and white, which is something I see people say happens when they try to play NTSC on a PAL-M system or vice versa, so that also checks out. So I'm assuming it's actually a good working unit, but I'll only be able to REALLY test it out when I go to Brazil and try to do PAL-M tapes to NTSC and capture that playback.
The only other one I could find online that works is from Southern Advantage listed at $1,500! So I felt pretty lucky getting this for 1/10th the price and that it actually works well for what I'll need it for (Hopefully, again, but looks promising as everything is working as expected so far).
https://www.southernadvantage.com/pr...lti-system-vcr
I can't seem to find too much info regarding this unit though. I was mostly psyched about the S-Video input/output since I couldn't find ANYTHING else that could play PAL-M tapes and have an S-Video output (Not really any of the other "World Wide Video"/Multisystem models sold here in the US, nor the regional models on the used marketplaces in Brazil that I had my family help look for), so this seems like a real lucky find. HOWEVER, I do remember reading a comment on this site saying that it's not true S-Video, and is actually just composite split up, not native S-Video? Does anyone have anymore info on this?
Quote:
Originally Posted by hodgey
There is also the weirdo Sony hi8/vhs combos, and the Samsung SV-300W converting multi-system that both had s-video out but from what I've seen in service manuals those were composite internally too from the vhs side using some Y/C separator to get it back to Y/C.
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I'm gonna do a thorough cleaning of the unit soon and maybe replace some of the more worn parts as a I heard a bit of a squeak when rewinding a tape to see if it would eat it (Which luckily it did not).
Does anybody know what control to get for this guy as well?
PS. This thing is HEAVY! Like twice as heavy as my JVC V101US since it seems like most of it is made out of metal and it's a bit "chunkier".
