Help choosing SVHS player
 

Hi Im about to buy a SVHS player on EBay but im not sure what to buy? what can you recomend? my budget is around 200Euros. + fright. Total maximum about 350 EUro.

I looked at this models:

Panasonic NV-HS900 S-VHS 220Euro ink fright.
Panasonic NV-FS200 7-Head S-VHS VTR with TBC 320EURO ink fright.
JVC HR-S7000 S-VHS 220 EURO inkl fritght.
Panasonic NV-HS860 S-VHS VTR 150Euro ink fright.

there are so many models out there. Not sure what to pick..if any of you could help me what is the best?`


Best regards

Panasonic are known for " capacitor leaks" and need recap more often than not while JVC's are most of the time "ready to go" with light cleaning.

If i spend +200€ on a deck , i sure as hell want it to work right off the bat. That's my view on things anyway.

As far as picture quality Pana Vs JVC it's 50/50

Assuming you're in Euroland, also have a look at vcrshop.com.

Both brands can have cap issues, depends on the age and model. In both cases it tends to be late 80s/early-mid 90s models that often suffer from bad ones in both power supply and video circuitries depending on model. (and also on audio boards in some early 90s jvcs). Some of the very late models of both brands (NV-SV12x for panasonic, very late SVHS combo models for JVC) have power supply filter caps that fail.

It just happens that the more popular JVC SVHS decks here are from the era that largerly did not have cap issues. The early 90s ones aren't much better than the panasonic models from the same era that are more popular when it comes to bad caps.

Of the models in the first post the NV-HS860 would be the most safe in that regard. (HS900 might be fine too but it seems much less common so don't know as much about it.)

More often than not, eBay is a path of misery, lost money, gambling, when it comes to video gear. Don't do that to yourself.

In Europe, get your PAL VCRs from VCRshop.

But don't forget, a quality conversion requires more than the VCR with line TBC. The frame TBC, and capture cards, are available in the marketplace forum here.