It's National VCR Day! What's your favorite VCR?
 

No, not National, the brand of VCRs by Panasonic. I actually saw a sign for this on the way to work. I have no clue who came up with it, but apparently its a thing.

That's amusing. :)

So as a celebration conversation, what's your favorite VCR?

- For recording, mine is/was the workhorse JVC HR-S3800U S-VHS VCR.
- For playback, while JVC does give the best image quality, the Panasonic AG-1980P S-VHS VTR curries my favor due to it's uncanny ability to play tapes that no other machine would cooperate with.

What about you?

I love my JVC S7800U, though I admit to not having a long list of priors.

My rebuilt Panasonic AG-1980 still outperforms every other VCR I've owned (and that included a handful of prosumer JVC's), except for one contender that holds a close 2nd place: my rebuilt Panasonic PV-S4670 SVHS whose overall image output is the spittin' image of the 1980's but without the same level of noise correction, and the 4670 needs a pass-thru ES10 tbc. Problem with the 1980 is the cost of maintenance every couple of years when some of its schizo caps start acting demented. The outcome is that the caps in the 4670 seem to live forever, despite their getting more use.

Decisions, decisions. When it comes down to money and maintenance requirements, I confess that the 4670 has the advantage -- and tracks like a champ, to boot.

My favourite player is the SVHS Hitachi S390E (PAL). I don't know if a NTSC version was released.

Interesting. :)

It sort of looks like a JVC clone.

- What year was that manufactured?
- And does it have internal TBC?

I have to admit that the Panasonic AG-1980P will play tapes (one specific problem tape, especially) that it won't, but I've still got a soft spot for my Mitsubishi HS-HD2000U. It was the first really good VCR I ever owned, and got my interest started in video as a hobby.

I really like the Philips VR1100 (PAL) for digitizing work, granted, I haven't had the opportunity to try a vast number of high-end SVHS vcrs.

I don't think it's a JVC clone. Is there a way to find out?

I have found a couple of years ago some video magazines at parents home. And the Hitachi has had the highest score for the SVHS Picture and was the reference for the SVHS picture for a few years (better than the Panasonic NV-HS 1000 and equal to the JVC HR-S7000) and they say he has a really good VHS picture and very good sound,too. I could pick up one for less money and now it's my favourite recorder and I have the Panasonic FS-200, Blaupunkt RTV 925 (Paanasonic FS-88),Blaupunkt RTV 966 (Panasonic NV-HS1000),JVC-7600, Nordmende S6400 (JVC 4700), Telefunken A1200 (JVC-5000), Panasonic NV-HD650 (VHS), Thomson VP6990 (VHS/NTSC) to compare.

The recorder was released in 1994. Unfortunately he has no TBC included but he has a edit mode and a dynamic picture eq (soft, normal,sharp).