Your dream VHS VCR from that time would be?
 

For me at that time would the JVC HR-7700 as favourite, it was in those early days i guess, because later came S-VHS i guess, i believe it had insert editing, and for me, it had a sleek design, maybe a stupid thing to say, but that was my state of mind then, i found out it was a non USA model, and even has a Hirose camera connector, which was needed for camera + recorder those days, further i wasn't much in technology then, as i am now,
but allways wanted to know everything so i guess i had some general knowledge, played around with audio dub,
connected a black and white security camera to the vcr to record the family members :) i found some old recordings on a vhs tape from that, most video hardware was expensive, title generators, simple edit consoles,
but there was a Philips gaming console that had a title generator cardridge which many people used in those days just for that, it was a fun time, tv closed down at 24h00 when we had cable tv then, pirate tv stations took over, beaming in on the antennea, with low power tx, or boosted rf modulators. fun days :)

I started recording to S-VHS in the mid 90s. I long ago found my dream players.

First came the JVC HR-S9600U, back in the 90s, for somewhere under $500 with the Mac warranty included. I probably still have the receipt for it, and it came from B&H. The way it made old tapes look was astonishing. The loss incurred from analog copying VHS>VHS is what drove me to look into digital conversion, but nothing viable existed until the ATI AIW in 2001 for about $380 or so.

For years I'd been setting aside uncooperative tapes, and learned of the Panasonic AG-1980P in the early 2000s. I bought it used for under $400, then had to repair it for bad caps within a few years for another few hundred.

I guess in terms of pure dream, it's have been nice to include frame level TBC on the deck, but I know why it never did (the Macrovision SOBs). If we skipped to modern times, it's be neat to see that deck advanced upon to include LSI Logic type chroma noise removal, with an on/off switch on deck output. Perhaps embedded proc amp and detailer (SignVideo quality). Not that any of that will ever happen, of course.

For me VHS recording started in the early 80's or even sooner.. i should check my tapes for that, that's why i had that choice,
I should check if the HR-7700 even had Hifi PCM sound, i don't think so....
Hifi sound was really an improvement, what i did noticed, newer VHS machines got less in weight, also in quality, the first S-VHS VCR we got, did not perform very well mechanical, also some features which you mentioned, yes, would be indeed a problem for copyright reasons, only now i discover these things......
there lies the problem with implementing a (good) TBC into a VCR :( component video connections on later DVR/VCR combo's where meant mainly for the flatscreens that were introduced at that time, pre HDMI.
But component is now ideal to capture from.
the Panasonic AG-1980P looks also nice, and is called an "editor" i see when i Google it, has insert edit option, which is nice,
But it is called by Panasonic as proffessional, so i guess it was already a prosumer VCR i guess, but most of the time you could buy them in the normal HiFi store/shop.
A lot of fun you can have, with some VCR equipment that still is floating around, reasonable "available" even service manuals are easy to find, don't know if a "service mode" is of any use, when there's nothing wrong... any hacks possible ?

My dream VCR would be a variant of the Mitsubishi HS-HD2000U which included all present features plus frame-level TBC and a FireWire interface compatible with Windows and Amiga computers. Possibly a slightly more robust tape transport mechanism as well.

I guess the Firewire interface would be copyright problem for those days, others here say the DV protocol limits the colorspace, only recently i was aware of the DVHS system, Techmoan had a Youtube video of it, i also noticed some VCR models were limited to a region, like for USA only, Europe only, and even Japan only,
The recorder i mentioned i knew only when it was new, at that moment i only had a simpel vhs model and a "portable" vhs recorder from Hitachi, at that time i had a JVC camera that had a Saticon tube, which was slightly better than de Vidicon type, insert edit was possible but you could see that it was not a complete frame cut, sync was not lost, i think it was quiet an achivement for those days to capture video on tape.
Having also component video output is also a good thing, but by that time digital was not far away, and HDMI had better copyright protection options, which was more important, Hollywood wise.

I have tapes going back to the 70s (Star Wars Holiday Special in SP mode, anybody?), and just usede the family VCR in the 80s. It wasn't until the 90s that it became a serious hobby, and the 2000s a profession.

Some related reading:
http://www.digitalFAQ.com/editorials...g-workflow.htm
http://www.digitalFAQ.com/editorials...hobby-work.htm
http://www.digitalFAQ.com/editorials...ring-tapes.htm
http://www.digitalFAQ.com/editorials...-interview.htm

If you want to go back to the 80s, and even into the early 90s, I'd have been satisfied with a deck that cleaned chroma noise, had better grain control (even for crappy grainy tape stock), and better tracking (meaning better transports). And when I switched to JVC S-VHS, that's what happened.

What about a combo D-vhs / bluray burner with macrovision removal and hdmi /firewire out.
Some advanced tbc functions (with little knobs on the front panel)tint, blacks,colors etc... A real 2000's denoiser. 2 modes only: normal or Pro mode (no oversharp b.s). The whole monster being wooden aha.

I had a dream...