Toshiba M-785 rare thrifting find?
I have been thrifting every week for a few months now. I started going to acquire parts for a retro gaming PC, but continued after finishing the build as I kept finding interesting vintage electronics at this one particular place. Today I found a Toshiba M-785, of which there is not much info online but according to this post is the latest and greatest VCR Toshiba ever made, and is extremely rare in the US due to poor sales: https://www.avsforum.com/threads/bes...#post-16261747
It works perfectly as far as I can tell. No TBC but it has extremely good DNR, and I can attest that it has a shockingly clean composite signal. It definitely renders my DMR-ES15 redundant. If anyone wants capture samples let me know, and perhaps if LS himself is interested in testing it out I'd be willing to lend it for a technical analysis from a true pro. Here's hoping in another 6 months of thrifting I'll find an external TBC :P |
No, it is not the best VCR, It is as basic as the bottom of the barrel RCA's, Basic VHS with no TBC, no S-Video, It's a good tool for viewing and rewinding the tapes if one has a high end machine. The DNR option might look good for some but most prefer no DNR during capturing tapes.
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I also made a rare find last week on Farcebook Marketplace: a Sanyo DX625 and a Panny EZ48, both brand new, still in their sealed boxes; $140 US for both! Good S-Video picture from the Sanyo; I can't bring myself to open the EZ48!
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Mods, feel free to close/delete this thread lol. |
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The DNR is probably much nicer than the basic analog NR in most vcr, but it's still 90's technology so it's going to have some limits compared to post-capture noise reduction. Toshiba's DNR and TBC ICs were actually used in some of the later Panasonic SVHS decks though so I guess they have some merit. I don't see it negating the need for something with TBC like the ES15 though, unless they actually used a chip that had both TBC and DNR in there without mentioning it. |
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Is it common to see this deck? No.
But is it common to see any particular deck? Also no. The M-785 was one of falsely-claimed "6-head" VCRs of the late 90s. Almost all VCRs of that time had 6 heads (4 video + 2 audio), but only Toshiba was "clever" (deceitful) enough to claim it. Even I was initially fooled by the BS. To say "latest and greatest" in reference to Toshiba isn't impressive. They were all lower-end consumer decks. About 15-20 years ago, I also regarded it as one of the better consumer decks -- but not sure I still would. I was a bit easier to please (too forgiving), a bit more knee-jerk in assessments (less diligent). At AVS, I like CitiBear, but he has said some outright wrong things. In the linked post alone, he says nonsense about image softening ("TBC soften") and line TBCs ("only for flag waving"). He also claims the decks weren't available, but these were sold new at Circuit City, Best Buy, and some others like Conn's. I remember seeing them on the shelf next to the 2nd pair JVC HR-S3800s that I bought at Circuit City (and I may even still have that 3800 receipt somewhere!). I was actually tempted to get a Toshiba as well, but only had $500 budgeted (2x JVCs). Again, late 90s. If you want to send it, I'll look at it, PM me. :) But I vaguely remember these decks having two issues: (1) something catastrophic, which is why you see almost none of these used (2) color bleeding, chroma offset, on either playback or recording (or both?) I forget who, but somebody here found a DataVideo TBC-1000 at a junk shop for about $10, maybe 5 years ago. So it happens. |
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Interesting that they did note it as the "latest and greatest" toshiba, given that they had the W804 and W808 SVHS models that came out after this one. The Panasonic NV-HS870 I got uses a Toshiba 3D DNR chip which could the same or a successor of what was used in toshiba's own vcrs, it's okay, but it's not some miracle thing, more akin to a milder variant of the DNR in the JVCs with TBC/DNR on (but without the TBCing). |
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I've done some more extensive testing and its great at playing back good quality tapes, but worse than other VCRs at playing back bad quality tapes. In particular it tracks worse than an older Toshiba M-65 I have and goes to blue screen on really bad video errors. As the experienced folk here guessed, playback of disparate quality tapes is not its strength. Guess I learned my lesson about believing decade old internet fluff. :laugh:
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Ah, yes ... memories un-fuzzying. Blue screen. Panasonic VHS decks have this as well, and are infamous for it. Very crappy units. These expected ONLY perfect SP mode retail releases, not homemade recordings.
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I also found the attached advertisement from the 1996 Feb/March issue of VIDEO magazine... have a look, it specifically states: "To sharpen quality further, the M781 features 6 video heads and 2 audio heads". |
On this Youtube video of the 782 you can see the holes for an extra pair of heads (in addition to the normal 4 DA video heads and 2 hi-fi heads), same on another one of the 751 without noting anything about flying erase +dummy (which is what one would normally expect an extra set of holes would indicate). Maybe it does actually have an extra set of narrower 19µ heads for SLP. As they can be turned off in the menu presumably it would have the normal set of SLP heads too. Can't find any SM to verify though, it's of course not impossible that the extra holes were just not used and were shared with variants that had flying erase.
Later NTSC VCRs used 19µ for the SLP/trick play heads so that head width width on it's own is anything special, just the setup. That said Toshiba was also on the using 6-head to mean 4 video + 2 hifi bandwagon (and 7 when including flying erase), e.g the PAL V-804 (not to be confused with W-804) says "6 head" on the front and is for sure 4 video + 2 hifi so yea. |
Flying erase head don't need an amplifier, it needs a biased current from a bias oscilator to erase the tape, It has nothing to do whatsoever with the quality of playback of a previously recorded tape, Head count doesn't really mean anything, it will always be only two heads scaning the video at a given time (Head A and head B), whether SP, LP, SLP you name it, By the late 90's 19 micron double azimuth heads were common design even if it is not mentioned on the face plate.
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To contribute to this discussion, i did some experiment on another french forum testing 2 standard vhs decks (toshiba/jvc) and 2 high end s-vhs decks (JVC's). Turns out the Toshiba wins to me. This test was made with a retail secam tape.
https://imgsli.com/MTYyMjM5 It delivers a rather sharp image and no infamous pink vertical bar on the right side. The model is a V442EF just 2 scarts, composite only, lowest of the barel at first glance |
Does the non-SVHS JVC also give the pink bar? If so it might be related to the digital processing stuff only found in the SVHS decks or s-video vs composite but if not it's something else.
That Toshiba is a later model made with Samsung guts so it will be quite different to the slightly earlier Toshiba models talked about in this thread which I believe were designed and manufactured by a joint venture between Toshiba and Thomson. |
The Toshiba has a white/highlight bar on the left, lesser pink on the right. So it's not really better, in terms of edge overscan noise. Such behavior is really expected across almost all decks.
The Toshiba is definitely softer. He got younger (less wrinkles), and her hair is now anime style. The Toshiba is exposed hotter. As a result, color is lost and reduced. Toshiba head switching noise is taller. Is that JVC 7700 TBC on? Both images have chroma noise. This all needs to be taken into context. You can see flaws on a still. You can really see flaws in motion. So this isn't nitpicking whatsoever. The real test is motion, not stills. The Toshiba is expected to do better than most consumer VHS decks, but not outperform S-VHS decks, even TBC-less models. A cheap Toshiba is a fun and interesting find, better than most. Condition matters, of course, not just model number. And it may have some niche uses for you. But it's not going to replace better decks. |
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The 781 for sale locally seems in decent shape (see pic, the protective cellophane for the display is still there even) and he says it works fine. He only wants $30 Canadian (like $22 USD) so I'll probably grab it just to see how it fairs against some snowy EP tapes I have. Purely out of curiosity, I'm not expecting much out of it.
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