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  #21  
06-12-2022, 03:34 PM
pthebest19 pthebest19 is offline
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Please let’s have a civilized conversation in my own thread.

I just ask what experts think because I’m in the process of converting a lot of tapes to digital, and some people here have way more knowledge than me.

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  #22  
06-13-2022, 07:18 AM
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You see I'm the opposite, I'm yet to come across any really well built JVC stuff. It's certainly a name that carries moderate-to-little cachet in Europe.

In fact, their domestic stuff is by-and-large junk, in my opinion, it's laughable what they stamped 'Professional' on (look at the difference with a genuinely 'professional' Panasonic machine), the late mechanisms that get lauded are little more than pressed steel junk and they're usually coveted by those who've never used truly professional equipment and appreciate what good equipment is built like.

But that's an opinion of one, in one market, but I just bin JVC machines regardless of what they are, it's pretty much all low-end junk, even the 'desired' machines in my opinion.

Panasonic electronically reliability in some markets is low, there's tons of conjecture as to why, but that wasn't seen as much in PAL markets and seeing as I own several hundred PAL machines and maybe 20 NTSC VHS players I can only speak as to my experience.

JVC seemed to do better in the NTSC markets, but their PAL machines really don't carry much cachet. Sony picture quality is usually the 'best' in my opinion, but Sony machines come with their own pitfalls.

If you like JVC, buy JVC... But here either domestically and especially professionally it was a bit of a mid-market joke. Cheap-ass studios used JVC equipment (Anglia, TVam), and actual main broadcasters used Sony/Panasonic (BBC, Thames, Granada, Central) .
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  #23  
06-13-2022, 07:38 AM
pthebest19 pthebest19 is offline
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Usually every brand has their own hit and miss models.

As far as I know Sony never produced VCRs with features such as the TBC, or even S-VHS support with S Video out. I don’t think it’s accurate to make a comparison with broadcast equipment, as that was Sony’s main focus at the time.
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  #24  
06-13-2022, 08:20 AM
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Originally Posted by pthebest19 View Post
Usually every brand has their own hit and miss models.

As far as I know Sony never produced VCRs with features such as the TBC, or even S-VHS support with S Video out. I don’t think it’s accurate to make a comparison with broadcast equipment, as that was Sony’s main focus at the time.
You are of course right in regards to Sony's focus, but I doubt many who use genuinely professional equipment (including VHS) would choose JVC in this market.

I doubt many VT ops had JVC video machines at home either.

My point, which I may have arrived at a bit clumsily was that JVC made some very middling stuff . Those who have never used broadcast-grade machines then assume this is high-quality stuff when really either their 'best' mechanisms are complete junk. Open something like an NV-FS200 and compare it to a similar PAL JVC machine and the built quality and material selection are a world apart.

JVCs 'professional' machines were widely seen as a joke here, LS posted up the internals of one of their 'high end' machines and it was full of pressed steel parts! You won't find that on an AG series Panasonic machine with cast magnesium and brass bearings being the order of the day.

I don't care if individuals buy it or not, but it's just interesting to read it's held in such esteem in some markets yet seen as pretty mid-market in others.

Whether this actually matters to anybody is a whole other point, but having used many hundreds of machines, JVC in my experience are the weakest of the big three.

For broadcast work, Sony really were the kings then Panasonic, then JVC a very distant third and usually very much the budget option.
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  #25  
06-13-2022, 09:32 AM
hodgey hodgey is offline
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Which decks are you comparing?

The JVC competitor to the FS200 from around the same release year would be something like a HR-S6800EG/EA which is a bit more beefily constructed than the later models LS and others typically use for digitization (though I don't think the chassis is cast aluminium like the panasonic G and K mechs). JVC didn't put a TBC in their consumer decks outside Japan until the 1998 lineup though (HR-S9500 and the like) though I think, and those are much more cost-reduced and simplified, same with panasonic consumer SVHS decks from the time and later we got around here in Europe like the NV-HS860/960 and later. Panasonic kept the beefy die cast K mech around for longer than JVC bothered with beefier mechs though it seems.

There are more "proper" "pro" decks from JVC like the BR-S5xx/BR-S8xx models that are more like the large panasonic AG decks that are of a completely different build standard. Of course (S)VHS was mainly a consumer thing so I don't doubt JVC was less involved in broadcast things than Sony and Panasonic.

Another thing with VHS and Panasonic is that the consumer-marketed models they released in the late 80s to early 2000s seem to use completely different platforms and mechanisms to some extent to the ones sold elsewhere., and seem simpler and more cost-reduced I don't know why that is but it might have had some impact on perceptions.

Sony did make a few SVHS decks with S-video, both prosumer ones and "pro" variants akin to the AG7xxx and BR-S5xx/8xx decks, only the latter is found with TBC outside japan as far as I know. In Japan it seems there were a lot of top of the line consumer (S)VHS VCRs that never got equivialents elsewhere.

Anyhow, we're getting a bit far off topic here.

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  #26  
06-13-2022, 09:47 AM
latreche34 latreche34 is offline
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Let's leave the studio equipment out of the equation, you can't compare business tools to entertainment devices.

I lived in the Mediterranean sea area back in the 90's and JVC didn't have a good market penetration in the region, there was a lot of VCR manufacturers in the region, France, Germany, Netherlands ...etc. for JVC to be able to market a product there it has to be cheap and via one of their remote factories in Asia usually Singapore or Korea.

The stamped chassis thing is an evolution of manufacturing, all manufacturers did it to save a buck, there is no exception. But JVC did have the technology, the patents, the designs ...

Don't get me wrong, I like other VCR brands, I just prefer the video processing on JVC machines.

https://www.youtube.com/@Capturing-Memories/videos
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  #27  
06-13-2022, 10:03 AM
RobustReviews RobustReviews is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by latreche34 View Post
Let's leave the studio equipment out of the equation, you can't compare business tools to entertainment devices.
You're right, they can't be directly compared. What I do find irksome though is that JVC marketed a range of 'professional' which are clearly not very well made at all.

I'm getting tired of reading views of what is and isn't professional by people who've clearly never worked with professional machines or formats and often just make themselves look silly. It's very transparent who has and who hasn't worked with professional equipment and formats in these communities.

Professional machines aren't full of pressed-steel parts. End of.

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Don't get me wrong, I like other VCR brands, I just prefer the video processing on JVC machines.
Then I wish you all the JVC machines you could ever want, and I mean that entirely plainly. They work well enough, I just don't think they're worth what some invest in them in the market I'm in. It's all academic though, I actively don't care what other people buy.

I can't speak as to other markets.
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  #28  
06-13-2022, 12:15 PM
latreche34 latreche34 is offline
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Not just JVC, Panasonic and other manufacturers did market VCR's with Professional on the face plate, But what that means is that they are for schools, corporate media, government agencies and so on, They are not for studios as one may think but for non home use with minimum features. VHS was not really a professional format to begin with.

https://www.youtube.com/@Capturing-Memories/videos
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  #29  
06-13-2022, 01:10 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by latreche34 View Post
Stop the attack behavior, it is not good for the image of the forum.
This needs repeating.

Quote:
Originally Posted by hodgey View Post
Anyhow, we're getting a bit far off topic here.
And this. I don't like seeing so many opinionated threadjack lately.
This site is for FAQ, Q&A, not pontification.

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Originally Posted by RobustReviews View Post
JVCs 'professional' machines were widely seen as a joke here
Quote:
Originally Posted by hodgey View Post
and those are much more cost-reduced and simplified
Quote:
Originally Posted by latreche34 View Post
you can't compare business tools to entertainment devices.
Quote:
Originally Posted by RobustReviews View Post
What I do find irksome though is that JVC marketed a range of 'professional' which are clearly not very well made at all.
I'm getting tired of reading views of what is and isn't professional by people who've clearly never worked with professional machines or formats and often just make themselves look silly. It's very transparent who has and who hasn't worked with professional equipment and formats in these communities.
Quote:
Originally Posted by latreche34 View Post
Not just JVC, Panasonic and other manufacturers did market VCR's with Professional on the face plate, But what that means is that they are for schools, corporate media, government agencies and so on, They are not for studios as one may think but for non home use with minimum features. VHS was not really a professional format to begin with.
This needs to be addressed.

JVC Professional machines were indeed professional. The mark of professionalism isn't some idea of how much metal it contains, but how it performs for the intended non-consumer use. These pro decks almost all had line TBCs, and the transports were often more robust (as compared to the new consumer form factors, which were all plastic, less tolerances).

The main demographic was edu, govt, and small/medium studios that handled consumer VHS/DV formats (and semi-pro S-VHS). Eventually digital conversion was considered, but was very DV and DVD centric.

The simpler guts of the machines made maintenance and repair far easier, as compared to the "big bertha" inferior SP-only type machines that were mostly geared to the previous generation of "professional". Medical, surveillance, etc. (I had to deal with far too many surveillance systems at an early career, and lots of those older decks were crap.)

So enough of that. Professional? Yep. And some of the EOL were amazingly good, JVC saved the best for last.

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  #30  
06-13-2022, 01:15 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by latreche34 View Post
Not just JVC, Panasonic and other manufacturers did market VCR's with Professional on the face plate, But what that means is that they are for schools, corporate media, government agencies and so on, They are not for studios as one may think but for non home use with minimum features. VHS was not really a professional format to begin with.
I'm sure they did, and I fully understand what you're trying to arrive at.

However, even their high-end models are pretty crappily built in terms of component quality, would you not agree?

VHS was not a professional format, it did have a few applications in broadcast for ROTs, LFSs, candidates etc. It was not possible here due to our broadcast regulations but I think some seriously low-rent novelty Stateside cable channels used S-VHS, but I can't prove that off-hand.

I think a lot of the actual 'broadcast' S-VHS machines were a trojan horse for colleges and training facilities to ingratiate students into xyz's edit system. Purely conjecture, but it wouldn't surprise me if that's where a great deal of the machines was actually being aimed; colleges and learning facilities as a cost-effective way of practising editing without investing in Betacam SP systems.
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  #31  
06-13-2022, 01:42 PM
latreche34 latreche34 is offline
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No, Hi end JVC S-VHS machines are not crappily built, As I mentioned before, manufacturers including JVC had a good feedback and experience on how the format played out over the years in terms of problems and bugs, So in the last decade of the format they knew where to cut down on costs and where they don't, not to mention that manufacturing process has shifted from manual labor to automated robots with little human supervision so the design has to be completely changed to accommodate for the process.

JVC was burnt because of their failing DD system but honestly when those machines were made they were not designed to last for over 35 years, we are pretty much assessing equipment that belong to the museum.

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  #32  
06-17-2022, 08:27 PM
pthebest19 pthebest19 is offline
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I received the VCR and I'm very unsatisfied with it. There's way more noise, especially chroma noise, even though less grain. The only picture setting that makes sense is the "edit" mode.

I ended up finding a NV SV121 for cheap, and I went for it, as I'll sell the 120 anyway. I'll post comparison files once I get it.

-- merged --

I tried a NV SV121 model and the grain seems even worse to me. That's the model with TBC.

Could it be due to the heads being too worn out?

-- merged --

Apparently I can't edit my own messages, so I'll have to double post. Sorry about that.

I noticed the drop capacitor area was extremely dusty. I cleaned it with IPA and nothing different happened. I have no idea how it got that dirty when the rest of the VCR was clean.

The caps seem ok to me. I see two of them having a different color, maybe they were replaced.

I cleaned the heads as well and the picture is still grainy.

I'm not sure if this is related to the deck itself or due to age, but I owned the Panasonic combo since 2005 when I was still pretty young, and it went through everything. I didn't really treat it with care back then like I do now instead.

The DNR barely does anything with that amount of noise.


Attached Images
File Type: jpg dirty caps.jpg (124.8 KB, 7 downloads)
Attached Files
File Type: mpg 121 tbc on dnr off 2.mpg (24.33 MB, 14 downloads)
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  #33  
06-23-2022, 01:36 PM
hodgey hodgey is offline
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The power supply being a bit dusty isn't unusual in my experience.

It's a bit hard to say too much based on the videos you posted due to the heavy compression. Maybe it would be easier with screenshot comparisons if lossless clips take too much space.

On the earlier panasonic SVHS decks there was a menu setting to change between 2-3 picture settings, but seems they may have removed that on the NV-SV12x variants?

The NV-SVxxx, NV-HVxx and NV-VPxx combos all use very similar hardware other than the mechanism change from the first lineup and the SVHS specific bits, think they all have the same video IC even, so I guess they set up the SVHS variants to rely more on the DNR maybe?

What sort of "look" are you after? Noise reduction in VCRs is primarily there to reduce the noise generated by the recording/playback process, it doesn't help as much on e.g noise due to bad TV reception when the tape was recorded.

Re possible cap issues, in my experience at least those tend to cause more sporadic noise, diagonal bands or very noisy chroma rather than grainyness. Worn heads tend to give dropouts, easy head clogging and/or black streaks on sharp transitions. Grainyness is more a symptom of worn/weak signal tapes, especially when using EDIT mode on a deck. (I have one or two bad cap examples somewhere but couldn't find them right now.)

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Last edited by hodgey; 06-23-2022 at 02:15 PM.
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  #34  
06-23-2022, 02:53 PM
pthebest19 pthebest19 is offline
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I sent you privately a lossless capture because it'd be too large to attach it here.

Both the SV120 and 121 don't have picture settings. I have an Australian NV HV60PX model with NTSC 3.58 support, that has them. In that one the picture quality is even worse.

With the lossless capture you can see it even better. Maybe you know what's going on.
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  #35  
06-23-2022, 03:06 PM
latreche34 latreche34 is offline
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Use vdub2 to cut few seconds lossless sample and post it here, Yeah 99MB is too low by today's standard, You can always post at videohelp they have 500MB upload limit and just link the thread here so that way you get help on both forums.

At this point I think this is source related and your low end VCR processing just wash out the details, I've seen a lot of combo units do that, The high end VCR's just capture what ever on the tape be it noise or not. If analog video noise bothers you just use post processing filters in software.

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  #36  
06-24-2022, 11:43 AM
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Yeah 99MB is too low by today's standard
I disagree that 99mb is too low. Servers cost way to much to allow filling it up with mere sample and test clips, and lossless to boot. If you need more than 99mb, then encode to H.264 or MPEG (and both 4:2:2). I can assure you that Baldrick (VH) would lower the limit if this got out of hand. VH has per-user limits (that I recall), this site has no per-user limits (just the per-file limits). 99mb is plenty for samples.

Or you can use your own cloud file-hosting service. Just be aware that most people will not take the time to downloads large files, especially not from sites that "make you jump through hoops" to download it. Myself included. So small samples, attach here.

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  #37  
06-24-2022, 11:46 AM
pthebest19 pthebest19 is offline
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Ok, here's a lossless clip.

This noise seems more like interference to me.

-- merged --

Sorry again for the double post, but it seems in this unit many capacitors don't seem the stock ones. I heard that bad or off spec caps are the main issue for video noise, so that could be the answer to all my problems.

Also the noise is far worse than in my SV120 unit, which is what I brought up before. In that one only one capacitor was blown and I replaced it, but it could be that others have gone bad even though they don't leak.

Anyway let me know what you think by that clip I posted.


Attached Files
File Type: avi nv sv121 lossless cut.avi (64.98 MB, 12 downloads)
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  #38  
06-24-2022, 11:25 PM
latreche34 latreche34 is offline
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I highly doubt capacitors has any effect on that noise what so ever, Analog formats are the way they are, grainy, noisy, low chroma ...etc. Just because your low end VCR is over processing the video removing every detail of it making look like noise free doesn't mean your high end VCRs have bad capacitors. I hope I'm wrong but post a lossless sample of the said good VCR so we can take a look at the video and compare it to the sample above.

https://www.youtube.com/@Capturing-Memories/videos
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  #39  
06-25-2022, 10:00 PM
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Is line TBC in use? (Not related, curious. Seems so. Micro wiggly.)

FYI, caps can have this effect, I've seen it. But usually caps are far worse, more obvious. So I also highly doubt it's caps on this exact tape. More likely is VHS tape grade causing grain. What is it? Present on all tapes, all brands, all dates/eras? Because I'd doubt it.

Do realize Panasonic is more grainy at playback. It lacks the refined DNR of JVC. That can be good, or bad. There is no "best" here, aside from best for the intended project goals. (Some folks want EDIT, or need EDIT, but for most users it's not the best setting, as it disables a main reason to own the quality S-VHS VCR. Not all reasons, just a reason.)

Is that Ant & Aardvark?

My own cartoon captures look the same, for specific sources. For me, that source is S-VHS ET, EP, Cartoon Network, and Bugs Bunny, HB, and MGM toons. I recorded many of those days long 90s marathons. Do realize the toons themselves had grain. (It was a mess to compress to DVD, you had to be very careful. Even some studios screwed it up.)

Due to family issues in recent past months, as discussed elsewhere, some conversations were just dropped, some lost. Were you the toon collector that I was conversing with? With the online toon cache? I want to resume that conversation, and download the cache. I remembered it was somebody, but not sure if email or PM, both of which have nightmare inboxes right now. Email alone was 1k message, "only" 675 at the moment. PMs worse. Triaging those still.

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  #40  
06-26-2022, 07:15 AM
pthebest19 pthebest19 is offline
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Yes I’m that toon collector you’re thinking of. Ok, so here’s a bit on that tape I ripped. It’s part of a collection released in Italy, the UK also got a similar one during the 80s. They made new masters for these tapes back then, some ended up being re used on Digital Betacam dupes, that’s why I know how they’re supposed to look.

But the tape I used is a 1992 reissue. The tape played without that kind of grain on my combo unit. I even posted a sample here (no point in having it lossless as there’s not much noise anyway). The picture looks just as sharp, so I don’t think it’s a matter of detail. I kept using that tape and a few others to test how VCRs perform.

The reason why I don’t want to rely on filters is because they take away the film grain on top of the noise the VCR adds.

Anyway in this case, the NV SV121 unit I have looks far worse than the 120, and I think it’s highly unlikely a new unit would perform like this.

I’ll ask next week if I can get it recapped. Anyway I have the TBC turned off. I have to say on the 121 the TBC is really good on bad tapes. Otherwise it doesn’t make much of a difference than what my capture card does to stabilize the signal. In comparison the TBC on the JVC player I got barely does anything. Do note that both crop the picture at 704x576.
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