Panasonic S-VHS player grain noise?
 

Hi. I got a Panasonic model NV SV120 last couple months. One first thing I noticed was a leaking capacitor inside but I replaced it myself shortly after.

Anyway, here's the issue. When I play tapes with this VCR I see a lot of grain/noise that doesn't show up on my old Panasonic combo that came out just one year after this model. Even if I turn on the 3D DNR the noise still shows up more than the combo, other than adding artifacts during scene changes and fade outs.

I'm aware there's a superior model that is the NV SV121 with TBC that came out at the same time as my combo, and shares the same remote design. But right now I can't find it for relatively cheap.

I attached a comparison below. The S VHS recording comes first.

I was thinking of trying a JVC player instead. I see some HR S9500 models on eBay here.

The sample is heavily compressed, it's hard to make out what the noise actually looks like. You may want to upload two lossless samples 90MB each.

Here is a review of the Panasonic NV-SV120, NV-SV-121 devices from a German video forum in terms of picture quality:
The picture is too dark and has a minimal green cast, not visible on the TV, but slightly visible on the PC. If you switch on the TBC, it gets even darker. The picture is also quite blurry. In addition, there is sometimes extreme noise, which even digital noise reduction cannot eliminate. On some video cassettes, the noise carpet varies in intensity in different regions of the picture.

What sounds absurd to me is how a low end DVD/VHS combo from the same era outperforms what should be the high end models.

I'm aware of the mpeg2 compression in the sample I posted but I don't have time to capture everything again right now.

At this point I was thinking of trying out a JVC player instead. Right now I see some HR S9500 models on eBay. I was told the PAL model lacks the features but I see all of them in the manual.

Well, the Panasonic NV-SV120 was from the year 2003 and the NV-SV121 was from 2004. The SV121 should have been the last Panasonic with TBC. The retail price of the NV-120 was 200,- Euros and the price of the SV121 was 270,- Euros.

The time of the video recorders was over and there was produced as cheaply as possible.

There can be no more talk of high-end.

A rough rule for the purchase of PAL-Panasonic video recorders is, fingers away from devices where the drive is centered!

The best DVD recorders with VHS drive were 2004, the JVC DR-MV1 SE for 750,- Euro and the Panasonic DMR-E75 V for 800,- Euro.
It could be possible that these provide a better picture than the last generation of Panasonic S-VHS video recorders.
The combo recorders should work like, when you use a DVD recorder as a passthrough device. (But I have no experience with these devices.)

If you want to buy a JVC these days I would only buy one without the dynamic drum.

You can read more here:

http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/vide...html#post84039

http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/vide...html#post77079

The main problem with the NV VP line of combos is the very poor tracking. Even on good tapes sometimes the hi-fi audio drops and I get frame losses.

For an example I have the Australian model NV HV60 (which seems to be identical to the Japanese one with PAL support added), and the tracking is way better. That model in particular has the best linear audio quality I’ve heard as well, it’s what I use for NTSC tapes right now. The PAL quality on this model is bad, I assume it’s because the heads are calibrated for NTSC 3.58. The S VHS Panasonic I have also has way better tracking than the combos.

As for JVC players, those with the dynamic drum are the 9000 series right? I’m trying to win a 9600 one right now, but otherwise the only affordable units that start with a 9 right now are the 9500 models. I heard the PAL S9500 lacks features, but I see TBC and DNR in the manual.

I own many French SECAM tapes right now that I digitized with a Panasonic NV HD647 (yes the one that oversharpens PAL tapes), and I always get unsatisfactory results that vary a lot depending on the capture setup I use. For an example the DVD recorder passthrough seems to handle the signal way better. Also I have a Yuan OEM capture card with the same chip as the one I normally use that handles the SECAM signal completely differently, and it’s free of the snowing/grain noise I see on the other one. With this said, I could try going for a French JVC model, but I’m not sure if the PAL quality takes a hit like what I’ve seen with that Panasonic I bought 7 years ago.

The HV60 (and SV-120) is from the last lineup with the Z mechanism as far as I know. The HV61 and the most of the PAL panasonic combos (other than the NV-VHD1 at least) use the simplified R4 mechanism, so that might be the cause of worse tracking. Not sure if that's the case for the SV121 too.

As for JVC, for PAL/Europe, it was afaik S9xxx, and S8xxx models that featured it, plus some non-SVHS ones named HR-DDxxx, though not all of them. Dynamic drum is advertised on the front on the ones that have it.

At least: HR-S9400, S8500, S9500, S8600, S9600, S9700 + HR-DDxxx models, Philips VR1500 (+ the "broadcast/pro decks)

Not sure about the Philips VR1600

The S9400 and HR-DD848 have an earlier mechanism so the DD system is a bit different.

S8000, S9000, S9200, S8700, S885x, S985x S895x do not have DD.

Even when it comes to the HS950 and HS860/960? I have the HS870 which I'm not a fan of at all, but the earlier "digital process" ones seem to get some praise.

For the non-SVHS ones, the HD610 and 620 decks I have also seem to work nicely, and they have the same k mech as the SVHS decks, and it's possible to adjust the CVC thing to be sharper or softer with a pot on the inside inside. Later ones seem more hit and miss.

I've had issues with distortion linear audio on the two JVC DVD/VHS combo decks I have (DR-MX1 and HR-XVS20), and I've seen others report similar thing on late model JVCs so a bit iffy on those. Otherwise they seem ok, XVS20 especially since it's SVHS so it has S-Video. SOme of the later JVC combos are made by LG, so those are completely different.

I heard the dynamic drum actually makes the deck more unreliable due to more moving parts, and doesn’t really improve picture stability on normal play anymore. I mentioned it without looking into it before.

Maybe I should just look for a non DD JVC model that has TBC as well. Not sure if 2MB vs 4MB RAM makes a big difference. If some of you know which models give the cleanest picture let me know.

I have a NV HD650 model (the drive is not centered) and it has the worst linear audio quality I’ve ever heard. The picture looks way brighter too.

Yeah the dynamic drum system is just a nuisance when it comes to digitizing.

2 vs 4mb ram is only a thing on the NTSC JVCs, the PAL/SECAM ones with TBC/DNR all have 2mb as far as I know. Not sure if the extra memory was used during playback or just for doing more when doing trick play and similar.

I found a TBC non DD deck for a decent price, but I have a question. Do the MS variants which support SECAM have lower PAL quality? Otherwise I'll just wait for a French model considering how I have a lot of French tapes as well.

Just to go way back to the start regarding cheaper late VHS machines.

My experience is that is that a lot of these machines could deliver sparkling image quality. Component counts had been substantially reduced, heads had become commodity items and less variable (and often less prone to wear).

For viewing, a lot of even the modest end of line models were great playback machines.

A lot of them are built out of cheap mechanicals, use some questionable passive components and were not built to last, but when they're working the picture quality can be surprisingly good

Don't conflate this with whether they're suitable for digitising tapes, but for playback and viewing a lot of them can perform brilliantly.

I have a late Sony machine, it's made of biscuits but for general playback it outperforms some older, higher quality machines.

DD is a bit of a hack, my personal opinion is to not spend a great deal on a machine with it. Working; it's fantastic, but it's very problematic.

Shame, Philips cracked dynamic drum in the 1970s with near perfect reliability.

In my opinion high end S-VHS VCR's from late 90's are the go to VCR's, not the cheap Funai's or the brand name basic VHS machines. VCR manufacturers learned a lot about the format throughout the years to the point where almost all the kinks were ironed out, SoC have replaced many circuit boards, analog adjustments are dramatically reduced since all parameters are optimized by algorithms and put into the chips, Reduced the amount of wiring and connectors that used to connect circuit boards together, Machines that make mechanisms and the moving components used laser calibration to the Nanometer tolerances, not to mention that repairs are easier to make and parts can be salvaged from other machines even low end ones since they are shared across a lot of models. I would never bother acquiring a VCR from the 70's and 80's let alone trying to fix it.

I quote here the user "VS" who is not unknown in German-speaking video forums. Translated with an online translator.

Panasonic, why no center drive?
This is not a law of nature but a rough orientation. Panasonic has built several generations of very good, robust and strong (important for old, heavy cassettes), and these were the generations G, G2 and K. These were mostly installed on the left, exceptions were, for example, with S-VHS The devices NV-HS900 and 950, here the K deck sat in the middle. Still purchasable. After that came the Z-deck, punched plate with plastic, falls apart just by looking at it and without defined tape tension (with older cassettes the thing does not get along). All Z decks sit in the middle, except in the DVD-VHS combos of course. The SV120/121 got another aluminum chassis, but it's also a bit strangely constructed. Besides increased risk of tape jam due to inferior parts in the mechanism, certain cassettes may play back with a noise pattern that increases from top to bottom (even with multiple auto-tracking and/or manually corrected tracking) because the tape is too loose on the head drum. I have been able to observe this on several models of this type, but it depended on the tape. Pure lottery therefore.

In addition, the electronics have deteriorated. Newer Panasonics often suffer from a slight green cast and too dark brightness reproduction. Not all models, but apparently all of certain model series: It could be reproduced with all HS830, HS930, SV120 and SV121, which I got into the fingers. Take a satellite receiver with S-Video at the Scart output and connect it via Scart to a video recorder whose Scart input is set to composite. The result is a white-pure B/W recording, since the chrominance signal is completely missing. Whether the Panasonic or, for example, a JVC or Toshiba records the picture is irrelevant for this test, since the recording works perfectly, the problem lies in the playback. Then you play back the tape and record said image via capture card on the computer. Then you compare the histogram of e.g. an old Panasonic, a JVC or similar with the newer Panasonics like the HS930 or SV120 and lo and behold: While the colleagues still reproduce pure white, the image of the new Panasonic is slightly red- and strongly foundation dominant. Not enough that you notice it directly, but the color reproduction is unnaturally warm.

About the image reproduction: either the HS1000 we tested was broken, or you've fallen for the "visually beautiful" vs "metrologically beautiful" effect. The HS1000 has a metrologically beautiful image. Super sharp, all details are preserved, color reproduction is nice and linear - but it is noisy like sea breeze. Of course, this is not visually attractive at first, but with the appropriate filters, e.g. in Virtual Dub, the result is a very good picture. The HS930 or SV120, for example, follow more of a "paint by numbers" approach: edges sharp, little to no noise (as long as the tape plays along and the "noise wedge" doesn't form from top to bottom) but no more details. Wrinkles on the face? Rough wallpaper on the wall? Everything becomes smooth and glossy. Visually nice because there's no noise, but far from what you can get out.

Panasonic has always been shady to me that's why I never owned a VCR from them. Even in the camcorder business they always slacked behind, Back in 2013 when I bought my first HD camcorder for $1400 it was a Panasonic, That thing had all kind of problems, loud fan that recorded noise through the built in microphone, excessive heat, Auto focus function has several bugs, I later went back to Sony and that was the first and last Panasonic device I've ever owned.

What is that supposed to tell us now?
Just because your first Panasonic HD camcorder from 2014 didn't live up to your expectations, Panasonic VCRs made 20 years earlier suck?
Thumbs down for the Panasonic VCRs without ever having owned or worked with one. It's all about badmouthing brands and products you don't like without even having experience with them. Sometimes it's better to say nothing.

It's not "live up to my expectation", It's a multi page thread over at AVSforum that lasted for several months about the problem, Besides we have the same right to express our opinions publicly about products we use, I expressed mine if you don't like it oh well, Not all VCR's are perfect but I don't like certain models of Panasonic's VCR's and so do many members for their design flaws. You like it? Good for you.

Stop the attack behavior, it is not good for the image of the forum.

You may have a lot of theoretical knowledge, but practically you have no experience with the devices. If I were you, I would test it myself, but as an expert, you don't need to. The discussion about whether JVC or Panasonic is better has been going on forever. One prefers JVC the other Panasonic. Only if you have nothing to compare you can not make a judgment.

Panasonic = Matsushita

And for a while (about 1990-2005), Matsushita essentially fully owned both JVC (Victor) and Panasonic, hence why lots of overlap at times. Rebadges, those VHS-C adapters, S-VHS tapes, etc. At least for video. (It had already been the majority shareholder, 50%+, since 1953, and it was already considered a subsidiary of Matsushita. But it was somewhat independent until the 90s.)

Fun fact, Toshiba was at one time a minority shareholder of JVC.

Those Japanese companies were very incestuous. I don't know that Panasonic/Matsushita was any more shady than others, if at all. Those Japanese businesses tend to keep themselves honorable. It's their custom.

Though whether Panasonic new about bad caps, or was duped, is up for debate.

I want to read that AVS thread. Link?

I own both, in multiples. :)

While JVC is often the best first choice, each unit has pros and cons. Though for NTSC, I must say that Panasonic has more cons. Hard to keep those running, money pits to try.

Once I get the JVC deck I bought I’ll post some quality tests.

How do you know? <snip> My family and friends owned Panasonic VCR's and camcorders since the 80's, I was repairing VCR's, camcorders, component HiFi, Car radios as a hobby since 1994, I've worked on JVC, Philips, Panasonic, Sony, Aiwa, Thomson VCR's, at least that's what was available in North Africa back then, I was reading over sized paper schematics before PDF and internet was mainstream, Stop complaining we've heard enough of it already.

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.

Thanks

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) .

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. :smack:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 repeating. :warning:

And this. I don't like seeing so many opinionated threadjack lately. :no2:
This site is for FAQ, Q&A, not pontification.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. :sick: Triaging those still.

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.