D-VHS players vs. S-VHS with TBC?
 

So I’m in the market for a new VHS player since I’m one of those noobs who started converting to HDD with no TBC. (Current setup is a standard composite 4-head JVC unit with no TBC to Explorer® 8300HDTM DVR to a Hauppage PVR to PC) I put it through a Rogers DVR to try and clean the signal and it does help a little.

Confusingly enough, all the newer D-VHS units are cheaper than their S-VHS counterparts that have TBC. Does this mean that they have less corrective features for regular SP/EP tapes? I read the suggested VHS player forms but it wasn’t clear whether D-VHS players have TBC for standard SP/EP tapes. If so, are the TBC’s in the S-VHS players than those in the D-VHS players?

Just trying to save some cash but I don’t want to get stuck with a D-VHS player that fails to clean the analog signal so it won’t stutter my capture card.

Many thanks!

In general, D-VHS players handle EP/SLP pretty poorly. Sometimes you come across a deck that seems to behave, but rarely. Most D-VHS players are attuned to SP mode playback. Almost all D-VHS get B+ at best on my grading/tracking scale, many more get B- to C.

I would be surprised if a DVR had any positive quality effects.

How many tapes?
What recording mode are your VHS tapes?
- SP, LP, EP/SLP, or a mix? If mix, % of each?
- If not known, guestimate. (What you don't want to do is put these tapes in a ratty old VCR, and have the tapes get damaged.)

Thank you for the quick reply!

The DVR in my experience helps a little to keep the timing correct and doesn't usually interrupt the capture card and ruin the whole recording. However, whenever the VCR player does put through a "dirty" signal; the DVR will just usually black out the interrupt and resume the tape. These blackouts are usually in the order of a few milliseconds but recently I've been noticing that my audio is not coming through sometimes.

I have upwards of 50 tapes to convert and maybe more if I can get my workflow optimized. I currently have a mix of LP/EP/SP, none of which are S-VHS to my knowledge. I'd guesstimate ~ 40% are SP, 25% LP and 35% EP.

Most of the VCR's I have are in pretty good exterior condition though I have not done any head/roller cleaning on them since the tape quality and all the VCR functions work properly. I was using an HR-A60U for recording and a HR-XVC24 for analyzing/comparing playback. I recently picked up a free HR-S3500U (S-VHS without TBC) that needs a lot of cleaning but I also have a DR-MV1 at my disposal (All units are JVC models).

It's a question that only one like Lordsmurf can answer because you have to use multiple players to make a judgment on how a group of them behave towards different tapes, I have only one machine the JVC HM-DH5U that I tried and seem to work as good as my HR-S7600AM, however the JVC HM-DH5U is a high end machine that sells for over a grand online used.

I posted some files to compare the two machines here, though I did not use the S-Video out of the HM-DH5U, instead I captured to MPEG-2 using its firewire port but it gives an idea on how both machines handle the same tape.

Wow that HM-DH5U looks crazy, it can output SP/LP/EP tapes through HDMI?? It's way over my budget and unfortunately my old school capture card doesn't even take HDMI. I do have a JVC DR-MV1 but it only has a DV firewire input and not an output. What equipment do you use to capture firewire? On an unrelated topic; I have a PC and a PCI card which have thunderbolt ports but I was unable to find a software that would recognize it on the PC.

I never treat an HDMI port as a capture port, It was designed for displaying video and should stay that way, Anyway I use a Sony VAIO laptop with iLink port and Windows 7 and CapDVHS tool to capture from the machine, VLC can capture MPEG-2 over firewire too. This is just experimental my usual workflow for capturing analog tapes is Windows 10 all in one machine, I use S-VHS VCR and BE75 connected to the computer using the BM SDI/USB3 adapter.