Expected quality for a JVC S-VHS VCR?
 

So I ended up digitizing a wedding tape from 1994 that was given to me a while back. Originally thought it had a bit of mold on it so I ended up capturing it from an old Panasonic PV-V4251 that I could care less about having ruined. Once that was done and the capture proved to be successful (no dropouts), I realized that the tape didn't have mold at all (what I thought was mold on the edge of the tape was actually just the reflection of the plastic cover, so the tape itself didn't have any physical damage on it)

After I figured out that the tape was actually clean, I decided to recapture it using a JVC SR-MV45U. Since the tape wasn't playing nicely with the internal line TBC (black streaks were appearing over the screen) had to pair it with an es15 and disable the JVC's line TBC.

A sample of the capture from the JVC has been provided. I don't have the raw file of the Panasonic capture anymore but I do remember that their was more detail on the walls of the room (the wall stripes were more pronounced) with the major downsides being the less vibrate colors and looking more grainy and less blurry than the JVC overall.

While I did end up sticking with the JVC's result. I'm just wondering if this is the sort of quality to be usually expected when using it.

I don't see an issue with that capture clip.

If you want to allow more noise (often confused with "detail"), you can put the JVC picture mode to EDIT. The JVC NR is a good balance while retaining true detail.

Ah, good to know. That is a possibility, when it came to the Panasonic result having more "detail" in my eyes. It was the additional grain, which I do remember was especially noticeable in the dark background.

Still, thanks for reassuring that the capture clip looks to have no obvious issues and seems to be standard quality for such a setup. Thankfully it seems like the VCR heads aren't dirty for the time being