digitalFAQ.com Forum - In the market for a new dvd recorder

For the task at hand, your JVC is the single best machine out there for this purpose.

Let me explain more....

Contrary to fanboyish myths, Betamax and VHS are pretty much identical in the output quality, including the list of potential flaws. The most important device for turning tapes into high quality DVDs is the VCR, which you may already know. There are some past discussions on this forum if you do a forum search, listing several suggestion Betamax VCRs.

When it comes to tapes, you really ought to remove the chroma noise. Chroma noise (or "color noise") is that reddish-bluish mist you see dancing around in shadows or on top of heavily saturated colors (especially red, yellow, purple and blue). If you don't see it easily, turn up the saturation of your television, or adjust a proc amp to a higher saturation level (if you have a proc amp). It's there, I promise -- it's an inherent defect of the formats. Some VCRs are worse than others at recording it onto or playing it from the tape.

The only DVD recorders that ever worked to remove chroma noise were machines using the LSI Logic Domino chipset, from about 2003-2006. These included the JVC DR-M10S, some other JVC series machines of the same era, LiteOn machines (and clones), and a few other random machines. There's a list on this site, search for "LSI Logic" with a forum search. A few Toshiba XS-series machines (and nearby series such as KX and other) offered advanced video controls, included some advanced temporal video filters that offset most of the chroma noise -- although not as good as the LSI chipset machines.

Unfortunately, due to consumer cluelessness (and associated lack of demand), DVD recorders started to die off before these types of machines could advance even better. JVC and LSI Logic both appear to be out of the DVD recorder business, and have been for some time now.

A few Panasonic DVD recorders in the ES and EZ series use LSI chipsets, but the recording quality is hampered by Panasonic idiocy of forcing the machine to use unsafe bitrates, which often gives out blocky/noisy video. A few of these are still found in stores, but the quality degrades with every successive generation.

Most DVD recorders, and all capture cards I've ever seen, retain chroma noise -- the DVDs look crappy because of it. You're then left with some software filtering options, which have blurring side effects depending on the strength. It's not as good as the hardware removal.

There are some complaints out there about JVC machines not retaining proper black level -- and I've seen it a few times -- but it does not affect every single machine. Neither my DR-M10 or DR-M100 show signs of wildly improper black levels on sources that are close to proper spec. The only "off" recording I get are from "off" sources (bad broadcasts, improperly made tapes, etc). IRE / black levels are a bigger discussion that tends to be more confusing than anything else -- including for the people who often lodge "bad IRE" complaints.