Panasonic AG-5700E vs Panasonic NV-HS1000 for transferring tapes?
 

Hello there

I have read your article about vhs buying giude and I am wondering if you could help me.
I have found 2 s-vhs vcrs on ebay that I can buy but I don't know which to choose.

Its

• the Panasonic AG-5700E
• and one that you recomment Panasonic NV HS1000

both have the same price I know what features each has but I am not sure witch will perform better or last more in time assuming that both are in the same condision.

Thank you very much in advance.

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The 5700E is an ancient piece of crap, not made to work with consumer VHS tapes. Those units were primarily built for recording video, and playing back ONLY the videos it had recorded, to specific demographics. For example, the medical community. It's not a general-use type of VCR. Most of these "big Bertha" type decks only play SP mode S-VHS, and would be a poor choice for anybody wanting to convert VHS (or even S-VHS) tapes to digital formats.

You want the NV-HS1000. :thumb:

It's a close PAL equivalent of the well-regarded NTSC AG-1980P.

Thank you very much

Thank you very much for your advice.
The thing is that I lost the NV-HS 1000 and now there is one with the NV-HS950 for about the same money.
I don't know if I should take it or wait a bit for a NV-HS 1000 or even a NV-FS 200 to popup on ebay.
The only thing I want to do with that vcr is to play old tapes and record them to my PC. Am I wrong to try to get a top vcr for that purpose?

Where do you live? There are multitude of HS-1000's in ebay in Europe all the time. FS-200 loses to HS-1000 in picture quality (HS-1000 has more detail, subjective sharpness is better, better colors). HS-1000 doesn't have NTSC/USA counterpart so it's a bit 'under the radar' in NTSC oriented FAQs. HS-1000 is an editing workhorse, well FS-200 too, so it's a bit of a gamble when buying used. I've got lucky and unlucky with both. FS-200 drum costs 50EUR, HS-1000 drum costs 300EUR. Other parts are pretty easy to get.

It's up to you. Dunno why you would want a bad VCR for that when there's a lot of good ones to choose from. :)

Here's a motivational picture. Repairing eBay f--ked FS-200. :)

The NV-HS950, NV-HS1000 and NV-FS200 are all comparable quality. Each is an excellent S-VHS VCR with internal line TBC (to help clean the picture quality), an excellent Panasonic transport that excels at playing longer-mode VHS recordings, and a better-than-consumer build quality.

There are also a number of excellent JVC models to choose from.
This is all addressed in the VCR buying guide: http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/vide...ing-guide.html

Wrong? No way! :eek:

What you're doing is the proper way to archive videotapes in the best possible quality. :thumb:

A crummy consumer VHS VCR will give you a crappy image, full of noise, chroma/color sparkles, and wiggling quality because of the unstable chaotic nature of VHS. These high-end S-VHS VCRs remove all (or most) of those flaws, leaving you with a archive-worthy image to be digitized forever.

Most tape flaws cannot (yet) be resolved in software. So quality hardware, like these VCRs, is required.

Did anybody put the 200 and the 1000 next to each other when they were new or at least totally refurbished and compared them? I guess not. So the assertion that one is better than the other one has no real value. It is just in the eye of the beholder.
I also see a picture of a 200 opened. What is that supposed to mean? Did the same person try to look at the 1000 (how about the Y/C card)? Well refurbish that .... So where do you find this parts "easy"? Well I do not expect an answer.
The point is that 200 can be refurbished, while the 1000 is almost impossible, unless you can "easy" find those circuits that nobody makes anymore. The video heads on both are extremely good quality and lasting, unless you bring a hammer to them.
Conclusion is that both are same quality ( unless proven otherwise) with the difference that the 200 can be refurbished, while the 1000... well... dream on, and yes after so many years both can fail. This leads to a final conclusion: for the long run 200 is a much better choice. Prove me I am wrong and I welcome it.

@videonut: Excellent points. :congrats: