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Is there a Betamax VCR buying guide?
Does anyone have any knowledge about a good solid betamax player? I'm not looking for the Sony Super Betamax SL-HF1000 which goes for like 600-900 on ebay lol. I'm looking for something that isn't bottom of the barrel but not super high tech either. Basically a player that works and plays tapes :P
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Beta is really hampered by the fact they never made a good TBC equipped deck
even worse there is only 3 Beta model ever made with S-video: SL-HF2100 EDV-7500 EDV-9500. those should be the ones to look for. all others are composite only - even the SL-HF1000 if you absolutely have to go the cheap route these are probably the best of the composite only decks: SL-HF1000 SL-HF870D SL-HF860D SL-HF840D SL-HF750 SL-HF900 dont even bother with any non-Sony Beta - they are all junk and way too old Sony was the only Beta maker after around 1986 and you should avoid anything even Sonys made before then. |
I'm stickying this. :congrats:
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i will also ad there are a couple industrial beta model as well
these are just industrial versions of the consumer models like the EDW-30F is the same as a EDV-9500 and the GCS-50 is just a tunerless SL-HF1000 |
LS - perhaps just ad it in to the buying guide
i simplified it a bit Beta models with S-video these will be the very best for tape transfers: SL-HF2100 EDV-9500 / EDW-30F EDV-7500 all other Betas are composite only these are the best of the composite only Beta decks: SL-HF1000 / GCS-50 SL-HF870D SL-HF860D SL-HF840D SL-HF750 SL-HF900 dont even bother with any non-Sony Beta - they are all junk and way too old Sony was the only Beta maker after around 1986 and you should avoid anything even Sonys made much before then. |
Rather than sticky it, I'm going to incorporate the info into the VCR buying guide. I want to do that with Video8/Hi8 as well. Again, one of your posts is going to be very useful here.
There's a "New Guides" folder in the queue. I've dragged this there for my attention later this month. |
This is a good baseline for PAL Betamax : http://www.palsite.com/models.html & http://www.palsite.com/home.html
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so far i got this list going for 8mm
it is not complete but a start Hi8 stereo with TBC: CCD-TRV62 CCD-TRV65 CCD-TRV66 CCD-TRV67 CCD-TRV72 CCD-TRV82 CCD-TRV85 CCD-TRV87 CCD-TRV93 CCD-TRV99 CCD-TRV101 CCD-TRV615 Hi8 mono with TBC: CCD-TRV68 CCD-TRV88 CCD-TRV98 CCD-TRV108 CCD-TRV138 CCD-TRV308 CCD-TRV318 CCD-TRV608 Digtial 8 with video8/Hi8 playback: DCR-TRV120 DCR-TRV230 DCR-TRV240 DCR-TRV320 DCR-TRV330 DCR-TRV340 DCR-TRV350 DCR-TRV460 DCR-TRV530 DCR-TRV720 DCR-TRV730 DCR-TRV740 DCR-TRV820 DCR-TRV830 DCR-TRV840 |
PAL Video8/Hi8 decks by 1ivanka : http://www.1ivanka.de/GB/GB_05_Tabelle.htm
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there is also 3 TBC equipped Hi8 NTSC decks:
EV-S3000 EV-S5000 EV-S7000 and also a few hi8/d8 walkmans have TBC the decks/walkmans tend to be harder to find and much more expensive and offer no benefits over the cams. |
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When working with Betamax, is native S-Video output considered superior to composite? I know that in the world of Laserdisc, the discs themselves are encoded with composite video. So even when they have S-Video output, there are better more modern comb filters available that can separate the luma and chroma signals. I'm not sure how Betamax is encoded. I guess my question would be, in a head-to-head combat, which of the following workflows would produce superior results? SL-HF2100 S-Video --> AVT-8710 --> ATI 600 Capture Card SL-HF900 Composite --> Panasonic DMR-ES15 pass-through --> AVT-8710 --> ATI 600 Capture Card |
Betamax is no different than VHS, so yes S-Video produces better output for all Betamax tape speeds, I. II ...all the way to ED beta which can only be played back by an ED beta machine by the way.
Capture workflows have to be tested first before judging but you can't go wrong with the first one. |
Add the EDV-5000, EDV-6000 and EDV-8000 NTSC, Japan only to the ED Beta line. All have S-Video out and have been showing up on eBay the past few years.
Edit: Also the EDV-7300 and EDV-9300. Japanese equivalents to the EDV-7500 and EDV-9300. |
EDV-7300 and 9300 are Canadian models, The Japanese equivalent to 7500 and 7300 is 7000 and to 9500 and 9300 is 9000. The voltage is 100V in Japan, I would stay away from any Japanese deck without a power transformer.
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Here at least (UK) the humble Sanyo VTC5000 is a great little player, there is also a stack of spares knocking around if you do a bit of digging and they're very well documented and easy to work on. They're logically laid out and direct-drive. The picture quality is very good. I recently (2021) ordered a new pendulum drive for one, and a linear power regulator for another, both came to less than $15 each and turned up a few days later. The pendulum drive can be replaced in about 5 minutes. Some of the Sanyo's were derided for being 'cheap', the reason they were 'cheap' was nothing to do with quality, it's quite the inverse in this case actually. Some of the Toshiba machines are considered the best for playback quality here in PAL land, often the lower-market Sony machines are the most troublesome. So I wouldn't say non-Sony machines are junk at all, not in Western Europe anyway. Some of the Toshiba Betamax models fetch more money than a Sony on eBay. |
the problem is it does not have S-Video - which makes it sub-par for doing tape to digital transfers.
only the super high end Sony Betas have S-video transfers are the only reason to even use a VCR at this point in time. using it for general watching is foolish - you are just wearing out the decks and tapes for nothing |
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We're in to the realms of impossibly rare and temperamental machines with the S-Video models though, and there are few (if any) extant PAL machines with S-Video. For what it costs to get into the S-Video game with these, I think there's a genuine case to be made that composite with a decent filter is 'good enough, especially with PAL where the number of models with S-Video is vanishingly small and they command eye-watering prices. I won't agree that the non-Sony machines are junk though - Sony made plenty of their own to be honest. Also, complicated Betamax machines are absolute 'hell' to work on, I send our 950s off-site for service, it's the only machines we don't work on in house. |
100% agree about working on them, pretty much all Betas are damned cuckoo-clocks
and finding parts can be like chasing rainbows the later Sonys are the only ones i would even consider buying at least for NTSC models, i dont know what was available in PAL countries. |
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It was a lot more limited here, Sony, Sanyo and Toshiba were all that effectively existed. There was little interest in buying Betamax in most of the PAL world past around 1983ish so models tricked to a near halt past this point whereas the Japanese and North American markets looked a touch rosier. There's an argument that VHS won the war in around 1983 here, buying V2000 or Betamax after this would have been a renegade's choice. I think only Sony were manufacturing PAL Betamax machines from this point on, although weirdly the UK's biggest selling video recorder of the 1982 was the previously mentioned VTC-5000 which was priced below many VHS machines for reasons which rapidly became apparent on a wet evening, in Germany, just before Christmas 1982... Anyway, history lessons aside, the PAL market died before the NTSC one, it's pretty 'slim pickings' in the PAL world for late machines and they command a huge premium. It could potentially cost many thousands to get hold of a PAL S-Video machine, that's if you can find one. |
I don't think I know any PAL beta with S-Video, So composite is the only route as far as I know, For NTSC US and Canada there is basically 3 models, 2 ED beta models and one SuperBeta model with S-Video, the rest are not worth buying for a proper archival job, for casual digitizing from composite is okay.
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