Yes, LS you better be jesting! LOL
Most of the gear I acquired over a 4-5 year period. I knew that if I was going to get serious on doing video work (and possibly as a side job in the near future) I needed some good gear to get started.
The DV deck I had because I never owned a DV camcorder until awhile back and gotten a Panny DV based 3-chipped camcorder. Didn't have a firewire port so the deck would obviously be easier to play back those tapes without doing unnecessary A/D conversions, since DV has an odd compression scheme.
As for the broadcast decks, like the JVC BR-series and Panasonic AG-DS units, I remember a poster 'Deter' used to post on such decks sometime ago. As I know they only do SP tapes, I have a good number of them (non-commercial) and have a few projects in mind where I could finally try my hand at linear based editing. Would be fun working those features. I had all of them serviced so they play very good at optimum quality. Of course still may need to do adjustments once I start working on them. The 1980 and 5710....was a no-brainer adding those to my arsenal.
The Sony 9800A deck; though I do have two Sony D8 camcorders that do support Hi8 playback as well as A/D conversion, the 9800 has one feature that the camcorder does not: ability to write time code. I have another batch of 8mm and Hi-8 tapes that i want to write time code to, where it can be easier to do (yep more linear editing) with the edit controller. Just some cool stuff to do that I missed out on when these decks were mainstream
The DPS-575, I briefly tested it, and it does work well, but only downside I discovered was that there was a breakout cable that had the S-Video output (input was on unit), which I didn't have of course and wouldn't do me any good for S-Video sources unless I can hunt down that cable somehow. But it has all the other connectors though like SDI and CAV (component). May sit on the sidelines for now. The Feral unit worked well with the sources I tried, and the TBC cleaned it up pretty nicely, but haven't tested the proc amp functions. Basically these VCR-sized units were really meant for broadcast decks that had no built in TBC circuitry or proc amp controls so most edit suites I am sure had one of these at some point.
BetacamSP....I had bought a BetacamSP broadcast camera in Fall of '14 and the tape unit has very low hours on it. The seller I got it from on
Ebay was an enthusiast with BetacamSP gear, having several cameras himself. These units of course were the standard in TV broadcast for decades. I figure I may try my hand at shooting some video with it and editing it on the decks....fun fun! And who knows, if I ever get a client one day that may need some transfer work done, I'll have the gear to do it. I also had one of the decks serviced so should last me a good while.
The Sony R1000, I bought that new which ran me $1K back then. Still works very well to this day and makes an excellent SVHS player. I plan to use it in conjunction with an TBC for backup purposes. As I have read in one of the posts here, its always good to have different type decks to just about handle any tape (except molded ones, wont touch those).
And at last the ADVC-3000. I got this converter new on
ebay awhile back, when it originally retailed around $3,000 I snagged it for $400. Can't beat that deal. Unlike the common units like the 110 and 300, this unit is broadcast level since it has mostly BNC connections, SDI in and out and the ability to convert the DV back to analog format, including component, composite and s-video plus 4-channel audio (for decks that has them). It also supports RS-422 deck control via the DV port also. After reading some postings on how unwise it would be to convert VHS and other analog sources to DV, I changed my game plan in how I was going to deal with that. So that's what prompted me to rework my XP capture boxes and build a second box where I will have plenty of room to capture all analog video (except component) through the AIW cards. There's a good wealth of info here on this site on the tools needed to do this job right the first time. The component based sources I will work on getting a Kona card to take care of that.
So even is the 3000 may not see too much action, it will be cool to have just because it looks cool!
A few more pieces of gear I recently attained was a 32-port RS-422 switcher, where I can connect all of the remote-controllable decks to it and route whatever decks I plan to use/control to the Sony FXE-120 edit controller, which supports 2 play decks and a recorder. Beats having to disconnect/reconnect cabling.
I have a feeling I will also have alot of projects to work on--temporarily store on a storage server until I get more time to work on them. Selecting a proper storage format will be just as important as the finished format once done. And I am sure I will learn alot along the way.
