The budget options is the ES10/15 + DataVideo DVK.

The ES10/15 is not a TBC, but a DVD recorder. It has a strong line TBC (meaning JVC TBC must be OFF) -- yet crippled, to allow Macrovision/anti-copy. It has a basic frame sync, not framesync TBC (ie, DataVideo TBC-1000). The DVK has a weak framesync TBC that needs to be pre-processed by a good line TBC (and sometimes the VCR line TBCs fail, while ES10/15 does not).

You can try ES10/15 alone, or DVK alone, but there is a large fail rate (overall, all sources, wide array of issues).

An actual TBC is mostly "set it and forget it", while TBC(ish) methods are "monitor, verify, re-verify". (You should monitor all methods, but the actual TBC tends to be bulletproof, far less worries and hassles.) As an example of what can go wrong, dropped frames and audio skew, or even luma/brightness values can fluxuate.

The ES10/15 is not transparent, you get luma issues with PAL, posterization, and aggressive NR that always on (even when "off"). This unit is suggested for tearing mostly, before an actual TBC, not really in lieu of a TBC. The DVK is finicky at signal start (10s or so) before usually behaving.

The TBC-1000 "auto-senses" PAL/NTSC. Some models are PAL-first (NTSC fallback), others NTSC-first (PAL fallback).

Amazing. This was very helpful, thank you very much!

I edited my post with more info, so re-read it. ;)

Duly noted. We'll see what happens in the future, but I don't really like the idea of half-arsing anything in any case.

I received the VCR but it seems to have a few issues.

At first, the machine was picky with when it wanted to load tapes or reject them just afterwards.

Later, it played an included PAL tape well (SP tape) well, but now it loads the tape, wraps the tape around the head, and immediately goes into standby mode. The same happens when I press the power button without inserting a tape. Audible whir from the head, before it whirs down again. Tried to spin the gears below the head but to no avail.

Before this, it behaved strangely when playing a NTSC tape - adding four black-and-white stripes to the image.

I might as well attempt to get it fixed, but would anyone have any idea as to what could contribute to this?

Edit: I assume that it has the dynamic drum system issue. I'll ask someone to attempt to unjam the gears and give them a little grease - I'm not really confident in even being close to the head assembly myself. But I still am not entirely sure why it seems to have rejected some tapes (although that issue seems to be gone now), and why I saw stripes on the image.

Excuse the triple (!) post, but I can't seem to edit my post again. It's important to say that the deck played a PAL tape just fine before this issue arose - which, I suspect, means that the head isn't grimy or otherwise damaged by cleaning.

Can't edit but just wanted to correct this since this thread sometimes pops up - on the PAL JVC SVHS decks the TBC seems to be active on NTSC playback. I can say for sure it does on the HR-S8500 as I've tested, though the manuals for the later models doesn't state any different. They only state that it is not active on MESECAM playback. The output is still PAL60 though, other than on the special multi-system variant.

Panasonic decks with TBC changed much more over time internally than the JVCs, so it seems to vary a bit:

NV-HS860 and HS960 manual states TBC and 3D DNR does not work with NTSC, ", same with the older 950. HS1000 (this one I can verfy as I've tested), and FS200 says about TBC "only in PAL playback". Linked HS860/960 manual doesn't say it does not work on MESECAM, so idk there, the linked 950 manual is for a variant without MESECAM so don't know with that either.

For the newer HS930, the manual states TBC is inactive in MESECAM (but not noting NTSC), while the even newer NV-SV121 doesn't note anything about TBC being inactive in any mode.


Whether/to what extent analog noise reduction is active also seems to vary a bit, on the HS1000 it seemed to be mostly be disabled when playing a NTSC tape, while on the 8500 it seemed it was active. Think in general it's more likely to be on in NTSC mode on newer models as the video ics evolved to have NTSC playback built in.

Of these it looks like all of them other than the FS200 (which plays back in ntsc 4.43) only let you use PAL60 for NTSC playback, so that is a slight limitation. I don't know if the NTSC->PAL color conversion happens in the TBC (which would be ideal) on the models that have it or if the TBC is acting on a PAL60 signal from the video IC which can mean a slight vertical chroma resolution loss as at least early PAL60 playback had to throw away every other line of chroma. (NTSC 4.43 is just straight NTSC but with color at a higher frequency so it doesn't have any inherent loss or conversion compared to standard NTSC.)