When you're done with your movie, what do you watch it on?

[John Klein]

I was hoping that getting a nice cam would improve vhs copies. I'm sure it has somewhat, but do you guys ever watch anything non-digital? I'm not even liking the loss of rich color if I go through a composite plug?

I just cringe passing out my tapes on vhs after continually looking at it as sweet dv.

Maybe an s or a psuedo shvs deck would be better. Anybody using a deck like that to make straight vhs copies but going through the y/c jack?

Please share.. Is it really worth it with either s- or vhs vs. the "normal" decks?

You know, if everybody would just buy the cheap d8 deck, they'd be about $100 like vhs ones. Buy more so the price drops..keep dv alive!!

[Chris Hurd]

Howdy from Texas,

For making VHS dubs from your DV master, don't settle for anything less than an S-VHS deck. It makes a lot of difference. I'm using a JVC HRS9800 S-VHS deck with a built-in time-base corrector and it produces very good VHS copies, if there even is such a thing. For large jobs, I farm out the work to a pro duplication house with industrial VHS decks. Hope this helps,

[Adrian Douglas]

I've got the PAL version of the same deck Chris has and it does a great job.

Unfortunately, VHS is VHS, which is why it's important to do your colour correction using a broadcast monitor and or a consumer TV.

The problem with giving people SVHS or even SVHS ET is that not everyones machines can play them.

[Rob Lohman]

Most SVHS recorder just do a better job of recording. This is also
true with a plain VHS tape! And most of these recorders allow
a SVHS input signal instead of composite, which produces a much
better signal.

[Bradley Miller]

I gave up on my JVC decks because they made tapes that were not completely compatible with other machines (even in SP, which is of course the only speed I ever use). The other reason was that the JVC decks did not record the HiFi audio in sync with the picture! No joke. Take a JVC (or at least the ones I had) and any other VCR in the world and play a tape on the other VCR and record it on the JVC. Then take that tape out of the JVC, put it in the other VCR and record it again to the JVC. By that time it should be obvious, if not dupe it once more. I noticed it was out of sync even playing rental video cassettes from BlockBuster though. Not cool.

For the bucks, my personal opinion is that Mitsubishi S-VHS decks can not be beat. Their tapes play on any VCR (even the JVCs I have abandoned) and the tapes look better than any other machine I have ever used has produced. This includes industrial decks. Plus Mitsubishi is about the only manufacturer left who still gives manual audio level controls. AGC circuits should be outlawed.

Anyway, that's my take for what it's worth. I do firmly agree though that recording regular VHS on an S-VHS deck will produce better tapes than just using a standard VHS deck.

[Joe Redifer]

I used to have the JVC HR-S6700U and it was a great VCR. Lots of features and built really well. It was the model made AFTER the ones Brad had that recorded out of sync. Not sure if mine did that since I never really used it for duping. Anyway I was so happy with that I kept purchasing JVC Super VHS machines, all of them their top of the line. They got to the point where they started dropping features like the jog/shuttle on the deck, Hi-Fi rec level controls and basically started making the VCRs out of plastic. They also removed the cool auto-head cleaning feature. The last couple of JVC VCRs I have had eventually have gone bad after a very short period of time. I can't remember the model number, but I gave one to my now ex girlfriend and it always displays a vertical horzontal line in the picture... it looks like a crease and is very distracting. Two friends of mine have similar vintage JVC S-VHS units and they all started doing the same thing after about a year. Cleaning the heads does nothing. They suck.

My latest JVC is the HR-S9500U and that has the built in TBC which is marginally useful. It's great for playback. But after a year the VCR still developed some problems. It doesn't exhibit the same picture crease problem as the other units, this one just lays down a low level buzz on the audio track. You can't hear it playing tapes made on other VCR's, but you can hear it playing back tapes made on this VCR in any VCR. Suck.

I decided to go with the Mitsubishi HS-U795. It has been perfect. The only thing it lacks are audio level controls. The PerfecTape feature really does make the best recording possible on any given inserted tape, and the tapes play back perfectly on other decks. I won't even consider Panasonic VCRs since they rarely have flying erase heads (an absolute MUST!!!!). I am a very happy Mitsubishi customer.