I have a Zenith (JVC built) VHS from 1984 that weighs a ton. I have used it as a loaner machine since 1992, and other than belts, and an occasional cleaning, it has never failed me not once.

I have a Sony SuperBeta from 1986 that is used anytime someone has some home video that they want copied to VHS. It has never failed.

I have a similar NEC machine with Hi-Fi sound with linear stereo. They dropped the linear stereo in 1985. These machines were well-built, as you know, Jesse

Jerry: We had some troubles with the 2-tuner systems when they first came out. Hitachi was very helpful and took care of everything. I never had a problem dealing with them in the 16 years I was in business.

John P: I started working on TV's when they had more tubes than transistors!! I shuddered when I worked on my first VCR: a Sony SL-5000 from 1976. I think the owner still has it, and yes, it was still running the last time I asked.

I HATE trashing all of the machines that I do. Seems like there are less and less field servicable anythings out there.

I still keep some of the Motorola Quasar TV modules around for a certain customer. His set, built in 1970, is still going strong, and is on its 3rd kine (picture tube) He says he will junk it when I can no longer fix it for him. It's a big beautiful cabinet, and I understand why he keeps it.

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WEGA
WEGA
WEGA

OK. I think I have it right now. Whew.

I was thinking for some reason of the Chevy Vega when I was typng. Thats another topic!

I have bought exactly ONE new TV for myself: a SONY 27" XBR with excellent convergence to the edges of the screen. It's been running 8 years now, and I've touched nothing in the kine drive/screen circuitry.
The power supply IC has been changed twice.
After the 2nd time, I installed a computer fan in there beside the IC heat sink. That was 6 years ago, and it has run just fine since.

All but one of my TV's I've owned have been nice ones that were brought in for repairs, fixed, and never picked up even after many calls to the customer.

The odd one is my 1960 RCA color set with the wonderful round screen. Full of tubes. It looks almost-decent after it runs for about 15 minutes. What's convergence?

Just ran across this site on D-VHS: http://jkor.com/peter/dvhs.html
Judging from what it says, I won't have to put up with bad copies for much longer. However, all those folks who threw away their 8mm film after having it copied to VHS are going to be kicking themselves.

Transferring home movies to video does make watching them more convenient, but constantly changing video formats mandate keeping the original film so it can be transferred again as current video formats become obsolete. Having a "man-readable" image has its advantages, and the relatively simple mechanics of a projector can be maintained or duplicated in the future.
http://www.kodak.com/country/US/en/motion/story/fact6.shtml

"Film is an analog image. It’s human readable, and it’s independent of many things
concerning digital today, like its multitude of different formats. Film can be scanned by
today’s high resolution scanners (at resolutions and information densities greater than digital
video capture devices) – and/or any future scanning technology (which may pull out even
more information from the same image). As a result, we use the term “future-proof” to show
film’s compatibility into the foreseeable future. "

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John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Eastman Kodak Company
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7419
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: 716-477-5325 Cell: 716-781-4036 Fax: 716-722-7243
E-Mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com
Web site: http://www.kodak.com/go/motion

P.S. to Bruce, I watch it while I eat my White Tower Hamburger's.

I eat KRYSTAL burgers while watching my XBR 27" Sony...No baloney!

Seriously, Bob, did you not mean to say White Castles? See what eating those things will do to you?

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My Mitsubishi VCR has something that is called "Perfectape" (yes, that's how they spell it) which measures the video frequency response of the inserted tape by making a small test recording and playing it back. The SVHS tapes always have a much higher rating in the mid and high video frequencies, whereas even archival VHS tapes have very low high frequency response. So one must assume there are definite physical differences in the tapes themselves.

Physically (tape dimensions and video/audio track layouts) the two formats are identical.

Regards,

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quote:

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Besides bieng a better quality tape reel way that Super VHS works is that it records the Luminance and Chrominance as two separate signals.

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I believe plain old VHS does that as well. It's just that only professional quality decks and SVHS decks have the S-Video in and out to take advantage of it. With VHS, isn't there some degradation in the color signal due to interference between the luminamce and color signals? I thought SVHS helped this problem by providing a wider gap in the frequencies used for the two carriers. Don't VHS and SVHS record the color in exactly the same way, with only the luminance portion having a higher bandwidth? (1.6MHz vs. 1.0 MHz)? I have several reference books on this subject, but doggone it, I can't seem to locate any of them at the moment. I'm reciting details from memory, from about 10 years ago. I hope they're right. Since I can't verify my facts at the moment, I'm posing them in the form of questions, hoping someone in the know can say I'm right (or wrong).

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Evans A Criswell
Huntsville-Decatur Movie Theatre Info Site

Here's the link.

VHS uses different frequencies for color (0.129MHz to 1.129MHz) and luminance (3.4 MHz to 4.4 MHz). The center frequency and deviation of the luminance portion are different in VHS (3.4 MHz to 4.4 MHz) and SVHS (5.4MHz to 7.0MHz). I believe the main problem with VHS was the interference of the lower FM sideband from the luminance portion with the color signal.

It appears the the professor's main reference for his information is the exact same book I have, but can't find at the moment.

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Evans A Criswell
Huntsville-Decatur Movie Theatre Info Site