SLV-R1000 Crystal Clear... Oh yea???

[Carlos Menem]

I think this VCR is a dup a hoax! They claim to give vhs tapes a sharp look but what they do in my view is use filters!! and they blur the image a bit to make it look neat but no is fake! I really want a vcr that can give me the best a tape can give! or am I wrong? or is just the VCR is old enough already but was something?

[Chewy]

have you cleaned the heads and demagnetized them?

[RFBurns]

First off....a VHS, super or regular, only has a maximum of up to 400 lines of resolution, and in analog.

Second....it also depends on the type of tape you are using. Normal cheap VHS tape that sells for 99 cents per T-160 barely has any frequency response from the tape to provide correct color much less clarity in luminance.

High bias VHS can give a little bit more cleaner images and better color. But again there is that up to 400 lines of resolution cap.

Metal particle VHS tape is the best your gonna find, and does have the frequency response from the tape to provide more than adequate color depth and luminance clarity. But there is still the 400 lines of resolution limit.

Third.....are you recording in the super duper mega extended speed? Thats the slowest speed the VCR can run. Definately not going to get clean recordings whatsoever.

Last but not least....Fourth.....what is the source that you are recording? Is it of the purest, cleanest quality? It will have to be if you want a VHS recording to look anything exactly like the source looks, or the results are going to be worse than the original.

All late model VCR's use the 19 micron video heads. These heads provide the best possible transfer of the magnetic fields produced by the recording heads and onto the tape. They also provide the best possible pick-up of the recorded magnetic signal for the best possible playback quality.

Keep in mind also, that older VHS tapes, even those that are store bought or direct from the movie distributor, were not recorded on machines with the 19 micron heads or digital filters that are found in the later machines. Those tapes will look fuzzy, grainy, and just plain icky.

It amazes me that VHS held on to and won the format war when comparing VHS to Beta and Super Beta. Beta out performed and still does out perform even S-VHS, and Beta/Super Beta didnt need 19 micron heads either.

IMO, what should have happend is a recordable 12" video disc format should have been developed. Problem was the 12" size of the disc. Plus the speeds required to even come close to 200 lines of resolution on a 12" disc would have to be so fast that the disc itself would be in jeapordy of flying apart inside the machine.....a very LOUD crash!

Hope you do eventually find the right combination of proper tape and machine to get the results your looking for.


(DV-D8-DVD-DHDT and the new Blu-Ray-R, are the only formats you can expect to get high resolution recordings from. And even with these, the source material must be as clean and clear as possible.)

[blutach]

Just like to pipe in and say that every post I see from you RFBurns is a real useful one.

Thanks for the info.

Regards

[soup]

I ditto post #4.

It amazes me that VHS held on to and won the format war when comparing VHS to Beta and Super Beta. Beta out performed and still does out perform even S-VHS, and Beta/Super Beta didnt need 19 micron heads either.

@ RF Beta was broadcast quality while VHS doesn't even come close but do you think that VHS won it strictly based on price? Like anything else if the consumer isn't buying, you have to do one of two things, quit selling or bring your price down to what the consumer will pay. VHS did that & we all know how you know who hates to do anything that might help the consumer out. I mean the consumer could still watch their movies just not the quality of Beta & obviously most of them didn't care, they just wanted to be entertained at a decent cost.

[RFBurns]

@ RF Beta was broadcast quality while VHS doesn't even come close but do you think that VHS won it strictly based on price?

Hi soup!
Well my first job was chief engineer for a 316 kilowatt VHF Ch 7 television station. This was back in 1976. The good ol days of quad and u-matic. Most definately I know Beta had superior performance that closely matched broadcast specs. Close, but not quite. It was more of a match to the u-matic format, or more commonly refered to as the 3/4 format. There were two machines that had full 525 lines of resolution. The 2 inch quad head format (open reel) and the C format (1 inch open reel).

VHS pricing of the tapes themselves had nothing to do with the format becoming the mainstay in the home video market. I can tell you what did make it become the mainstay of the format wars. Two things contributed to its success.

1. The price of the VCR. A high end VHS unit was considerably cheaper than its Beta counterpart. Aprox. $300.00 difference. The average price of a high end VHS machine was around 1,200.00, and that was not a hi-fi unit. A Beta machine was around 2,500.00 and up, and the Beta did have stereo audio.

2. The marketing itself, ie advertising and promotion. The movie industry along with the movie rental industry focused on the VHS format because of the purchasing trend by the consumer to the VHS format. This was further enhanced by the price of a home video camera system. The Beta system again was considerably expensive and boasted a 3 piece setup. Cumbersome and too much to haul around, no so portable. The VHS system had 1, the camera with the on-board VHS deck. Large and somewhat heavy when the battery was put into the camera, but still better than hauling 2 or more units with straps haning from your shoulders.

Like anything else if the consumer isn't buying, you have to do one of two things, quit selling or bring your price down to what the consumer will pay. VHS did that & we all know how you know who hates to do anything that might help the consumer out. I mean the consumer could still watch their movies just not the quality of Beta & obviously most of them didn't care, they just wanted to be entertained at a decent cost.

This is very true. It is the same today, people want a good deal. And there is not a thing wrong with that. However, what that has done is bring the value of the service industry and the service technicians skill value right down the toilet with the cheap prices.

When a consumer brings to a repair shop some 40 dollar DVD player, it surprises the customer that it cannot be fixed for less than 80 dollars, and they walk away highly confused as to why it is more expensive to fix than it cost brand new to purchase it.

The mass marketing of an item is also a contributing factor to cheap prices on what most would think are valuable items with a high re-sale value. However it is opposite. The item that cost 40 dollars at a wally world store instantly depreciates in value the second it leaves the store, and even more once it is removed from its box.

One can example this by taking one of those cheap DVD players to a pawn shop, even if it is still in its box shrink wrapped. See what the pawn shop will give for it. Aprox 1/3 the value of it brand new. Maybe a little higher in some places, and maybe lower.

But the poor service technician who spent years going to school and spent tons of tuition money to earn that degree and trying to support a family and house payment and replace worn out tires on the old betsy beat up truck has to make it on his/her now depreciated value skill. His/her cost of living does not get cheap along side with the cheap prices. The repair shop also must face this de-valued industry when having to make overhead costs, payroll, insurance, office supplies, inventory control, accounting and legal services plus the big one....taxes.

It is almost impossible for an average repair shop to even keep the doors open when faced with a ton of cheap items that can be replaced more easily than to fix it. When items can be replaced because of the cheap price to buy a new one vs repairing, it forces the repair industry to go through layoffs, reduced wages and sometimes going out of buisness. Anyone wonder why most service shops with the exception of major chain stores like Sears, no longer do in-home service and free estimates?

They cannot afford it. Why? Cheap retail pricing.

The industry back in the 70's when the VHS format hit the consumer market was a booming industry, often exceeding other major industries. Costs were also considerably cheaper for the repair shop owner, add the cost of living back then balanced out with the wages of those years. And it was not cheap to simply replace a 1,200.00 VCR but it was economical to repair it for 300.00. Multiply that by about 10 a day, and that shop is making a good profit line, and the technician is making a very good wage and can buy a new truck!

The whole thing is tied together like links on a chain. Where one link goes, all the others must follow that same path or the chain breaks. And believe me, the repair industry is broken.

Most consumers of that time did not know what hi-fi was, did not know the difference between a 5.99 VHS tape vs a 19.99 VHS tape. All they knew was the price, and the 5.99 blank was more attractive to the wallet than the 19.99 blank. Movies were also expensive too, which is why there was a sudden surge and apperance of movie rental buisnesses. They too followed the majority purchasing power, and is why the VHS format lasted so long even after the 12" LaserDisc hit the market. Beta began to come down in pricing to match VHS, both media and machine so that the format could recover from lost sales.

All in all, the price did have some effect on the consumer choice as well as the direction of what format would become the mainstay.

And you are correct soup, that the majority market just wanted to watch movies at home and were not concerned with picture and sound detail. That is until stereo hi-fi units came along and the HQ process of pre-recorded tapes that vastly improved picture and sound, even on the older VCR's, the HQ process improved the old workhorse picture reproduction by about 20 percent.

Finer shadow masks inside the CRT's of televisions that were introduced around the early 80's that used dynamic convergence circuitry gave us the semi-flat/semi-square picture tube. That vastly improved picture reproduction all by itself, giving finer sharpness and greater contrast without the washed out look. It also gave us a vast improvement in color. Digital tuners and IR remote controls that were incorporated into the tv and VCR's helped.

However, the "buff" market, those who do look at specifications, features and functionality, pricing didnt matter much because specifications, adaptability and reproduction quality such as the Beta systems offered were the primary reason for spending the extra bucks.

Some may be familiar with Sony's "XBR" logo which was used on Sony's high end televisoins. Us engineers came up with a unique translation of those 3 letters.

XBR, eXtraBucksRequired! Of course this is not the official position of Sony.

The "buff" market does not make the majority of the buying power in the consumer electronic industry or any other industry. The "buff" market is more of a special application section of the market, which is why high end gear is considerably expensive and sports more bells and whistles, and it was the same during the format wars of VHS and Beta, and that is why the VHS won that format war in the majority consumer market and the Beta won the hearts of the die hard high end market.

In light of all of this, nothing can prevent change and improvement in technology, and with that it is inevitable that markets will change with it. It can go either way, benefit to the end users and service/manufacturing, or hurt the end users anticipated hopes of having high end results with cheap items, and run down the value of service/manufacturing by flooding the market with cheap items.

Whew! A long post! Sorry bout that, just tons of information to try to cram into a nutshell!

I cant wait for the replacement of DVD discs and no more mechanical nightmares or scratched discs. The infamous memory stick!

Once those hit 40Gb and higher we can eliminate the DVD disc and machine completely. The memory stick is already familiar to even the most laymen consumer, it does not need a machine, the stick is cross-unit compatiable with the various makers, access times is vastly faster than the DVD, very small in size, does not need any special equipment or cables to connect to play or record to, slips into the slot already built into LCD and Plasma tv's, is far more portable for things like I-Pod, it will not require a re-education of the consumer to use it, it will not require a re-engineering of tv's or engineering of a new play/record unit, and the biggest benefit....is scratch proof!!!

There are some nifty concept prototyping going on here at the Sony Labs, lets just say that if the corporate mindset looks at this alternative closely as well as the movie/audio industry, we could see the replacement of all disc based media very soon, possibly see some introduction at a CES show as early as 2010.

[toomanycats]

Those XBR's had an incredible picture. I still havve two 32' XBRs and a 27" XBR in storage just in case. Spec's aside I still theink those 32" XBR look better than 95% of the Plasma and LCD TV's out here. They were a money maker too. Those Tuners and the VIF had to rebuilt every couple of years and the TV owners loved those TV's so much they happily paid the price. What other TV could you (or can you even!) tune-up every 2 years or so for 10 years and still have a fantastic picture. Like I said before those big Sony CRT WEGA's still have the best picture around, even if it takes 4 people to move them.

[Carlos Menem]

I was confuse the VCR is great... there is no blurring it was just my UHF cable can't handle the detail I tried s-video and the picture is great.
I wouldn't care about a neat VCR except for the fact I need it to transfer tapes to DV then to DVD and then it will be all over for the tape...
I sent my SLV-r1000 to repair it for 75$ I paid about the same amount for it with the loading tape damage. I read your messages so is the BETA better? I always heard the BETA was an older competitor to VCRs so I deduced its image was worse then anything that's why I never bought one... Would a VHS tape play on a BETA? I wouldn't buy a BETA even if it gives me DVD quality since I don't have any beta tape I need to transfer.

Oh one thing! has my SLV-r1000 better quality then any beta out there? you know this VCR has APC... just a curiosity...

[Carlos Menem]

Those XBR's had an incredible picture. I still havve two 32' XBRs and a 27" XBR in storage just in case. Spec's aside I still theink those 32" XBR look better than 95% of the Plasma and LCD TV's out here. They were a money maker too. Those Tuners and the VIF had to rebuilt every couple of years and the TV owners loved those TV's so much they happily paid the price. What other TV could you (or can you even!) tune-up every 2 years or so for 10 years and still have a fantastic picture. Like I said before those big Sony CRT WEGA's still have the best picture around, even if it takes 4 people to move them.

These old TV's have better picture then newer plasmas?

[RFBurns]

The Beta format worked much like the C-1 inch format. The tape wrapped around the video drum almost completely. The 1 inch C format would have the tape wrapped around the drum 99 percent of the circumferance of the head drum, the Beta was about 80 percent. This means the video heads have more tape area to write/read, which translates to more information on the tape and hence, better video (greater resolution).

The scan angle also played an important role in the Beta format. At almost near horizontal scan angle to tape angle, this gave each video head more tape surface to record.

The VHS format only puts the tape at about 75 percent of the video drum, and the scan angle is considerably less horizontal. Both the Beta format and VHS format use the same width tape, 1/2 inch.

The broadcast format U-Matic had the same tape to head drum contact percentage as the Beta format, about 80 percent and the scan angle was identical. The differences are: Beta tape speed was slower and used 1/2 inch wide tape, where as the U-Matic used 3/4 inch wide tape and the speed was equivilant to about 10 ips (inches per second). This gave both Beta and U-Matic a very close spec equivilant to the 1" C format and the 2" Quad Head format.

Of course in recent years both VHS and the Beta format went to digital, that is the recorded information going to tape was in digital form, not analog. The Beta format continues to live on in the broadcast world known as Beta-SP, which sports both analog and digital capabilities. VHS went to the digital realm much later, but was overlooked by the DVD and DV formats, which are both pure digital.

Most broadcast facilities dont even use tape anymore, they use an array of RAID platters (HD's) and DVD discs for program content and commercial playback. Some are even using the total HDR (Hard Disc Raid) systems for HDTV broadcasting.

Now we all face the format wars again, with the HDTV differences between shows and stations, the Blu-Ray HD disc, and the never ending resolution debacle of 1080i vs 1080p and byond. Seems that even in the world of 1's and 0's, variances are prevelant when there shouldnt be. Had the FCC decided on an absolute standard for HDTV, and mandated all stations broadcast HDTV in one specific format, we wouldnt be going through this resoltuion confusion....hey I made a neat little saying there! The Resolution Confusion!!!!

[discman]

Just like to pipe in and say that every post I see from you RFBurns is a real useful one.

Thanks for the info.

Regards

i agree.
the man knows his stuff.