Playback Comparison - VHS / S-VHS / S-VHS ET

[@NikHYTWP]

Nice comparison, really showcases the Luma superiority of S-VHS. Another fun thing to compare would be drilling a hole into a VHS tape to make the machine think it's S-VHS and record in pure S-VHS mode. I wonder how it would look compared to S-VHS on an S-VHS tape and S-VHS ET on the same VHS tape.

[@m80116]

S-VHS was a monster of its time... I didn't expect to have that gap with VHS and be more DVD alike. I am wondering where a LaserDisc might stand in this comparison.

[@chrisgullett4332]

Really depends, because a lot of lase disc movies were worse quality than VHS. Basically laser disc had some really great quality movies, but a lot were really bad quality. It was hot or miss with laser disc.

[@probnotstech]

@@chrisgullett4332 Wouldn't that be more to do with how they were mastered? I know a lot of early VHS and Beta releases of movies are pretty rough. Lots of film flecks and the audio (even with HiFi) was poor. Same thing with early Blu-ray releases when they hadn't quite figured out the HD film transfers.

[@Satanspeaks666]

DVD 576 lines, laserdisc and S-VHS 625 lines. Laserdisc is fine in 4/3 ratio for old movies and tv but fails miserable with letterboxed widescreen.

[@SeanCC]

@@Satanspeaks666 Laserdisc is higher quality than DVD, when you get properly mastered CAV releases, especially towards the later years of the format where CAV laserdisc is the only full-bandwidth SD format ever released to the public. It was higher than broadcast quality. The only real advantage that DVD had was not having to flip discs during a film but it got beat on picture quality as well as audio. DVD is a far more stable format over time and has virtually no issue with "rot" that was a big problem with laserdisc. Anamorphic encoding on DVD (which is also a 4:3 format) is ironically best realized on 16:9 *CRT* displays which were only really present on the market in the US a few transitionary years before the switch to flat panels. DVD look like ass on digital flat displays even more than they look bad on projection displays, due to the artifacts and encoding limitations of DVD.

[@tambarskelfir]

Excellent comparison of the different technologies :) the luma part looks so 1970s on the VHS and the S-VHS looks like semi-broadcast quality for the 1990s! Clearly the S-VHS luma part is a generation above VHS, but the chroma is the same, which I think devalued S-VHS. That and the utter lack of original material for S-VHS. Over-the-air broadcast recordings or even cable wasn't all that amazing, so it really came down to home video-camera recordings. And then of course Sony took a big cut of that with Video-8, so S-VHS never really gained any altitude outside wedding videography. Now had it had much better chroma, I think that would have kicked it into a higher tier. That's my pet theory!

[@probnotstech]

Yeah, that was my biggest drawback with S-VHS - lack of content. No (or virtually no) pre-recorded stuff, and the average consumer (like me) had crappy analog cable or rabbit ears and maybe a camcorder to dub home movies from. I can see why the price wasn't worth it for most people. Especially when people in my city cared so little about quality they just used EP on a cheap mono VCR.

[@tambarskelfir]

@@probnotstech I agree, the lack of content and the lack of demand really, for better video. VHS was "good enough" for most people, and we rented VHS tapes well into the 2000s lol The quality (or lack thereof) from over-the-air broadcasts and even questionable cable service made people used to crap quality TV. Normal VHS was not good, but eh the source material wasn't anything amazing either and so yeah EP recordings (or LP where I'm situated, I can't sleep obviously almost 3AM) were quite acceptable. We went to the movies to see high quality visuals. At home we had at best 20"-ish TVs, and on tiny screens like that even really crappy playback looked kinda decent!

[@andorcor]

A very good system with a really bad cameras, above all from Panasonic... Sony 5000 Hi8 vs Panasonic MS4 or MS5 (first/mid '90s), for example... AG-DP800 Panasonic (called "Supercam"), theorically professional, and with a worst quality than MS-4, also selled much more expensive with a "professional name". Really that I always thinked that they were laughing about Europeans or Americans buyers.

[@Watcher3223]

Yeah, Super VHS ET is sensitive to the quality of tape that's used. The usual complaints with Super VHS ET is an overly grainy picture, which is most likely to occur using standard grade tape. You do need to use high grade VHS tape, and preferably from a top tier brand (Maxell, TDK, Fuji, etc.) to ensure that it's high grade, for the best results with Super VHS ET.

[@probnotstech]

I may grab a higher quality tape and try again later. I know I had good results a while back when testing my HR-S3800U and using a high grade tape.

[@Watcher3223]

@@probnotstech A silly test would be to record Super VHS ET on Super VHS tape. A way to attempt that would be to cover the sensor hole on the bottom right rear edge of the cassette (the left side rear edge if the cassette is upside down) to make the VCR think that it's a regular VHS cassette.

[@RealHomeRecording]

@@Watcher3223 I love your silly test idea!

[@ConsumerDV]

I wonder have you deinterlaced the video into 60p by converting each field into a complete frame? Since this is a static image, I think that if you treated the video as progressive, you would get higher vertical resolution with less moiré and line twitter.

[@skelly6815]

Let's bring out the Laserdisc camcorder (very portable)

[@nostoon4332]

i have a vcr with s-video and i can't see a difference with my eyes.

[@probnotstech]

S-video is just the interface to the display, which has slightly better picture than composite. This comparison is between the VHS and S-VHS recording formats.

[@SuperCartoonist]

I'm so glad I bought a DVD Recorder back in 2006.

[@cowmix]

Which upscaler did you use?

[@probnotstech]

A fairly cheap one, but it has S-Video and the quality difference was pretty accurate to my direct feed on an s-video CRT display. It looks similar to this one, but who knows if the internals are the same: www.amazon.com/Tensun-Composite-Converter-Upscaler-Nintendo/dp/B019T0WFA4

[@thescottfamilyarchives]

Fantastic video, next please include Betamax and ED Betamax :)

[@probnotstech]

I don't have an ED Beta VCR, but I plan to do a comparison between Beta, SuperBeta and VHS.

[@Ballowax]

what is the point of SVHS "ET"? It doesn't look any sharper than generic SVHS mode.

[@probnotstech]

You can record SVHS ET on a regular VHS tape, instead of requiring a more expensive SVHS tape.

[@chrisgullett4332]

The point was to have Super VHS camcorders and VCRs that could record on normal VHS and VHS-C tapes, and could also be played in a normal VCR. VHS-ET was just a JVC thing. All other companies use something called SQPB, which was a VCR that allowed you to play Super VHS tapes. SQPB stood for Super Quasi Play Back. Most newer VCRs had SQPB. I have an old JVS Super VHS camcorder that has VHS-ET, and it lets me record on regular VHS-C tapes, and I can play them back on most VCRs. VHS-ET basically gave you more options on what tapes and VCRs you could use to record and play tapes. I find the VHS-ET worked better than SQPB VCRs. SQPB would play super VHS tapes, but they did not look that good. VHS-ET had a better look when playing the tapes back.

[@probnotstech]

@@chrisgullett4332 S-VHS ET and SQPB accomplish different things though. S-VHS ET was to record higher quality than normal on a standard (high grade) VHS tape. SQPB was to play back S-VHS recordings on a regular VHS VCR (at VHS quality) and was playback only.

[@chrisgullett4332]

@@probnotstech My comment was clearly saying you could play tapes recorded in Super VHS recorders in normal VCRs using either S-VHS ET or SQPB. I literally explained they were different.

[@probnotstech]

I was commenting that S-VHS ET and SQPB were not intended to accomplish the same thing. They are not equivalent features. One was for focused on recording, the other was for playback only. Also SQPB was absolutely used by JVC on their newer standard VHS VCRs.

[@cadenthesmasher4527]

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