S-VHS VCR question

[Sammy709Sony930]

I'm thinking of getting a Panasonic 820 S-VHS VCR, as it states that it records onto High Grade (HG) VHS tapes with S-VHS quality.

I have a few niggling questions :

1) If I hook the VCR up to an S-Video enabled SCART on my TV,
does the tuner output from the VCR and normal VHS tapes traverse to the TV via S-Video, or do they use composite?

2) Can a recording made in S-VHS mode be played on a normal VHS VCR? If not, I assume you can downgrade the player to record in vanilla VHS only?

Anything else I need to be wary of?

[LV426]

1) via S-video

2) SVHS tapes cannot normally be played back on regular VCRs although some do have the ability to do so, with reduced, VHS-like quality. You can always defeat SVHS recording on a SVHS VCR eg by a switch or menu setting, effectively turning it into a regular VHS machine.

[pjweston]

1) One of the two SCART outputs on the 820 can output either S-video or composite. There's a little switch next to the SCART to select. The other SCART is composite only. The 820 also has a dedicated S-video mini-DIN socket and phonos for permanent S-video ouput (although you don't get auto widescreen switching on that socket).

2) If you stick an SVHS tape in, the 820 defaults to recording in SVHS mode but you can press a button to force it to record in ordinary VHS mode. If you stick a VHS tape in, the 820 defaults to recording in VHS mode but you can press a button to force it to record VHS-ET.

You may like to know that the 820 supports RGB passthru.

[Sammy709Sony930]

Originally posted by pjweston
1) One of the two SCART outputs on the 820 can output either S-video or composite. There's a little switch next to the SCART to select. The other SCART is composite only. The 820 also has a dedicated S-video mini-DIN socket and phonos for permanent S-video ouput (although you don't get auto widescreen switching on that socket).

2) If you stick an SVHS tape in, the 820 defaults to recording in SVHS mode but you can press a button to force it to record in ordinary VHS mode. If you stick a VHS tape in, the 820 defaults to recording in VHS mode but you can press a button to force it to record VHS-ET.

You may like to know that the 820 supports RGB passthru.

RGB Passthru? How can it do that when it outputs S-Video or composite?

[lovegroova]

Originally posted by pjweston
The 820 also has a dedicated S-video mini-DIN socket and phonos for permanent S-video ouput (although you don't get auto widescreen switching on that socket).


Not true, a 4 pin s-video connector does support widescreen switching. My Sony TV switches automatically for both my DVD and VCR which are connected via my Denon AVR3300 from s-video-s-video-SCART2.

It is a fallacy that you need a SCART to perform auto widescreen switching.

[pjweston]

Not true, a 4 pin s-video connector does support widescreen switching. My Sony TV switches automatically for both my DVD and VCR which are connected via my Denon AVR3300 from s-video-s-video-SCART2.

It is a fallacy that you need a SCART to perform auto widescreen switching.
I didn't know that - I guess it's just something that my Tosh. doesn't do :( Any idea how it works?

RGB Passthru? How can it do that when it outputs S-Video or composite?All this means is that internally the 820 has all 21 SCART pins connected. So if the RGB signal comes in on one SCART, it is passed through to the same pins on the 2nd SCART. The 820 totally ignores the RGB signal. In practise, this means that you can plug your RGB Digibox/ DVD into one of the 820's SCARTs and the RGB signal will be sent to the TV via the 2nd SCART.

[LV426]

Widescreen autoswitching can be done two ways. One is via one of the pins on a Scart connector. The other is by adding a tiny signal to one of the unusued lines in the TV picture - this signal will get carried through to the TV whatever connection you use.

BUT: The standard location for this little signal differs from PAL and NTSC. Therefore, you may find that your TV will only detect this signal (and therefore autoswitch) if the DVD is a PAL one.

[Tempest]

Originally posted by Sammy709Sony930
I'm thinking of getting a Panasonic 820 S-VHS VCR, as it states that it records onto High Grade (HG) VHS tapes with S-VHS quality.

I have a few niggling questions :

1) If I hook the VCR up to an S-Video enabled SCART on my TV,
does the tuner output from the VCR and normal VHS tapes traverse to the TV via S-Video, or do they use composite?

2) Can a recording made in S-VHS mode be played on a normal VHS VCR? If not, I assume you can downgrade the player to record in vanilla VHS only?

Anything else I need to be wary of?

How do you feel the Panasonic SVHS compaires to the JVC S-VHS (which seems about the same) I posted in a later posting (above in the forums) ?

[pjweston]

I can't really comment as I've not seen the JVC. I doubt there's much in it, though, as both manufacturers are renowned for their excellent picture quality. SVHS is a vast improvement on VHS, though. :)

I have to admit that I chose the 820 largely because it permitted 16 timer entries rather than the more usual 8 (and the VCR is used almost exclusively for recording these days). Now if only NTL could get their STB reminder facility to turn the STB on and off so that the 820 could be slaved...

[Phill]

Originally posted by LV426
Widescreen autoswitching can be done two ways. One is via one of the pins on a Scart connector. The other is by adding a tiny signal to one of the unusued lines in the TV picture - this signal will get carried through to the TV whatever connection you use.

BUT: The standard location for this little signal differs from PAL and NTSC. Therefore, you may find that your TV will only detect this signal (and therefore autoswitch) if the DVD is a PAL one.

Is this signal encoded onto the DVD or is it added by the player when it sees the widescreen flag on the disk?

[LV426]

Originally posted by Phill


Is this signal encoded onto the DVD or is it added by the player when it sees the widescreen flag on the disk?

It has to be the latter. Because, you can set the DVD player to output a 4:3 image from 16:9 DVDs to cater for people with old square TVs.

BTW, don't confuse autoswitching (done properly, by either the Scart signal lead or the trigger in the picture) with the not-so-clever autoswitching some widescreen TVs have, whereby they simply detect black areas near the top of the picture and zoom it up when it finds some.