S-VHS opinions please and RGB question

[bollecks]

The old Panny VCR is starting to eat my tapes. So it looks like time for a new VCR.

First, I was wondering if it's worth getting SVHS. Is there much difference with off air recordings?

Second my Sky box only has RGB output. Are the RGB to S-video converters that are cropping up worth getting. Does anyone have any experience using one?

Thanks for your help.

[MikeK]

Originally posted by bollecks
The old Panny VCR is starting to eat my tapes. So it looks like time for a new VCR.

First, I was wondering if it's worth getting SVHS. Is there much difference with off air recordings?

Second my Sky box only has RGB output. Are the RGB to S-video converters that are cropping up worth getting. Does anyone have any experience using one?

Thanks for your help.

SVHS - it's arguable whether there is a significant difference with off air recordings, some say not, but IMO SVHS is better - however, it's not night and day.
That said, SVHS ET decks are available now at little more than similarly specced premium brand VHS VCRs, so I definitely think it's worth getting SVHS. Even marginal improvements over VHS are worthwhile IMO.
Put a high quality source in though, such as the S-video feed from a macro-disabled DVD player (tsk tsk!!), and the differences are much more striking, especially when using pukka SVHS tapes (though you could argue that the quality of the tape is at least partly responsible for this).

As for there being no S-video out from your STB, it's just the same with OnDigital, even though it's in the software it's never had any effect, and since the last update the option is now greyed out.
I read that this was because they decided that they didn't want people to be able to make high quality recordings from the film and premium TV channels. Doesn't bode too well for future, even higher quality recording formats, such as DVD-RW etc, eh?
Not that you really need a higher quality format for the stuff we have available to record (end of moan).


As for RGB-S-video converters, I suspect it's much like anything else - you get what you pay for. There's certainly no technical reason why a high quality RGB to S-video conversion can't be done, but that doesn't necessarily mean they will actually be good.
I've never used one though.