New JVC S-VHS VCR a great buy!! HR-S7800U
Written: Jan 21 '01 (Updated Jan 22 '01)
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Pros: Ease of setup, totally customizable picture options auto or manual.
Cons: No headphone jack
The Bottom Line: A great VCR with many different user friendly options and superb picture quality. Great price for what you get.
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| bhbest's Full Review: JVC HR-S7800 VCR |
This was my 4th VCR purchase in as many years (I returned all of them). I was trying to acquire a VCR that had as good of a picture as my "going on 11 year old" JVC HR-s5500U S-VHS VCR that I had purchased back in 1990. The thing is getting a bit antiquated and weighs a ton but its picture is the best I have ever come across. I had purchased a Toshiba, Sony and yes even a 4-head hi-fi JVC VCR but all had lackluster picture quality compared to my old JVC. It had seemed that this machine was not going to be easily replaced. I just wanted a VCR that had decent and fast performance with an above average picture but had yet to find any takers coming even close to my 5500. Actually none were even close, with the Sony's picture even seeming a little snowy. Maybe I was being too critical. But my perseverance kept on. When I went to JVC's website and saw their newest models I had taken notice to their new HR-S7800U S-VHS VCR and it's pretty decent price. I had figured the same still applied as the old days, you get what you pay for so I wasn't going to get a knock down VCR in the 100-150 dollar area. It made sense. After all I had paid almost 600 bucks in 1990 for my 5500 but I didn't want to shell out 200-400 bucks for another "rental". I was getting tired of unpacking and repacking so I was going to give it one last try. I had seen on BH Photo's website that the y had the new HR-S7800U in stock for 100 less than suggested retail so this was going to be the last chance. Upon hooking it up I was impressed with the simplicity of the set-up. But this doesn't an awesome picture make. I had a stack of sample tapes I was going to test some were older dubbed tapes and some were high quality master. This would be the real test for this machine. Upon inserting one of my older lower quality tapes I noticed the top end of the picture was "rolling" as so to speak. Not good as I had this problem with all of the other VCR's. I had tried the different manual user picture options to no avail. The picture was ok but I was not that impressed. One last thing I had noticed was that upon setup I had turned off the Time Base Correction option on the front panel of the VCR so I re-engaged this option again and lo-en behold the picture rolling was gone!! I had to actually inspect it quite closely but this picture was indeed every bit as high quality as my 11 year old dinosaur. Upon insertion of other tapes and different picture options such as video stabilizer, soft picture, sharp picture and auto plus it has digital noise reduction I was finally satisfied that this machine could definitely compete with my old 500, no doubt at all. The pictures were sharp in auto mode with brilliant color and no bleeding that can be associated with less than stellar recordings. So this machine had succeeded in accomplishing what I needed. Too make the best out of many of my older 5-year and up recordings and make them actually look decent. With all of the other machines this was definitely not the case at all. And yes the difference with this VCR was noticeable. And the plus side is it is a S-VHS machine with the special 19 micron heads for superior EP recordings and even records S-VHS quality on regular VHS tape. So after years of trying I had to spend a little more but I finally was able to get a replacement for my 11 year old 5500. Don't get me wrong I am not replacing this machine by any means just giving it the much needed rest that it deserves for giving me my true money’s worth. I just hope this new HR-S7800U does the same thing. Just another documentation to the phrase "you get what you pay for".
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 279
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Epinions.com ID:
bhbest
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Reviews written: 1
Trusted by: 0 members
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