Ferguson Videostar FV-10b - 1987 and a jem!

[Quasipal]

Oh what a tired VHS deck from 1987 it looked. Dusty buttons, weary fascia and worn out remote. What could it do for me (if it still worked) I wondered. I always try donated VCR's though, but have never tried one of these. A JVC machine at heart, but made in the UK with different to JVC electronics. Mono, bare-bones features and HEAVY.

So, what did I find. In short was shocked. The mechanism was temperamental and shut down twice with the belts slipping, but once it was playing my jaw dropped open. Playback is rock solid with no flash or jitter that all my other machines are afflicted with. Chroma noise - well I saw none on even areas of solid blue or red. Grain did not affect any tape (even though it has no buffer chip or sharpness slider). Where did the grain go? Certainly not through unsharpness - checked this back to back with my high-end JVC. Sound quality is the best I have heard for mono on all tapes I have thrown at it (it hurts to write this considering my investment in time and money on my other machines).

So, stable picture, minimal chroma distortions, sharp yet smooth picture and clean sound. If this is from 1987 then what has happened since? Where has all the noise and grain come from in the recent machines? Sure, we have DigiPure and 3D noise reductions, but these do reduce the sharpness and add visual echoes. The old Ferguson needs no filtering for almost all my problem tapes. Whatever they put inside that machine gets my seal of approval.

It is not all good news though. I know I will have to transfer some of my tapes again - afer I thought I had got it spot-on.

So, please tell me what you know about 1987 model JVC's and Ferguson's - what other models were there and do any of you still run them?

Ian

[sphinx99]

Can't speak to the Ferguson but I have recently picked up a SLV-R1000 (Sony) and it's hard not to notice how much sharper everything seems to be on my projection screen versus my JVC 9911U. Sure, no TBC or DigiAnything or whatnaught, but I am noticing that the lack of such things itself is a sort of blessing, at least when viewing rather than capturing...

[Quasipal]

Despite the merits of digital noise reduction it DOES have an effect on the film being shown. Loss of fine detail, frame echoes and a shimmer effect are the most notable. The older VHS decks used a 'HQ' system, which seems to make films very watchable. How this was implimented I do not really know, but a clean picture seems to be the result. I just wish that VHS was not shoved into the backwater that it now inhabits "you don't still use tapes do you" is something that I am used to hearing, but a good tape on a good machine shown on a decent CRT still looks as crisp and colourful as ever.