Whats the best recorder for LP video quality?

[gshelley61]

Well said. There have been lots of anti-JVC comments posted over past few months... mostly about the "loading" problem (which is a pain in the ass, but can be fixed at no charge)

I've checked out Panasonic E50's, E55's, and have a ES10 on the way. I've also spent quite a bit of time with two Pioneer units, the 210 (310) and the 220. My JVC does a better job of encoding MPEG2, period.

The Panasonics suffer from macroblocks, even at higher bitrate encodes. The Pioneer machines are very nice, and outperform the Panasonics easily... but the JVC is still better, especially on the longer recording times. JVC has a video noise reduction circuit that works wonders on analog sources, and results in smoother encodes with little or no compression artifacts. IMHO, YMMV

[trhouse]

There have been a few comments on other threads that the reason the JVC performance is what it is has to do with the LSI hardware encoder. A visit to the LSI web site shows quite a large number of recorder companies using these chips. One would think the performance would be similar.

http://www.lsilogic.com/markets/consumer/index.html

[D'oh!]

spectroelectro wrote:

The JVC seems to do a wonderful job of getting rid of the video noise inherent in analog VHS tapes. By contrast, the Panasonic (and most other DVD recorders) tend to muck up the encoding, showing mosquito noise and macroblocking and other garbage because the MPEG-2 encoding hardware on other machines just doesn't seem to know what to do when presented with crufty analog noise from a VHS videotape. The JVC actually performs significant visible effective noise reduction. It's pretty amazing.

If I am not mistaken, the JVC uses the same encoder as the ILO? This can also be said of the ILO DVD recorders. I have done a LOT of testing of recorders and I'm still amazed at how the ILO manages to clean up the input.

D'oh!

[samijubal]

The answer is simply personal preference. Some people like certain TVs better than others, some like certain burners better than others, people think certain audio receivers sound better than others, with all of them what's best will change depending on who you ask. It's the same with DVD recorders, there is no best, it's what you like the best. Do some research, find a few with the features you want in your price range, then try them. You can return the ones you don't like. What other people think is best is irrelevant, it's what you think is best that counts, other people aren't going to use the recorder, you are. I listened to people here and ended up getting one I couldn't stand. Now I have a few hundred recordings from the machine that are mostly unwatchable to me. Decide for yourself.

[lordsmurf]

There have been a few comments on other threads that the reason the JVC performance is what it is has to do with the LSI hardware encoder. A visit to the LSI web site shows quite a large number of recorder companies using these chips. One would think the performance would be similar.

http://www.lsilogic.com/markets/consumer/index.html

It needs to be noted that JVC stands a bit above the other LSI machines because they also included JVC DigiPure. The Digipure does well at removing VHS grain and other analog noises, even more than the LSI does natively. Small things, but they each add up.