JVC HM-DH40000 as a VHS player

[Brian L]

Hi, I forgot I even had an account here. It has been that long. I did some searching and saw a posting that resembled my writing style. It was me.


Anyways, I still have that JVC 7600 (very similar to the 9600). Not sure if I mentioned it here in this thread or elsewhere, but I had a problem where the deck was creasing/wrinkling the very edge of one side of the tape during playback/recording. But everything else worked fine to my knowledge. It ended up effecting the audio track (damaging it , I assume). I took it in to a local authorized repair center back in 2003, they charged a little over $200 and didn't fix the problem after about 4-5 tries at it and refused to refund me. So I ate a big loss on this one. It's been in storage ever since, and I realize I don't plan on ever fixing it at this point in time. Perhaps the repair guys at the shop I took it to didn't know what they were doing? Perhaps sending it to JVC would get it fixed? Either way, I don't think I want to put more money into this deck. I'm happy with the less (SVHS) featured DVHS decks I own. So now I'm thinking of ways to get rid of it? How much would this deck that is functional (from memory)but creasing the very edge of one side of tape be worth (say on eBay)? Better to sell as 'needs work' or as a parts unit? Considering what I paid for it originally and and the non-repair costs, I know I am not going to recoup much but I just want it gone. Perhaps someone here knows how to fix this issue and could end up with a good deck cheap? Is $50 too much to sell the way it is on eBay?

[lordsmurf]

Your service repair center was staffed by idiots. The problem you describe is a simple alignment issue -- anybody should be able to fix that easily, if they're knowledgeable on VCR repair. It costs about $50-75 at most shops.

If you happen to be near Dallas, TX, send it to Jots Electronics in Arlington.

$50 to sell it is a fair price, sure.

[Brian L]

What they did the first time around is do an alignment and charged $70. It didn't fix the problem, so when I took it back the second time, they said they made a mistake and that it needed something else. So they replaced both the 'take up' and 'supply' base assemblies. After this, the deck still operated the very same as before so I don't know what was going on there. I wish I would have opened up the deck and maybe marked various parts with a marker or pen in conspicious areas - I wonder if they were thieves who didn't actually replace or fix anything but charged me on it.

[JVC-Guy]

Visited a Hi-Fi shop in a small town pre-pandemic, asked if they had any high-end VHS players around still. Owner re-directs me to a customer who had a new in the box JVC HM-DH40000 and I bought it for $350 Canadian. Was tired of combing thru eBay, and guessing how many prospective hours all of those "low hour' units actually had on them. It runs beautifully and I believe is 5 head. I typically route it through a Toshiba RD-XS30 to clean up the signal slightly and serve as an external Line Time Base Corrector with NR turned off (using 3ft braided Atlona S-Video cables - yes, cables matter). I capture MPEG-2 at 9000kbps, though the playback bitrate varies due to the source. Using original / first gen SP tapes - the capturing capabilities are better than anything I have used to date (HR-S7800U, HR-S9900U, SR-V101US).

I just playback at 640x480i (de-interlacing results in loss of quality, just my opinion) - and when watching on either a 21.5 iMac or 27" Apple LED Display using Potplayer, and an nVidia RTX 2070 the jaggies aren't really noticeable (I use target display mode on the iMac to get PC video output)

I knew I would find a decent unit, still new. Recently located an unopened Apple Thunderbolt display (model A1407) for $450. It's only a matter of time before I find a Supermarine Spitfire Mark IX in a local Ontario barn, still flightworthy).

[dellsam34]

I haven't tried my D-VHS deck S-Video out but I did a comparison between capturing with D-VHS in MPEG-2 via firewire and using the HR-S7600 via S-Video and the HR-S7600 was way better, Deeper colors and more dynamic in the luma:

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/391517-Capturing-VHS-With-D-VHS-Deck-MPEG-2

[Alwyn]

Good one, JVC-Guy. A brand new VCR and Spit. Way to go.

[JVC-Guy]

I haven't tried my D-VHS deck S-Video out but I did a comparison between capturing with D-VHS in MPEG-2 via firewire and using the HR-S7600 via S-Video and the HR-S7600 was way better, Deeper colors and more dynamic in the luma:

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/391517-Capturing-VHS-With-D-VHS-Deck-MPEG-2

From a true scientific perspective, I would have captured from each respective device using S-Video. The D-VHS deck exhibited next to no noise, and far less over saturation and truer clarity than some of the ones I cited.

That said, it is doubtful that capturing via IEE 1394 would have degraded the quality any. I think I simply had the benefit of using a new unit, no rental tapes, etc.

In any case, I am convinced if one searches long and hard enough, you can find gems anywhere - sometimes in the least likely places.

[dellsam34]

It is not the firewire that degrades the capture, it's the MPEG-2 compression. I didn't see the need to capture with the D-VHS deck in lossless using the S-Video port, although it has some TBC'ish functionality for analog tapes but not as good as a dedicated analog machine, It does playback SP tapes as good as a high end deck such as the HR-S7600AM. the line TBC in the HR-S7600AM S-VHS deck is well built for low speed tapes in the era when they've been the go to PVR for taping shows, D-VHS came late to the game and wasn't fully optimized for low quality EP, SLP ..etc tapes, it was made for recording and playing back digital tapes.