S-VHS Playback Trick

[grandmasterjayboogie]

Hello.

I purchased an S-VHS player a few months back and I came across this link that tells about an S-VHS playback trick that enables playback of standard VHS tapes in S-VHS mode.

http://twcny.rr.com/technofile/texts/cheapersvhs90.html

I've got some standard VHS tapes I would like to record to DVD so I want those VHS tapes to playback in S-VHS mode. My questions are:

1) This info says it's from 1990. Is it still relevant?

2) Is anyone aware of any other links that describe the method more vividly, perhaps with pictures? I don't want to screw up my tapes.

Thanks in advance.

[davideck]

This method allows SVHS machines to RECORD SVHS on VHS tapes.
It will not improve the playback of VHS recordings.

[wulf109]

Drilling the detection hole in regular VHS tapes is as old as S-VHS recording. All current S-VHS decks however employ ET technology which recognizes all regular VHS tapes as S-VHS tapes. Your deck probably employs ET,so just turn it on.

[mstone321]

This is old, old news. I did this a lot with higher-end VHS tapes before I started travelling to Japan (where S-VHS tapes were quite inexpensive for some reason).

Some pointers:
It's for recording S-VHS signals on VHS tapes, playback is a secondary
issue / benefit.

You need very good VHS tapes to make this worthwhile.

JVC (and perhaps others) have S-VHS modes for recording onto regular VHS cassettes that don't need the "trick".

A soldering iron for melting the hole is messy. If you drill, I suggest
taking apart the shell of the cassette to avoid plastic chips inside the cassette.

It's hardly worth the effort now that we have DVD recorders, low cost media and good PC capture cards.

A DVD-R costs about one tenth of a good VHS tape for this "trick".

Think about it....

[vhs?]

I have some Panasonics like the 4566 that don't sense et on a vhs tape and play back in svhs. Is there a way to trick these machines into going into svhs mode without drilling the cassettes?

[wulf109]

Yes,you need to remove the cover. Look at the tape tramsport.there is a small plastic key sticking up. Match that key to an S-VHS cassette so your sure about the key. Cut that key off and it will see all cassettes as S-VHS. It's a permanent modification,there's no going back to regular VHS.

[Megahurts]

SVHS is recorded with a higher frequency deviation of the luminance carrier (5.4 MHz) than VHS (3.4 MHz). This gives sharper B&W detail. Chroma detail and audio are the same as VHS.

Drilling cassettes only effects the recording mode.

If you could trick a VHS tape to playback in SVHS mode it would be unwatchable.

Chas

[edDV]

VHS and SVHS use different RF FM modulation hi-lo limits. If you try to play a VHS tape with SVHS modulation spec, it will lower quality.