JVC SR-W5U (PAL support?)

[VCRcomp]

Hi,

I'm from EU and am looking into buying this great deck for the purpose of the best quality VHS restoration . There are however two issues. The first one is the deck's voltage being 100 or 110V 60Hz. I can easily buy a step-down transformer and hope that the frequency (in EU 50Hz) will not interfere with the deck's normal operation. I can only assume and hope that the deck is using a switching mode power supply, which doesn't depend on any AC frequency. Ideally, that solves the first issue.

The other issue is with PAL (EU) system compatibility. I haven't had any experience with NTSC decks nor did I ever play foreign (NTSC) tape inside the PAL deck so I don't really know how this works. I have been googling to find the specs for SR-W5U, but so far I haven't found what I'm looking for. Before I decide to buy the deck, I need to know if it can:

1. ...play PAL VHS tape
2. ...be set to out-put PAL signal through composite video and s-video
3. Can that "other" (I think it's component) connection help with the situation?

Thank you

[hech54]

NO WAY I would buy that in a PAL country.

[jman98]

It was almost impossible to find VCRs sold in North America that were capable of running on European power and playing PAL video tapes. Such specialty decks were VERY expensive back in the 1990s when it seems that this model came out. So I don't expect it to have any ability to play PAL tapes and I expect it to NOT have any power switch to run on European power. I did a quick look online and I can't find any evidence of PAL support or European power support.

[deadhead_]

The SR-W5U (HR-W5) are made only for NTSC countries, so you can use it in Europe only if you need to get highest quality transfers from NTSC tapes. There's absolutely no PAL support in these machines!

[VCRcomp]

I wonder which models were made for PAL then. Many people say that there were also PAL versions, which were very expensive, but I haven't had any luck finding a single model through google.

[deadhead_]

There's nothing similar for PAL.
HR-W5 was made for Japanese market only and contains some special sat tuner circuits (worked only in Japan). Than this model was slightly castrated (tuner has been excluded) and sold with abnormal price in the US under the name SR-W5U.

PS: For all, who searching for SR-W5U cleaning tape. The name of the tapes is WCD-5. Good Luck

[VCRcomp]

I realise that many of these discussions have been made on this forum, but anyway, I hope I'm right in assuming that throwing away money for a professional machine like Panasonic AG7750 (very expensive for shipping!) won't make my VHS tapes look any better, than just using JVC HR-S7600, that I already have. Tapes, that I need to capture, vary between mid and high quality (for VHS). Perhaps 15% were made in studio.

[deadhead_]

Yes, but you can add Panasonic NV-FS200 for your setup and get better results by swapping your recorders and comparing the capture quality.

[NJRoadfan]

I realise that many of these discussions have been made on this forum, but anyway, I hope I'm right in assuming that throwing away money for a professional machine like Panasonic AG7750 (very expensive for shipping!) won't make my VHS tapes look any better, than just using JVC HR-S7600, that I already have. Tapes, that I need to capture, vary between mid and high quality (for VHS). Perhaps 15% were made in studio.

I have a handful of studio recorded tapes from when I was in high school. Source decks were the Panasonic AG-DS555 Superdeck and the old AG-6000 series tanks from the 80s. They all play great in the newer Digipure enabled JVCs.

[VCRcomp]

I'm relatively new to video restoring and haven't had that much experience, but from what I've managed to experience, my JVC 7600 is very good at well recorded tapes with very little noise and strong, clean signal. It filters what it needs to filter and brings up the best in video, it doesn't remove anything that it shouldn't. However, when noisy and grainy tapes are used, it does too much damage to video (regardless of mode used: EDIT, SOFT, SHARP..., even if TBC is disabled) and that's when FS200 (AG 1980) comes in play. I surely don't like noise and certain filtering has to be done, but JVC tends to be too rough on some tapes. In some cases of really bad tapes, Panasonic did flicker colors a bit, while JVC did not (I wonder why that happened). I can post some of more interesting snapshots from my restorations, which will display these differences, but I'm not sure if this thread is meant for that.

[victoriabears]

[Attachment 6439 - Click to enlarge]Whilst I live in Canada most of my vhs to dvd project has been PAL.

I can confirm that the JVC VCr's with dnr/tbc can often be too aggressive , also playback of stereo soundtrack is glitchy as is playback of anything other than the SP speed.

I will be selling my collection of PAL VCR's over the next three months or so and it contains 2 FS-200 machines and Panasonic 930 and the like. Overall my best results have been with either a Panasonic VCR s-VHS with TBC/DNR like the 930 or a JVC 8965 etc but always with a JVC DVD Recorder-M100 no ohter DVD recorder really works as well.

The odd tapes (& I mean odd) that have produced strange picture quality were even fixed by a chain of standard (non s-vhs) VCR's and connecting them in a chain and onto a JVC DVD recorder, I suppose the filters in each machine removed some of the fuzz.


Having done close to a 1000 tapes recorded on either Panasonics or JVC, I had to decide what the best I was going to achieve was, I used DVD Recorders, I tried Computer captue and for me it was too convoluted, others love it.

So I am pleased with most of my collection , and am left with a few dozen that I will give one last throw at and may send them to Lordsmurf for conversion if I cannot get a happy result.

In the end you really have to discipline yourself and say "How often will I watch this stuff, and am I watching the picture content or being anal about the picture quality"

One mans meat is another mans poison as the saying goes.

I have two JVC Euro VCR's with TBC/DNR , the big problem is the shipping $120 for surface ! to Europe.

Shipping seems to have gone up a lot.

[timewinder]

I wonder which models were made for PAL then. Many people say that there were also PAL versions, which were very expensive, but I haven't had any luck finding a single model through google.

I recently bought a European model of the SR-W7U, which must be ridiculously rare. However, the irony is that it appears to not be capable of playing PAL tapes, only NTSC or W-VHS. So far I've only had it tested in Germany, so I have not tried it on an NTSC display yet. My hope is that it will convert PAL to NTSC output at least, but I doubt it. Or even better, convert PAL (SD) to VGA (SD or HD)... even more wishful thinking I reckon

Anyways, it does run on either voltage 110V - 240V, 50/60Hz, but then so does the SR-W7U.

[jealousy91]

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