The capabilities of Blaupunkt RTV-950

[Maris 55]

Hello all,

I am now in a process of evaluating the image quality and the capability of DOC (Dropout Compensation) of my Blaupunkt RTV-950 (clone of Panasonic FS200). I bought it from Ebay.de with a fault but in mint condition. It was repaired by a highly skilled master who was himself a constructor of VCRs in the 70-ies! So I would assume that it should be in a near perfect condition now. But sadly it is not. When compared to my other non S-VHS machines which are HiFi VCRs I see 2 major flaws:
1. it is less capable of correcting dropouts in a number of VHS tapes. I find specific places on these tapes with more and less severe dropouts.
2. the image quality seems to be worse too. I know that it is sometimes easy to confuse the image detail with the noise. But for me it seems worse. I see what I would call shadows or ghosting of lines. The TBC and Noise Filter does it's job well, but that does not help if the image is read worse in the first place. Most of the time I compare the image with TBC and NF Off to have a fair comparison. But even in On position my HiFi machines win. The LG LV 880 must be one of the last generation VCRs. Can this be the reason? I guess no. As I have read in many forums Panasonic FS200 has been judged as a reference machine.
So I have no other idea as that my Blaupunkt is not at it's best. My only explanation is the one I like the least- my highly skilled specialist has repaired the electronics faults, but has not been able or has not had the chance to check if the machine performs at it's best in real life.
What would you say about the comparison of highly evaluated S-VHS and new era HiFi VCRs?

[hech54]

I would imagine that any of the various quality settings on VCRs affects the output. I rarely use the effects on my Philips/JVC clone, except the TBC of course.

[Maris 55]

I would imagine that any of the various quality settings on VCRs affects the output. I rarely use the effects on my Philips/JVC clone, except the TBC of course.

Hi,
In fact there are little quality settings. The Soft/Sharp slider is at the middle position. And as I said the comparison to be fair I have switched Off both the TBC and NF because I want to compare unprocessed image quality of my VCRs in the first place. You can't compare image from a VCR with a TBC, NF On with an image from a VCR without these filters. I want to be sure that my Blaupunkt outputs the same or better unprocessed image quality as my other decks. In what I am in doubt at present.

[Skiller]

For the rawest output set the picture quality selector to EDIT. This also disables any sharpening and softening, making the sharpness slider have no effect.

[Maris 55]

Does this disable the TBC On state as well?

[Skiller]

No.