Sony DVHS Recorder - my new toy - Anyone still use DVHS?

davemurgtroyd

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Just acquired a Sony DHR1000 DVHS and MiniDV recorder as a Xmas present to myself - not sure how quickly it will arrive.

Reading the specs and reviews I didn't realise how high a spec for its day. This unit is SD and apparently its quality is better than DVD with a bit rate of 14Mbps compared to a DVD average of 5.5. DVHS tapes are available in sizes up yo 8 hours at standard play but are rather expensive but can also use Mini DV tapes (60 mins capacity) of which I have a small box full. Unfortunately only an analogue UHF tuner but also has two line inputs.

Anyone had or still have one of these and still osing it?

Would have liked an HD version but prices are way too high unless someone has one going cheap.
 

davemurgtroyd

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I received notice that an investment bond had matured so decided to use some of the profits on another present for me - an HD version - Sony HVR M15 which will playback my HD Mini DV tapes from my Canon HD
 

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To be honest I've never used a Digital VHS recorder, , never even knew they existed until Techmoan on youtube did a review of one, up until that point, the only "full sized" tape system I knew of that was digital was DigiBeta (and subsequent HD derivatives), but that was a professional grade bit of kit rather than a consumer grade...
 

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Apparently DVHS was used professionally in the US by broadcasters archiving transmissions as it is supposedly a more stable medium than DVD and the SD version gives higher quality recordings.
 

davemurgtroyd

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I have received both units and had a little play, both work OK but am a little disappointed a neither is a DVHS machine but both can use two sizes of DV tape. The HD one was down to me reading sellers description of using both small and large cassettes as meaning MiniDV and VHS instead of correct meaning small and large DV tapes (I had forgotten there were 4 sizes of DV tapes. The SD one was mis-described on ebay as DVHS so I am debating whether to
1 Return it as wrongly described
2 Keep it and resell it as this model sells on ebay for over twice what I paid for this one.
3 Keep it as a backup to play SD MiniDVs from my SD camcorder.

Usually this sort of thing doesn't happen to me as I download and read user manuals before buying but this time I didn't as I was in too much of a hurry.
 

davemurgtroyd

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All is not lost as an DHVS unit with at least one commercially recorded HD tape is on its way from the US - the only market they launched this format in. I am also looking at a SD UK model - decisions, decisions. Both models can also record standard VHS and SVHS - I suspect the US one will be NTSC and the UK one PAL

 

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Is there any region blocking on these Dave?
 

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Is there any region blocking on these Dave?
Yes and no. All commercial releases are region 1 (US) but they only made region 1 VCRs capable of playing D-Theater tapes. The intention was to also do regions 2 and 3 but never happened.
 

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I believe the players are single, rather that multistandard, so NTSC recorded tape will not play in a PAL machine.

Standard VHS machines, the NTSC workaround utilises PAL60 where the chrominance subcarrier is at the wrong frequency, but the television will render the correct signal during playback. There is no similar option in DVHS.
 

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Given that digital formats tend to be encoded in a universal standard, would the NTSC part of the equation not be a part of the Digital-to-Analogue side of things rather than the tape's contents? The television used probably doesn't really care what signal it gets given that most of them these days are multi-standard anyway, so it's more down to what the DVHS puts out than how the recordings are encoded...
 

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Given that digital formats tend to be encoded in a universal standard, would the NTSC part of the equation not be a part of the Digital-to-Analogue side of things rather than the tape's contents? The television used probably doesn't really care what signal it gets given that most of them these days are multi-standard anyway, so it's more down to what the DVHS puts out than how the recordings are encoded...

Like the Blu-ray format, the D-VHS format was region controlled for pre-recorded content – Region 1 for the USA, region 2 for Japan and Region 3 for South Korea, although pre-recorded content was only released in the USA. The studios that released titles on the format include 20th Century Fox, Atrisan Entertainment, DreamWorks and Universal Studios. Some Japanese units could be hacked to play USA region D-Theater tapes


https://www.myce.com/news/remember-d-theater-hd-vhs-tape-79207/
 

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Well, there's that, but like a lot of DVD players in the past, I'm sure there's ways to set a player to "Region Zero" to bypass such issues... :)
 

davemurgtroyd

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Well, there's that, but like a lot of DVD players in the past, I'm sure there's ways to set a player to "Region Zero" to bypass such issues... :)
No point with the D-theatre capable recorders as there are no other region commercial releases and I believe home recordings are region free (as with optical disks)
 

davemurgtroyd

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Given that digital formats tend to be encoded in a universal standard, would the NTSC part of the equation not be a part of the Digital-to-Analogue side of things rather than the tape's contents? The television used probably doesn't really care what signal it gets given that most of them these days are multi-standard anyway, so it's more down to what the DVHS puts out than how the recordings are encoded...
DVHS recordings (on D-Theater boxes) are encoded to MPEF2 (at a bit rate of 14.4 compared to DVDs average of 5.5 Mbps) and the inbuilt HD capable RF tuner is ATSC so probably the recordings are NTSC rather than PAL.

The machine I have on the way has component (YUV), S-VHS, RCA video outputs but no HDMI or RGB and optical (up to DD5.1 - later model does DTS) and RCA audio outputs
 
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