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VHs was first released in September 1976, it was developed by JVC with some licensing agreements with Sony (who created Betamax). There are two main types of video recorders, they are S-VHS (super VHS) which has 400 lines and is analog, and VHS that is 240 lines and analog also. The numbers themselves are no indication of the picture quality difference however, but generally S-VHS is an improved analog standard, and the rare D-VHS standard. The number of heads usually affects the quality of recording and playback. The more recording heads, the better the result. Long play is another useful feature to look for, because it doubles the recording time of a tape.

Recommended Resources

• Comet - Comet supply a wide range of Video recorders and Video recorders's.
• Empiredirect - One of the country’s leading online electrical retailers.

Due to DVD it seems that video recorders are becoming a lot cheaper. It is even becoming hard to find video recorders in shops (Dixons stopped selling them. Therefore you should beable to find one with plenty of features such as nicam stereo sound and super long play for under £100. We managed to buy a panasonic video player for £80 on Comet which seems of a high standard, and can rewind and forward at a fast speed. Plus one of the advantages of video player is that all of them can record programs broadcasts on television.

Update - Now that Dvd recorders have come onto the market the death of VHS recorders seem guaranteed, 2006 maybe the last year you can find them in the majority of stores. So be quick if you want to keep a little piece of electronics history.

A few things to consider are,

Mono videos will only record and play back in mono sound. Mono sound is a sound channeled to a single speaker. It would be as though you would have only one ear to listen with. This is udeful for things such as AM radio broadcasts, but now not good enough for entertainment systems such as Home Theatre.

Nicam videos record in stereo giving a crisper, clearer sound. NICAM ( full name, NICAM 728) was invented during the early 1980's by the BBC Research Centre, Kingswood Warren. It was first applied to the British "System I" 625 line PAL colour TV broadcasting system, and premiered in 1986 on the "First Night of the Proms" concert programme. How NICAM works: It uses a higher frequency subcarrier (5.85MHz on System B/G) and (6.552MHz on System I) than on on mono system. This frequency is then modulated with a 728Kbits / sec datastream digitally. The 728bit packets produced are then transmitted every millisecond continuously. Nicam stereo sound can be found on both televisions and video recorders (obviously play and record in nicam stereo sound). They are usually more expensive than mono tv's and vhs recorders.

Videoplus+ has been created as a system to encode tv programmes by day-number, channel number and the published start time and duration of a TV programme. This means people with videoplus+ can program their video recorders to record programs weeks or days before they happen. Videoplus is the UK version of a system which started in the 'States a couple of years ago under the name VCR+. You can usually find your videoplus+ codes in your tv guide and reasonably priced recorders now come with videoplus+

NTSC playback allows video cassettes recorded in the NTSC (National Television Standards Committee) system, eg. from the USA, to be played back via a compatible UK PAL TV. This format is usual in Europe, because the manufacturers can use parts of the PAL circuits and so that money to save.

S-VHS is short for SuperVHS and was created by JVC to offer better video quality than the VHS format. The quality of S-VHS is much better because it offers over 400 lines of horizontal resolution compared to appx. 250 lines of VHS. You do however nned to use S-VHS videos in conjunction with the recorder to get this quality. SVHS uses identical-looking cassettes to those of VHS, but you can recognize the SVHS cassettes by a small hole in the cassette container that VHS cassettes don't have. S_VHS are more expensive and so are the videos used by them.

Long play doubles the recording time of a tape. Especially useful for recording several long programmes on one tape. Currently some top of the range video recorders also offer features such as 12 hour super long play for a E240 tape. This means it will record for three times as long as the type lasts. There has in the past been question marks over the quality of long play recording, but this now seems to have been fixed.

Auto head cleaner ensures the tape heads of VHS videos are kept clean, thereby improving both reliability and picture quality. This can mean that your videos will last longer because they won't be damaged and also the quality of your recording will be much higher. Auto Head Cleaner recorders are usually quite expensive, but a worthwhile function to have.

Posted on 07 / 01 / 2006

JVC HR-S5975EK

This is a solid, good quality & well built machine, i've always bought JVC video recorders because this was the company which designed the technology. And in the process wiped the floor with Sony's Betamax version. I guess some of the let downs with this machine are it only has four heads, and i've found the remote control fiddly. Overall it's a nice solid well built vcr, and has a quality feel. Just a shame it does't boast 6 heads for supposedly better recordings.

User Rating -
Kenny Rogers

Popularity
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Ability to find on the Net
Better value than high street

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It seems that at the moment the DVD format beats video in every respect except on questions of affordability. There is no way for the video player to beat DVD, with all the latter's features, such as improved image and sound quality, special features, and the better durability of DVDs as compared to video cassettes giving DVD an easy victory. But if your favourite films are not available on DVD, then these advantages are worthless. Video is still the king when it comes to the amount of films you can buy on video.