Quality of the different VCR’s

In terms of optimum picture quality, the EV-S9000 certainly is the best available VCR loaded with the best available technology from professional Sony Hi8 machines. This demonstrates the superior quality of picture and sound of Hi8 as compared to VHS and S-VHS. Just to mention a few, the EV-S9000 has a picture noise suppressing system as well as a digital comb filter (DCF) and furthermore a drop out compensation and a time base corrector (TBC). Such electronic devices are hardly known in VHS machines.

Similar good properties offers the C2000, although this is the less loaded machine with a lot of plastic in the front, which makes it very sensitive to transporting (e.g. in a box).

One may say, that this is the best ever built VCR, which offers a qulity of video and sound, sometimes better than that of hard disc and DVD recorders, which sometimes have a too high rate of compression. Just as good is the C2000 and not to forget, model S880, which is actually a remodelled S1000, however, PCM sound not on board.

Because of DCF, all twin recorders (T1, T2 and T2000) are within this upper class. Of course the famous S1000 also belongs to this class, especially due to its PCM sound and a high efficient head design, which allows for efficient editing quality of the picture. This can be recognized from the option, which only the S1000 offers, to playback faulty videos in the edit mode, which no other VCR can cope with. The S1000 has gained its importance as the key VCR for the analog cut of videos, which makes it a brilliant player for digitizing videos.

All other Sony Hi8 VCR’s may be classified as belonging to the next class of quality, beginning with the C400, and the C500 and ending with the P300 (no edit function).

A little step lower all other Sony Video8 VCR’s should be listed. To begin with the S550 because of excellent picture and PCM sound option, followed by the C3 and the C45, but all other VCR’s are at a similar high lever, especially due to the fact, that all O-drive machines have a brilliant picture quality, the head amps of which being derived from the professional VCR’s. This lower class has nothing to do with poor quality, but is just a matter of the fact, that Video8 offers but the composite video signal. The difference between the two systems Video8 and Hi8 enables the separation of the video signal in luminance and chrominance (brilliance and color). Should that separation not take place, the signal is called composite video. Once it is separated, it is called Hi8 or S-Video. A slightly different approach is reached by the so called component video signal, which separates the signal in its color components.