The mid-1990s brought us some great VHS Machines from Mitsubishi and this model HS-U760 is no exception! This Super VHS unit arrives non-working...but can we fix it? Yes we can! Watch and see!
I have repaired hundreds of those Mitsu. VCR's from 1982 till 2005.I worked for a huge national repair center,great video! One hint,you can restore belts that have expanded by dropping them into a Pyrex glass container with water and boiling for 2 min. in a microwave,it works very well if no belt is available.
They do not last as long, but might get you enough time to order the new set and have them arrive on the slow boat from the little old man in Japan that made the spare belt kits. However if you are in a jam, and the old belt has just stretched slightly, and is not gummy, it will work. The joys of VCR mechanisms, where every plastic part clips together, and seemingly is determined that you have to remove the rest of the deck to get to the failed part. Most likely failure on that deck now would be the mode switch, as it has sat for a while unused, so the contacts will be slightly oxidised and the grease aged. Then the slides will need new lubrication, with the correct white grease. At least that Mitsubishi does not have a switching power supply, where the repair kit consisted of every electrolytic capacitor, every resistor, a few diodes and a power switch and driver, because the failing capacitors would cause every other part to go out, except the resistors, as they just were run a tiny bit short of max ratings.
SeanBZA Thanks for the reply, and that's about what I figured, as I've always just gone ahead, and replaced the belts in anything I've repaired, Even if it meant waiting for a correct replacement in the mail.
Chroma was always crappy on SVHS never impressed with it, but it still was a slight improvement over VHS. Back then it made a great audio recorder with upto 8 hrs of audio with 20-20KHz, no W&F, s/n ratio >70db, and dynamic range >90db. You couldn't tell between CD and VHS and it was analog!
I recently did a Blu-Ray to S-VHS conversion. I had to dig up my old ATI X1800 All-in-Wonder video card to do it, which (amazingly) works on a modern PC. The X1800 AIW has a dongle for S-Video output. I ripped the movie John Wick from Blu-ray without re-encoding the video stream. I then played the massive 27 GB file in MPC-HC, and had the program downmix the 7.1 TrueHD to Dolby Surround stereo. I was actually quite impressed with the results! The S-VHS recording was much sharper than even my best pre-recorded VHS tape (the AV receiver's video processing probably helped immensely here). It wasn't quite up to Laserdisc standards, but surprisingly close. The audio was also fairly impressive. The Pro Logic encoding obviously made the trip, as I heard decent stereo separation and rear channel activity. The source file's discrete 7.1 TrueHD track was obviously much better, but just a few months ago I didn't even think that video tape could sound so good! Bass was the weak spot, as it seemed to be limited to around 45Hz or so. I was definitely hearing some low end, but it didn't even come close to the downright relentless TrueHD track, which gripped the room and shook it like a set of maracas. All in all, it was a fun little experiment with a format that I pretty much ignored back in the day.
But of course its way better than any prerecorded tape! you have as a master a moder digital recorded film on a 1080p format. Thats way a better source as they were in the 90’s. I doubt the amp videpoprocessing would improve anything on that particular case...
Thanks for bringing back S-VHS memories, databits! My experience with this format was with the JVC GR-S707 S-VHSC camcorder. At that time, it was one of the most expensive consumer camcorders. However, I was not able to afford a normal S-VHS VCR like the Mitsubishi you are featuring here. I edited my S-VHS recordings on a normal VHS video recorder. This arrangement still allowed me to have decent VHS recordings. Nowadays, its all digital for me - 4K recordings edited on computer and played back via a big screen TV. What a world of difference!!!
Great presentation! As I’m busy finally digitizing my life into editable files, I love seeing this unit! What was once the most common becomes the most rare! Getting these decks to work is important
Increasingly I want videos as good as this, and I'm always going to give my like to support more new content here on the channel (I confess that I really wanted to have a VCR like that, actually, all those wonderful gadgets that appear on your videos I would like to be able to buy one of each, especially that super Laserdisc, but unfortunately here in Brazil you can not find these precious things as easily as there in the USA) See you soon ^^
Awesome VCR. My dad bought this back in the day, I loved that thing. It was almost $900 new in the 90's if i recall correctly. We did some editing on it. Very good quality and a handsome machine. Impressive. I love the signal meters. I'm pretty sure my parents still have it and I wont let them throw it out even though I need to fix it like you did. Being too young at the time and DVDs were coming along it got put away.
I just picked up this same model at my local goodwill for 4.99. I told my mother I would capture and digitize some old camcorder vhs's from our childhood and saw this badboy and jumped at it!
What a wealth of features for a consumer grade VCR! I'm intrigued about those "active A/V network" plugs. I'd really enjoy a video about that, it sounds close to professional gear.
Universal remote will give you pretty much all the functions aside from possibly the menu button, you have to try a few generic types till you get the right buttons to use. Remote is around $5 last time I looked, from the China mall equivalent by you.
It's 2022 and my trusty Mitsubishi HS-U650, which I paid $550 for when new, decided to lock on to a tape. Watching this video was a Godsend! I removed the chassis, and after you mentioned fenangling with the tabs on the front, was able to remove the face and get the trapped tape. I cannot thank you enough for your video! I could not replace those family videos. Now I can digitize them with another Mitsubishi.
I bought that same one brand-new when I was in college! Lasted about five years, then failed completely. I was an annoying sod who insisted on recording my TV shows on SVHS rather than regular VHS. In the end, I don't think it ever mattered. But I remember the remote control had a giant jog-dial on it, identical to the one on the front of the unit. By the time it failed, I just bought a super-cheapo VCR that could play SVHS tapes, and called it good. (I had a high-end DVD player by then.)
I have one of the last gen Mits SVHS VCRs the HS-U790. Took it out of storage and did a manual clean of tape path (original grease still good). Turned it ON -works like new. Good machine -nice picture.
I remember when Mitsubishi was getting big sales in the US with Diamond Vision TVs kind of surpassing Sony's Trinitrons for a period in time. Obviously the SuperBeta format did not save the Beta format in the consumer sales and DigitalBeta was almost completely professional use. That said, I still own a Mits S-VHS deck which I haven't tried to connect and play in many years. I would doubt it would work alone due to belt issues if for no other reason. I was never aware of the PerfectTape tweak until your video. It seems to do what auto-bias cassette circuitry did for cassette audio recording decks where it made comparative signal tests to tweak the bias and other parameters for optimal tape recording; That is definitely a worthwhile tweak I'd have to imagine. I should note I thoroughly enjoyed your trouble-shooting belt repairs which seemed to indicate the actual electronic components were still working as they should. When Mitsubishi exited the consumer video market in the US we lost a key innovative player. If memory serves Panasonic was a Mits company who also exited the US market at a point where they had taken the plasma TV flavor to it's near greatest peak similar to the Pioneer HDTVs. Are there any Mits brands, such as Panasonic, still sold in the US today? I realize they've come back in the high-end audio realm with Technics to a niche degree, but I've not seen any Panasonic HDTVs since they too exited the plasma HDTV US market. I actually still have a 47" (i think it's a 47" though it may be a 42" model to fit a cabinet I had) Panasonic plasma HDTV that works like a champ.
@@databits I had a Toshiba 6 Head VCR years ago that could record VHS and play SVHS. It called it the SQPB system "Super-Quasi Playback". I don't think I ever got a chance to try an SVHS tape in it, but it still only had composite out and no S-Video so you'd still lose out on the Luma/Chroma separation.
I got a nice JVC super VHS about a 1992 machine from eBay charity auction for£10 UK was sold as broken as a tape jammed, and they removed it turned out not to be broke they just knocked some brass fittings from the control arms I refitted them and it is fine looks like it has hardly been used if it even has.
Apparently it records a test frequency/signal, the PerfecTape function tells the VCR to rewind and analyzes the quality of the tape and gives you a reading based on how well the recording is played back from Average to Excellent and adjusts the VCR accordingly.
I have a newer version of this from 2002 and they had perfect tape even then. I bought it when some stereo shops were still open all closed now in my area. My 2002 Mitsubishi still works great even with many hours of use. Im sure it has over 5000 hours on it. Never jammed once.
A brilliant showpiece of yesterday's technology. I believe the D-Theatre machines had an HDMI port as well. Returning to the S-VHS machine the picture quality was excellent. I never had the pleasure of owning an S-VHS machine though. One important piece of technology that was dropped from flat screen tv's were the S connector. I feel for those who still have equipment using the S connector all that glorious picture quality cannot be utilized on today's flat screen tv's anymore which is a bit of a sad story.
Many older LCD TV's had S-Video and here in Europe many new TV's still have a RGB SCART connector which probably would support S-Video to SCART adapters.
I'd like to see how "Perfect Tape" would react to a VHS tape with the SVHS ID hole drilled into it. So it would try to record SVHS on a VHS tape, and also how it would "rate" the tape.
It will record as a S-VHS but your playback won't be S-VHS quality because the S-VHS tape is of higher grade to allow the 420 lines over standard tape which is 240 lines.
Does this deck have an option to make my 145 minute tape into t-210? I see it in my settings but I’m skeptical. I’d obviously have to try it for myself but I’m thinking the tape would max out at 7.5 hours of recording like in most VHS decks.
That VCR will make a fantastic Audio tape recorder, as it also has a recording level control, with level meters on the fascia, and rear mounted RCA connections.. So you could store it in a HiFi rack. I have Sony and JVC HiFi VCR's which I use for that purpose, and the audio recordings are awesome, much better than most compact cassette decks, as you do not need Dolby Noise Reduction, so recordings sound natural and uncompressed.
I remember LightScribe lol. I had an old HP desktop back around 2008 that had a LightScribe drive and almost any CD I burned back then was LightScribe. Sadly now you can't even buy LightScribe blank CD-Rs anywhere, and the designs have also faded off most of my old discs anyway
Hi there, I have the model U570 that I bought recently at Goodwill for $5.49 and it looks and works nicely... This is quite different in some ways then my other VCR decks... Some different display on screen... Has the bar S-E and REM 6:06 when the tape is fully rewind and 10h05m53s that changes from time to time.. I cannot or figure how to reset this if possible or what does it mean?...
I think I answer my own question on how to reset the display numbers.. On my remote on the top portion I flip the lid and hit "cancel"... Now it reset the display to 0.00.00
Val Willis None did. Laserdisc had different information in the space that macrovision would’ve used. So, Laser disks could not be encoded with macrovision. This is why the movie studios were so quick to adapt to DVD & abandon laserdisc.
Laserdisc was the same resolution as S-VHS but S-VHS didn't grow because nobody wanted to pay extra $$ for S-VHS tapes or players when laserdisc was right around the corner and it seemed to be better when it really was not, even DVD was only 480 lines over S-VHS at 420 lines. From 240 lines to 420 lines was a huge difference, 420 to 480 was not that much better.
@@ACommenterOnRU-vid A picture is made up of luminance resolution (luma - b&w) and chrominance (chroma - colour). For a colour image, the 2 components are equally important. You have ignored chroma and just quoted luma. You can't define image quality for a colour picture without referencing chroma! Chroma resolutions (all factually researchable): VHS 30 lines SVHS 30 lines Laserdisc 120 lines DVD 240 lines (based on the luma you quote of 480 lines). Note; most digital based mediums (including Blu Ray) have chroma res based at half that of their luma res. Conclusions - in regards to colour resolution, VHS and SVHS ( and all analog domestic video formats) are poor. Laserdisc is a big stepup re chroma and DVD is another big stepup from that. If you haven't seen the difference chroma resolution makes to an image, i'd recommend watching a TechnologyConnections youtube video where he compares the difference in chroma on an analog domestic format (Beta) to a professional one (Betacam). The difference of Luma goes from 240 to 290 lines, which is better, but the biggest difference is in chroma, which is hugely noticeable, and jumps from 30 to 100 lines. The same margins of difference are noticeable on jumping from SVHS/SVHS to Laserdisc to DVD.
There were three Goodwills in the city I just moved from (recently relocated for work) and I came across all of 4-5 VCRs in the three years I lived there. I don’t know how you come across SVHS decks along with all the other feature-loaded models you have covered on your channel. What do you do after you’ve repaired all these decks and then shown them on your channel? Re-donate so another retro-tech aficionado can discover it?
Furthermore, the unit's tuner certainly cannot receive modern all-digital transmission from cable or other sources. What possible use is this machine at present?
The U760 was just a so-so machine IIRC. The U795 was the last one for USDM yet it still did not offer DNR and TBC like on the JVC...... But IMO, the most disappointing was that Mitsu did not make a USDM variant of the flagshio JDM HV-V6000/7000......
Those centre mounted decks were a pain to work on because you had to remove the entire deck from the chassis to fix anything, and you had to reassemble to test, and if the problem remained, you had to take it all apart again. I much preferred the mechanics to the left where there was easy access to the top and bottom. They also looked more pleasing to my eyes too. VCR's with centre mounted mechanisms always looked cheap and tacky to me.
There is a plastic rod that sticks up inside the S-VHS machine that will slide into a special hole in the S-VHS tape that will tell the machine that its S-VHS .. If you insert a regular VHS tape, the tape does NOT have that hole for that rod and it will force push that rod down which opens the circuit to let the VCR know its a basic vhs tape. Kinda like a compact cassette has those tabs on top to let the recorder know if it can record or not. you must break the tabs OFF to prevent record over. OR put tape OVER those tab holes so that you can record over that tape. Same concept
S-VHS was 420 lines and DVD was 480 lines, not much more and most could NOT see a difference. Now VHS to S-VHS was a night and day difference, that was ~67% better quality. DVD on my 40 inch tv still looks clean.
Without upscaling for HDMI output, of what use is this machine at present? And, as the video demonstrates, Macrovision protection defeats illegal copying. Which is exactly what it was intended to do.
What country was this made in? The Mitsubishi VHS machines sold in the UK were actually made in the UK. Scotland I believe. I seem t remember some really dodgy ones from around 1982/83 which had a plastic chassis that used to distort and basically render the machine irreparable. We had a lot of them on rental that had to be condemned. The Hitachi VT-11 of the same era proved a much more reliable rental machine. Mitsubishi got better after that and had some pretty nice machines up until the early to mid 90s, with decent quality decks in them. Mitsubishi in the UK completely dropped out of the Home Audio Visual sector some time around 2000. A lot of the unsold stock ended up at a place called Superscreen in Middlesbrough where I was lucky enough to purchase three HS-M1000 super-VHS recorders quite cheaply. The M1000 is probably the generation before your machine, and is visibly better made than yours in terms of the casing and the layout being better for servicing. The M1000 for example has the deck on the left not in the centre, so there is no PCB obscuring it from underneath. It also has many more physical buttons and switches, and other features like a mic input for audio dubbing. I'm not sure whether or not yours has VU meters in the FL display or not. I sold 2 of the M1000s for a small profit immediately after buying them, but kept one for myself until a few years ago when I put it on eBay and it was picked up by one of the former Mitsubishi factory workers who remembered it as the flagship model of the time he worked there. I love your video and have never seen the PerfectTape system before. JVC over here had something they called B.E.S.T. which seems to be roughly the same thing, but it only ever gave you a light on the display to inform you that the tape analysis had been done. It certainly never gave you a tape score rating like yours does. Just 1 mistake you made in the video when talking about the tape remaining laced around the head drum during winding. That's actually nothing to do with the real-time counter. It is simply to allow it to have the image on screen with as little delay as possible after pressing the play key during rewind or fast forward. Machines that unlace to tape to do winding will always have a delay while they lace up before they can produce a picture. Usually you would still see your TV channel on screen for several seconds until the tape was ready to be played. The exception to this would be Hitachi machines which would give you a black screen between the time you press play and the picture from the tape appearing. This could be annoying to users I guess. Anyway, the real-time counter is generated from pulses on the control track which is a linear track on the tape, read by the audio/control head, not by the spinning drum. Panasonic's G-Mech which was also used in certain Philips machines is one famous (and generally highly-rated) mechanism that uses a sub-loading arm to keep a loop of tape out of the cassette, against the audio control head, while the rest of the tape is unloaded back into the cassette during winding operations. This allowed the real-time counter to work, while limiting the wear to the video heads and drums which is often suffered when machines like yours remain fully laced up during winding. Of course the G-Mech still exhibited that delay after pressing play before the image appeared on screen.
Why they bring out D-VHS in 1999 or early this days? During this time DVD was already on the market. S-VHS was a flop too i can remember only one one friend who had S-VHS.
Volker King D-VHS was far superior than DVD. But dvd was much more cheap, small and could be used in computers and consoles. Normally, the format that wins the war is not the best, but the more convenient and cheaper, and good enought. Dvd was all that.
HiFi-VHS uses FM carriers while embedding the signal and is demodulated for playback. Sound familiar? It’s basically an FM broadcast without the actual wireless transmission. It uses a 2:1 dbx-alike companding NR system to achive the S/N. Without that it would be around 50dB S/N. The compression is the most severe issue with HiFi-VHS. Very audible on a quality set-up. Beside the pumping effect in between, the sound signal was degraded in almost all parameters behind sound quality. The "Character" influences qualities such as soundstage, perspectives, clarity, naturality, attack, precision, articulation, air around the musicians, microdynamics, overtones, relations between "fat" and "tiny" instruments etc. etc. Demodulation noise at 60Hz is annoying. 50 Hz noise from the helical scan system is also annoying. Incompatibility in between decks were extreme. Fragility of the tape path was an all time issue. Most people claiming it's better than cassette lack the skills (or the cassette deck lack the option) of calibrating to the tape formula in the cassette deck. This was not needed with helical scan head of the VHS. HiFi-VHSha good relatively flat frequency response from 20Hz - 20kHz but restricted to that. Cassette could at best go from 17Hz to 25kHz rather flat and the cut of was not steep as it was with VHS. Most people used HiFi-VHS to get more playtime.............for party etc. Main problem for people to determin the differences in quality is their lack of trained hearing, their use of middle of the road gear, their listening room being filled with acoustical issues, their lack of skills in recording etc. etc. Using a PCM module can make VHS recordi digital. In that case you get a completely outdated digital resolution that even a Smart Phone can do better.
I've thought about buying an SVHS or DVHS VCR because I needed a format that the recording would service during a power failure during recording process because I've started a hobby of recording severe storm footage. I live in Oklahoma where he get a lot of severe weather. I have a DVD recorder, but if the power fails during the recording process it is essentially unretrievable. I've thought about a UPS, but I'm on a tight budget so that ain't happening. SVHS and DVHS are collectors items now so the price will always be untouchable for me. Living on SSI is really difficult, and trying to get together a small hobby is even more difficult. I don't know why people think the disabled should be punished for not being able to work for a living. Hell, we get a bare minimum just to survive (it usually proves to not meet that though), and they want to take away even that. It is frustrating. I can't work for a living so I can't get into any real serious hobbying, but I'd like to get into something small without breaking the bank. Everything is so wildly expensive anymore, and you really do need more than $1,000 a month to survive. Quite a bit more in fact, but I get an "allowance" of around $700. I have bills to pay, and I couldn't even survive if I did live by myself. I try to live on the cheapest of diets so I can do some small things. Of course, people think if I can eat third world food that I should live on even less money. *sigh* I can't even afford a car even though I live in a motor town with the worst public transit in the nation...
Robert Gaines I can't say I don't sympathize for you cause, but here where I live we have to work real HARD to get even less than you get. So, it's all in comparison. I have a small hobby of collecting VCRs, just cos they don't cost a lot and still are of much interest for me)
You make even less than what I get? I live in Oklahoma, and my sister who works with me works three part-time minimum wage jobs to make just a little more than what I get per month. At any rate, I am for raising the minimum wage. The Republicans call minimum wage the starting wage when in reality it is the standard wage. You don't get raises anymore. Either make raises for good job performance mandatory with a decent starting wage, or give everyone a much higher starting wage. People on Disability should make a little more as well ($100 bucks more per month would actually be nice even though the actual amount probably should be much more). I would argue that the Disabled should always make at least a little more than minimum wage because we did not ask to be crippled. That does not mean that we should be rolling in cash either. I want to see that minimum wage raised first though. Where do we get the money from? The over inflated military wage would be a great place to start. We don't need a military budget to take on the whole world let alone a world war. What we should be doing is aggressively promoting peace! Peace is just so much cheaper! We can pay an army of diplomats a high salary and still save a ton of money! It's just better all around! And don't think for one second that everyone prefers war because they don't! Who causes pretty much all of the wars in the world today? The United States of America, that's who! We seriously need to start behaving ourselves and stop promoting war under the guise of a euphemised and incorrectly named, "peacekeeping mission"! We need to stay out of other people's' business! PERIOD! If they got something they have that we want or need and we can't negotiate a peaceful deal with them, well tough! Leave them alone, and try somewhere else! If we want the world to be civil and terrorism to get down to better levels, we have to be civil and stop terrorising others! And, for people who are always afraid of an invasion or crime, for heaven's sake GROW SOME BALLS (to put it bluntly)! Our parents and grandparents had "larger balls"! I remember a time when we didn't lock car doors or even have car alarms. It was a time when we showed respect for each other. This "respect has to be earned" bullshit was what created our dark world! No, the answer isn't not locking your car doors. I'm not a moron. I'm just saying that such a world existed because we respected each other--even strangers. I want to see the return of such a world too, but you can't do it by living in a word of fear. Kids should still stay away from strangers though, but your teachers and government officials are not strangers and should be trusted by kids. We can help with governmental official acting wrongfully by implementing and enforcing much more sticker punishments especially the higher up in government you go where it likely needs it the most. We put a lot of faith in government officials so when they do hurt people they should get serious punishments!
Yeah, I get less. There are other countrie outside US, you know))). Our disabled citizens get less than 200$ US. I believe it's closer to 150. I share all this ideas of yours about war, but this is nothing but a utopian dream.
Yeah, the bad thing about digital is data corruption. This is one thing i love on analog. For exemple, analog audio tape... even if the tape is in really bad shape, i could still listen to it, even if it plays very bad, normally you could still listen. Same on vhs, it could be very bad but still watchable. Digital its different...or it works perfectly or it doesnt work at all or have very bad artifacts, and digital artifacts are very bad. Analog maybe not perfect quality and lose quality, but its more realiable and forgiving when you have some type of signal/media degradation. In your case, stopping the dvd recording in the middle is a type of data corruption, incomplete file. Not a problem on a pure analog media.
BCR tapes original movies that blockers on the tapes blockers to put these movies on disc disk got blockers on the desk to my copies on VCR tapes or discs
