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From: clements@bbncca.ARPA (Robert Clements)
Newsgroups: net.video
Subject: VHS -- still the pits?
Message-ID: <1444@bbncca.ARPA>
Date: Fri, 31-May-85 00:25:50 EDT
Article-I.D.: bbncca.1444
Posted: Fri May 31 00:25:50 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 1-Jun-85 02:53:47 EDT
Organization: Bolt, Beranek and Newman, Cambridge, Ma.
Lines: 72

I just spent some time playing with an AKAI 603 VHS Hifi VCR.
From the ads, I think this is supposed to be at or near the top of their
line of VCRs.  I think it is the pits.

Up front:   I have both Beta and VHS decks.  My VHS deck is an old and
simple one, just used for PCM audio recording, since I couldn't stand
it as a video deck.  I have heard people say that VHS decks are getting
better, and I really wanted to be convinced that they are, due to the
apparent sales shift to VHS.

A few specific disasters with this AKAI deck:

    Audio:  No MTS stereo receiver, but that's true of almost all VCRs.

    Presetting the channels: There are 16 preset channels, out of some
    large number of broadcast and cable frequencies. The ONLY way to
    associate a preset with a particular channel is to have the deck
    SEARCH to the station. This takes literally MINUTES per station
    for the higher numbered ones. There is NO way to say "Make preset
    'B' be channel 3" without generating a signal on channel 3 and having
    the deck search for it.

    Not only that, but once a channel is found, it doesn't tell you what
    channel number it has found. You have to look at the picture and
    wait for a station break or associate the plot of the show via TV
    Guide to find out what channel you are tuned to! You then key in
    your decision so that you can see it later when you select the
    particular preset.

    Playback searching: I had hoped that newer VHS decks had more reasonable
    search capabilities. No way.   This thing has only one faster-than-play
    search speed, forward and back. If you want to search a little faster,
    you have to hit stop and rewind, whereupon you suffer 5 seconds of
    tape unload and 3-4 seconds of tape load time, typical of all VHS
    decks that I know of, and even then you don't get to see what you
    are winding past, so you are searching in the dark.

    Pause: (Called "still").  You can't go from play to still.
    Hitting "still" from play is simply ignored. You get to
    "still" by hitting "stop", then "play", then "still".
    "Still" only works for a second or so after going into play.
    If you hit "stop" and then "still", it goes into "record
    pause", to allow you to get up to speed for a quick entry
    into record. I.e., it threatens to record over the tape you
    are trying to play a still from! Not what you want for
    play-still!

    Programming is done entirely on the TV screen.  Without arguing the
    merits of this, I'll point out that any 7-year-old writing in BASIC
    could make a better human engineered menu system than this thing has.
    Also, it insists on telling you, on the TV screen, about every button
    you push, and timing out the legend after a few seconds. No way to
    do any editting/dubbing without getting silly messages on the output.

    Tape speeds: The thing is advertised as 3-speed. But it only records
    in SP and SLP. LP is playback-only.  Now I thought that everyone knew
    that the slowest speed, Beta or VHS, is poorer quality. So you use it
    only when you need to cram a tape very full. For normal use, you select
    the second slowest speed, on both Beta and VHS. But this thing doesn't
    let you record at the second slowest speed! Is this common in VHS?

My general conclusion is that this thing is a disaster.  It has all the
old VHS disadvantages, plus a bunch of new ones.

My questions for the net:

    Is there a VHS (preferably Hifi) deck with anything like Beta
    cueing/editing/searching?  And has anyone done a VHS deck with
    reasonable human interfacing?

Sticking with my Beta stuff for now,
/Rcc