VHS camcorders, the lot of em.

[Beauregard42]

Just popping back on for a moment to say hi to yall. I just got my RCA CC300 camcorder working yesterday evening, and I just wanted to post something about it, since I'm excited.        

Update: I put on a battery, and the thing stopped working. Yep. So, time to order a new one and use parts from it or something to fix this thing. I SHANT GIVE UP THE SCOPE IS MY SAVIOR

[CaptDon]

I gave away a Panasonic VHS self-contained camcorder at a U.S. hamfest. Many years back I had a real piece of N.T.S.C. camera junk. It was called 'MyVideo' which I nick-named 'My-Shit-Eo' because I don't think it could even do 250 line resolution. It was bad at best.

[Beauregard42]

Well, I don't know what was up with your camcorder, but maybe it was a crappy model or something, because standard NTSC is 480 interlaced lines (240 every 60th of a second, once even, then odd) , with 45 lines of over-scan and retrace/blanking. In any case, VHS is NOT the format you want to use for anything you might call high-quality, except for audio, in which you can get absolutely perfect sound with it, except if there's wrinkles. But, I just use it because it's cool, and has the benefit of being contained in a big chunky plastic case, so you can hardly lose the things, and you can't accidentally delete the thing all at once. And I just like feeling the giant machine whirring on my shoulder, it gives me the sense that something is actually happening, work is being done, to put whatever the eye of the camcorder is seeing onto magnetic tape.

[coromonadalix]

Beta is the king 

[Beauregard42]

Beta is not really much better than VHS, mainly because they got rid of Beta SP mode, but if you can smack your Beta VCR enough times to make it go into SP mode, then that works for you. I've been keeping my eyeballs peeled for Beta tapes or machines, but I never see diddly squat. Just VHS machines and tapes, and even those are pretty rare nowadays. I bet that Beta SP would be less noisy than VHS SP, but I don't know what encoding scheme Beta uses to put the video signal onto tape. If you can give me the tech specs, then I'd be happy to change my opinions around.

[wasedadoc]

Well, I don't know what was up with your camcorder, but maybe it was a crappy model or something, because standard NTSC is 480 interlaced lines (240 every 60th of a second, once even, then odd) , with 45 lines of over-scan and retrace/blanking.

When the spec of a VTR/VCR/Camcorder says "x lines resolution" it is referring to the horizontal (NOT vertical) luminance resolution. The number of individual dots or vertical lines that can be distinguished across the screen width. 250 is the typical figure for a VHS machine. Nothing to do with the 480 or 575 visible scan lines in NTSC or PAL/SECAM respectively.  Video8 is very similar resolution.  S-VHS (originally called Super VHS) and Hi-8 extended it to about 400.

[switchabl]

Beta is not really much better than VHS, mainly because they got rid of Beta SP mode, but if you can smack your Beta VCR enough times to make it go into SP mode, then that works for you. I've been keeping my eyeballs peeled for Beta tapes or machines, but I never see diddly squat. Just VHS machines and tapes, and even those are pretty rare nowadays. I bet that Beta SP would be less noisy than VHS SP, but I don't know what encoding scheme Beta uses to put the video signal onto tape. If you can give me the tech specs, then I'd be happy to change my opinions around.

In my experience when people talk about "Beta SP" in relation to camcorders, they usually mean Betacam SP which is quite different from Betamax and does look significantly better (component video vs. composite and faster tape speed). So there is a lot of confusion around that.

Betamax camcorders were a thing at one point but I don't know that they ever got much traction.

[Beauregard42]

Ah, yes. Thank you for the clarification. I always get confused about that EXACT thing, vertical vs horizontal resolution in analog formats. I usually specify which axis I am referring to, but I think if I had to make a system without the use of 'horizontal' and 'vertical' then I would use (scan) lines for the vertical, and dots, details, or something like that for horizontal.

[Beauregard42]

Yes, I know about the differences between Betacam and Betamax. In this case I was referring to the deprecated Betamax SP

[shakalnokturn]

Beta is the king

Naaah! V2000 was the way to go...

(I too enjoy reigniting burried standards wars  It's a bit like Amiga 500 Vs. Atari 520, makes me feel younger for a few minutes.)

[Beauregard42]

ROTFL. It makes me feel older than I am, since I am 15.