List of PAL VHS Video Recorders with SLP / EP Mode

[TIMTAPE]

Originally Posted by Maarten

2000 is not to early as VHS Hifi was introduced around 1985.

I think it was JVC, the inventors of VHS who also invented HiFi Stereo. A friend gave me his 1984 JVC HR-D725EA unit, possibly the first HiFi model JVC released. It was packed with features. The Owner's Manual introduction reads:
"Thankyou for purchasing the JVC.... This unit is based on the new HiFi VHS system developed to provide true hifi accompaniment to video entertainment.."

It was a complicated system but when working as intended, VHS HiFi was pretty good. Interestingly, Sony was first with Beta HiFi by a short margin.

[trellis]

Originally Posted by G6Tanuki

I don;t recall any of the major movie-studios making a thing of Hi-Fi audio on their releases.

Interesting you say that, because it doesn't chime with my experience.

I admit I was never a great consumer of pre-recorded material, but I was a relatively early (early '90s) adopter of Hi-Fi Stereo, and apart from 1980s releases I don't recall any commercial VHS releases that didn't have Hi-Fi audio, whether they proclaimed it on the packaging or not. It was just a given, and I'd have been surprised to come across a pre-recorded tape without Hi-Fi audio.

It is true that the Hi-Fi tracks were often dodgy in some way so you had to switch to Linear anyway, and *very* often the actual audio recorded on the Hi-Fi tracks was mono, even on programmes which I know for a fact were made with stereo sound.

I had an uncle that was really into his Hi-Fi, and had a really fancy separates hi-fi setup, posh speaker cables and the like. I couldn't believe it when he went out and bought a linear mono video recorder. I think he just didn't make the connection between "television" and "hi-fi" - they just occupied separate parts of his brain.

[Welsh Anorak]

My old Philips VR723 had the feature to record hi-fi audio only on LP which meant you could record, say, a two-hour play from the radio or a long concert.
Handy when audio cassettes could only do a maximum of 60 minutes unless you had an auto-rerverse deck.

I did use the deck with a Dolby Surround system and the results, although primitive compared to Dolby 7.1 or Atmos were nevertheless impressive for the time if you had an encoded tape - most were.

My installer used to have a rental tape business as well and 'borrowed' an Amstrad double decker from us. You rented the latest release but got the tape in a plain sleeve. No-one seemed to notice it wasn't in hi-fi! Oddly, he didn't seem to have Macrovision problems.

We serviced the machines for a duplicating house (domestic high-end Mitsubishis) and most had worn hi-fi heads but plenty of meat on the video heads. As they catered for the kids' market the heads only got replaced when the pictures suffered.

[trellis]

Originally Posted by TIMTAPE

I think it was JVC, the inventors of VHS who also invented HiFi Stereo. A friend gave me his 1984 JVC HR-D725EA unit, possibly the first HiFi model JVC released. It was packed with features. The Owner's Manual introduction reads:
"Thankyou for purchasing the JVC.... This unit is based on the new HiFi VHS system developed to provide true hifi accompaniment to video entertainment.."

It was a complicated system but when working as intended, VHS HiFi was pretty good. Interestingly, Sony was first with Beta HiFi by a short margin.

I'm sure I read somewhere that initially Beta Hi-Fi was only possible on NTSC because the audio carriers could simply be frequency multiplexed onto the video signal written to tape, so there was no need for a separate pair of audio heads? They had to develop "depth multiplexing" to get Beta Hi-Fi to work with PAL, then JVC copied the technology for VHS.

[Maarten]

If Sony was first by a short margin, say a year or less, JVC would have done much of their own development.

[CathodeBias]

I see you have the Sharp MC-MH715 on the list. I have a Sharp MC-MH815 that supports PAL EP too, still working nicely as well.

[trellis]

Originally Posted by CathodeBias

I see you have the Sharp MC-MH715 on the list. I have a Sharp MC-MH815 that supports PAL EP too, still working nicely as well.

Thanks! I found another one too - the VC-MH835 also has PAL EP support.

I'm thinking about putting the list on an editable wiki somewhere, so it can be updated. Not really sure where to put it though.

[atsampson]

My JVC HR-DVS2EK has PAL EP support, as do the HR-DVS2EU and HR-DVS2EA according to the service manual. It's a 2000-ish S-VHS and Mini DV combo deck.

[trellis]

Originally Posted by atsampson

My JVC HR-DVS2EK has PAL EP support, as do the HR-DVS2EU and HR-DVS2EA according to the service manual. It's a 2000-ish S-VHS and Mini DV combo deck.

Thanks! I've found a few more Panasonic decks that support it too, a couple of which don't have HiFi Stereo audio.