Panasonic PV-D4734S VHS/DVD
 

Picked this up today at a Goodwill in Amish country for $7.99. I looks and plays like new. Remote included and fine. No photo as you all know what it looks like in it's silver glory. Just a dual player with DTS/Dolby hi-fi with no copy ability. VHS record only. I'm watching the Star Trek "Final Frontier" on VHS and it is so clean with no color noise. A "still" is solid with no noise. DVD is the same. Every bit as good as my JVC with a TBC. If I am going to copy to digi this is the deck.

I have a Panasonic DMR-ES35V (link to Youtube video) - a VHS+DVD recorder with built-in time base corrector (TBC). I haven't used its DVD Recorder part, I just only as a makeshift TBC for digitizing VHS tapes.

I could not find a review of this PV to explain anything. But it's still frame at SP speeds is clearly from a frame buffer. Slower speeds do not work that well. I'm not sure if that qualifies as a TBC but it looks good.

I have had three VHS-DVD recorders, all of which have failed apparently in the same way - the DVD recording quit working. I have heard that failure of the laser recording diode after a time was common.

EDit: depending on the unit, it might report that the media was bad, but testing discs on a computer optical drive disproved that.

And another fail, but a sunset fail I have read about. The component and HDMI outpuis fade away. i have several HDMI units that do nothing. ?

Many VCRs had digital freeze frame since the late 1980s, which to me would imply they had a TBC - apparently, not necessarily. For a couple of years in the late 1980s built-in TBC was a hot topic, then quietly faded away, which was double funny with "DIGITAL" written all over many VCRs. I suppose, labels were scared to offer VCRs that would produce a better-than-total-crap copy of a tape.

DV, I forgot the 80's early digi decks. I had a RCA VHS that did the still and a few other tricks all in the still mode. Clearly a frame buffer but does that qualify as a TBC? My PV stills are fine in SP. LP or SLP is not good and may be beyond the I/O range of the buffer. On my PV, the colors are spot on and no noise. I have an off-air 1960 Peter Pan from 1989 and it is perfect. I have the same Peter Pan as a Goodtimes VHS release. That is garbage.

I think we have discussed in another thread that a frame buffer could simply record a mistimed frame without time base correction, and the same as the TV does with normal motion playback, would hide any horizontal bending near the top of the picture above the viewable area.

Yes, we did, yet I still find it a waste of digital resources :)