405 line video of Test Card C recorded on JVC3320

[peter scott]

This recording shows the definition available for 405 line operation on VHS. The stability at the top of the scan is a bit wobbly but the drop-out performance of the old 3320 is pretty good. You will see that I'm cheating slightly with both buttons pressed in on the Sony 9-90 i.e. this is 405 UHF. You might need to select 1080 HD on your Youtube player settings.

Peter

[ppppenguin]

VHS luminance bandwidth is 2.5 to 3MHz. This is fairly rubbish on 625 but pretty good on 405.

[`FRANK.C]

Hi Peter
Your 3320 is doing very well. It is giving a great crisp picture.

Frank

[peter scott]

Thanks Frank, It's a bit wobbly. I've added a second half showing the same recording played back on a Panasonic NV FS90B. More stable but worse on drop-outs.
https://youtu.be/IzPPVSOS61s

Peter

[ppppenguin]

For those not familiar with recording 405 on VHS, the dropout compensator makes things worse, not better. This is because it replaces a whole line of 625 with the previous line. This will be a partial line on 405.

Before we had readily available 625 to 405 converters, 405 VHS tapes were a valuable source of signals for vintage TVs. Now they are no more than a curiosity. Many years ago I recovered some old 405 recordings where the 625 originals weren't available. I did it optically, with a camera pointed at a monitor. Worked better than it had any right to do. Now I can do it electronically, though I haven't proven that my converter is OK in the presence of jittery tapes, dropouts etc.

[peter scott]

VHS luminance bandwidth is 2.5 to 3MHz. This is fairly rubbish on 625 but pretty good on 405.

I tried playing 3320 tape into a television that has 3MHz bandwidth but if there was any on the recording it was very faint on the TV screen.

Peter

[`FRANK.C]

Hi Peter
I just googled "Panasonic NV FS90B" and it looks a relativity modern machine.
For a modern machine it is doing a good job of 405 playback.
I have been on the lookout for a machine that will record and play back 405. I have tried a couple of modern ones without any success.
None would record properly as for playback it is difficult to say as I have not got a good 405 recording.
Lately I have picked up a 3V30 but have not had any time yet to try it out.
I am expecting that it will record and play back 405 if it is working so I may soon have a good 405 tape.

Frank

[peter scott]

Hi Peter
I just googled "Panasonic NV FS90B" and it looks a relativity modern machine.
For a modern machine it is doing a good job of 405 playback.
I have been on the lookout for a machine that will record and play back 405. I have tried a couple of modern ones without any success.
None would record properly as for playback it is difficult to say as I have not got a good 405 recording.
Frank

I bought the FS90B in 1993.

Perhaps this isn't a fair test but I just fed the video output of my Aurora into the FS90B and recorded it. The playback looked very good except for the odd drop-out. It looked very similar to the FS90B playing the 3320 recording in the second part of this video https://youtu.be/IzPPVSOS61s

To get the Aurora converting instead of simply generating TCC I then fed it with 625 line video from my camcorder and the FS90B was perfectly happy recording the 405 line converted video signal which looked just as good as the TCC on playback. So you would be able to make a good 405 recording with the Hedghog.

Peter

[Murphyv310]

Hi
I have to say some VCRs are excellent on 405 and your recordings are very good indeed.
When I had the RT Russell TCD I recorded NTSC 405 which played back fine obviously without the normal processing for a PAL composite signal, no doubt there would be hue errors but my 405 line colour TV project was long gone by then.

[ppppenguin]

I'm surprised the NTSC 405 played well. One of the big problems with direct colour on VTRs (as against colour under) is that the subcarrier frequency jitters too much for the crystal based burst locked oscillator in the TV. I've seen this with PAL recordings on near-broadcast grade VTRs. They had the frequency response to record the whole PAL signal but needed a specialised timebase corrector to stabilise the subcarrier frequency.