Calling All Cams: Buyer's Guide (page 2)

The folks at JVC, who invented VHS, realized that VHS image quality was not that great. People wanted something better, so they came up with a way of making a new format that was backward compatible, meaning new gear could play old tapes. What they rolled out was Super VHS, or S-VHS. Super VHS uses the same cassette size and the same 1/2-inch tape format, but the tape itself has a higher magnetic coercivity, which means it can hold more information than a regular VHS tape.

The change in the signal recorded to the tape is more remarkable. The bandwidth of the luminance signal is 60 percent broader than that of regular VHS, which means a much more detailed and sharp picture. These changes mean that instead of VHS's 240 lines of resolution, S-VHS can produce as much as 400 lines, well into the range of what is typically called "broadcast quality" (See the Resolving to Understand Resolution sidebar.) The only S-VHS camcorder in the grid is the professional-grade JVC GY-X3U, coming in at just under $5,000.

How do you build a small camcorder with S-VHS tape? You put that "S" tape into a VHS-C style cassette, and voilà, S-VHS-C. While this format's days are probably numbered (JVC is the only company in the grid still making video cameras in this format), there are still a lot of S-VHS-C camcorders and tapes being sold out there. Here are some important things to remember about the S-VHS-C format.

First, the format uses compact S-VHS tapes, which you can recognize by the ST-C prefix. Second, with a cassette adapter, you can play back your compact S-VHS tapes in your S-VHS deck. You can not, however, play them back in your VHS VCR, or in your VHS-C camcorder. The tape is S-VHS not VHS, regardless the size of the cassette. If you are thinking of investing in an S-VHS-C camcorder, keep in mind that you will be one of a few; tape costs are going to remain high ($8 to $10 for a 30-minute tape) because there are not huge numbers of buyers to drive the prices down.

Regular 8mm video is only marginally superior to VHS in picture quality; S-VHS blows 8mm away. Into this fracas, Sony tossed its high-res version of 8mm known as Hi8. Hi8 does a similar shift and expansion of the luminance and chrominance frequencies, so that in the Hi8 format, a camcorder can actually achieve more than 400 lines of horizontal resolution.

Hi8 machines can play back or record on regular 8mm cassettes, but only at regular 8mm resolution. Hi8 also has stereo hi-fi audio. There are quite a few Hi8 camcorders still being sold today, including the least expensive camcorder in the roundup: the Samsung SC-W62 at $250. These models are popular with casual shooters who don't demand the greater resolution or FireWire connectivity of a Mini DV or Digital8 model.

Digital Formats

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