Here's another death blow to the American way of life.
Panasonic is discontinuing the production of SuperVHS video cassette recorders
This is not good !

Last updated December 15, 2007

I've just discovered more bad news. Panasonic is discontinuing the production of S-VHS Video Cassette Recorders. This is not good for several reasons.
Why Panasonic ? Panasonic is one of the three big video manufacturers, the other two are Sony and JVC. I have always used Panasonic VHS and Super VHS recorders and editors for several reasons. For one, Panasonic produced VHS and Super VHS VCR's, and prosumer/industrial VCRs and editors several years before Sony did. When Sony finally did start selling VHS and S-VHS VCR's, they never went into the production type equipment heavily like Panasonic. Sony equipment is generally much more expensive than Panasonic. I have had terrible experiences with the reliability of JVC S-VHS VCRs. These three companies produce most of the VCRs available to the public. Panasonic is really Matsushita, and is also sold as "National" brand in other countries. Panasonic prosumer equipment is more durable and reliable then the consumer versions of similar models, and if purchased from most consumer outlets the consumer versions are usually much more expensive. Many other brands are actually consumer versions with alternate faceplates, made by Matsushita. In my opinion, the best value in affordable VCRs is Panasonic industrial units purchased from discount sources.
Why VHS and S-VHS. The VHS video format is THE de-facto standard. More video titles have been released in VHS than in any other format. VHS and DVDs are the only formats that are available for rental. Except in South America, most people around the world with VCRs have VHS, and have a library of irreplaceable VHS tapes. Super-VHS is an improved VHS format with approximately twice the quality of VHS. S-VHS VCRs can record and play back both S-VHS and regular VHS tapes. VHS and S-VHS are very affordable, offer long recording times, and can be recorded at lesser quality to achieve very long recording times.
VHS and S-VHS can record up to three hours at full quality, or nine hours at reduced quality. These formats are very affordable. VHS costs about $1/hour at full quality (SP mode), and 33 cents/hour in lower quality mode (SLP mode). S-VHS costs about $3/hour in SP, and $1/hour in SLP. In Japan, S-VHS tapes cost half as much !
Many people buy VHS VCR's for less than $300. I don't recommend this as these "cheapie" VCRs don't last very long when used heavily, and don't have as good picture and sound quality.
For decades I have been using and recommending Panasonic industrial VCRs. As a home recorder I have been very happy with the Panasonic AG 1980 S-VHS VCRs, and this is the unit I tell people to get. They have built-in Time Base Correctors, and superb quality. No VCR will last forever, their mechanisms are quite complicated and fragile. Eventually we will all need a new VCR. Industrial VCRs last much longer
Panasonic spent their engineering time working on improved formats and never improved on the AG 1980. Now they are discontinuing S-VHS entirely. I'm not sure of Sony is still making S-VHS VCRs. Some friends have a Sony  S-VHS VCR and have had a lot of trouble with it.
Recordable DVDs and the DV format are the current logical replacements for VHS and S-VHS. The Panasonic AG-DV2000 DV VCR is a great replacement for the AG-1980. There are some problems with this. The DV2000 is 2-1/2 times as expensive as the AG-1980. DV tapes are much more expensive than S-VHS, and are not available locally. You may never be able to rent DV format movies, they are not available now. If they do become available, it may be decades before as many titles are available on DV as are now available on DVD. You can rent DVDs, but so far at least 10 times as many titles have been released in VHS as on DVD.

You can no longer find Panasonic AG-1980 VCRs. Panasonic sells only one S-VHS VCR. It is made by JVC whose VCRs break very quickly, and have lower quality. This VCR has few features such as a built in time base corrector and normal controls. While a Panasonic VCR lasts me a decade, a JVC VCR lasts only a year. And tapes recorded on it do not track in other VCRs. I have had a lot of problems with JVC equipment breaking quickly.

What should you do about your valuable irreplaceable libraries of VHS and S-VHS tapes ? Copying them all to DV tapes while you still have a working S-VHS VCR is a good idea. Hopefully the DV format will will last longer then the S-VHS format has. I'm not sure how long its shelf life is, but since they're digital, with two DV VCRs you can copy your DV's every decade to make them last forever. Unfortunately Mini-DV cassettes are only 60 minutes long while S-VHS tapes can be 160 minutes long, and these cost the same. Also, because of the tape size and speed, Mini-DV tapes are not as durable as S-VHS tapes.
DVD's have a long shelf life, and blanks are rapidly dropping in price. DVDs look great and are very convenient, but due to their incredibly high compression rates, they don't have all the quality of the DV format, or S-VHS tapes.

Note that Panasonic no longer personally services its own VHS S-VHS VCR's. Nikon no longer services its own cameras built before the 1990s. These may well be a sign of a failing economy, or that service is no longer to be expected, and planned obsolescence is the rule rather than the exception.

In 2007 I have seen some disturbing trends involving DVD recorders. Early this year DVD recorders were being sold with larger and larger hard drives. This allows you to edit video before making the DVD. You can cut out parts, and add other parts together. You can also make many copies to DVDs form the hard drive. Unfortunately the ability to record continuously like a TIVO unit, so you can record something to tape or DVD that you just saw but would have otherwise missed, was never included. Now it seems hard drives are being phased out. DVD recorders are no longer including volume controls. Normally, when you record something to video, or an audio tape, you adjust the volume so that the loudest places will not cause distortion. Without this feature, ALC is used. Automatic Level Control can sometimes be good, but not usually. For example, I recorded some rare rocket launch video with natural sound to a DVD with ALC. During the parts when the recording was very quiet, ALC turned up the volume until the background noise was so loud that it hurt to listen to it. ALC removed dynamic range so that the quiet parts are as loud as the loudest parts. The manufacturers want to save money by not including this standard control. They think people are no longer smart enough to make this adjustment that people have been making since sound recording first became available. Also, they don't want people copying their old tapes and expect people to use only digital sources. When you copy from a digital source, if the DVD recorder has this input, the ALC is disabled so the original dynamic range is not lost. But if you record from VHS or S-VHS or other analog formats, or with a microphone, your dynamic range will be destroyed.
Another inexplicable trend is that DVD players are now being sold with no S-Video output. It is only very recently that televisions and monitors have included "S-Video" inputs. The quality achieved using this type of signal is much better than with the now obsolete "Video" signal, and most people still don't know this. Many people still use the super low quality RF type of signal to distribute or copy television signals.The new digital firewire and SDI type of signals are the best, but no VCRs and few televisions and monitors have this type of input. The very confused manufacturers such as Sony are eliminating the S-Video output in favor of analog component signals. This is of slightly better quality than the S-Video signal, but the low quality of DVDs are not improved very much with it. And one cannot easily distribute this signal, which requires three separate wires, through their homes or businesses. Also, no VCRs, and few TV's and monitors can use this signal. It would be absurd to wire a home to distribute analog composite signals when Firewire has already made them obsolete. I have never seen distribution amplifiers, splitters, switchers, or even long cables for analog composite. And analog VCRs also do now have firewire or SDI inputs or outputs. Composite signals are OK for going directly from a DVD player to a TV or monitor, but they don't work if your DVD player is centrally located, or if you pass the DVD signal through your VCR, as most people do. By passing the DVD player through your VCR, you can send a video tape, DVD or television signal to your TVs/monitors, and you can record these signals without changing the wiring.

Another bad trend is the inclusion of a detector of copyrighted source material. I had made a DVD for a friend that showed a moment from a copyrighted DVD. With this feature, the moment of copyrighted material did not record onto the DVD and was lost. This is annoying especially since it is completely legal to do this.

There are two other disturbing trends with DVD recorders, and DVD players. One is the reliability. I have suspected that the reason manufacturers are no longer making VCRs is because they are difficult to manufacture and have never been very reliable. DVD players are much cheaper and easier to make. But now I find and hear from others that DVD players may work for only a year, or even a few months. I had an Akai DVD recorder that lasted only 2 months. Most DVD players and recorders last only a year with frequent use. First they stop playing DVD-R's. Then they won't record. Then they won't play copyguarded (Macrovision) DVDs, and finally they don't work at all. This year I had two Panasonic VCR repairs, and one Pioneer DVD recorder repair. Even though a DVD recorder is very simple inside, and is repaired by replacing parts, it cost twice as much as repairing a VCR. I suspect that manufacturers now expect people to replace all their DVDs with Blu Ray High Definition disks, and give up their DVDs. This is very annoying, especially since so few high definition titles are available. I have started to collect Blu Ray disks, but have only found 6 titles so far that were appealing to me. While there are tens of millions of titles, only tens of thousands are available on DVD, and only about 50 on Blu Ray. Note that Blu Ray disks are better than HD DVD. One reason is that Blu Ray disks hold more data and so the quality is higher, and longer titles can be recorded. A HD DVD only holds 15 GB on a single layer disk, or 30 GB on a dual layer disk. Blu Ray holds 25 and 50. Also, Blu Ray -R disks are available and so are computer drives, so you can back up lots of data, or record your own high def if you have the source material and right software. A Blu- Ray drive will record and play Blu Ray disks including High Def movies, as well as DVD-R's and CD-R's. Drives and blank media are not yet available for HD DVD's.

Another feature lacking in DVD recorders is the ability to record high quality dual layer video DVD-R's. All commercial video releases are on Dual layer DVDs. A single layer DVD holds 4.7 GB of data, while a dual layer DVD holds twice as much. This is one reason why commercial DVDs look better than home recorded ones. They are recorded at twice the data rate. When you have a DVD recorder, you can record only one hour at this quality level. When you record a 2 hour DVD it cuts the data rate in half, and forces you to use Dolby sound instead of the far superior 48 kHz 16 bit PCM stereo audio of one hour DVD-R's.. It should be that with new DVD recorders that will record to a dual layer DVD-R, we should be able to record a two hour DVD at this same quality level. When I call Sony, Panasonic or Pioneer, the major manufacturers of DVD recorders, they can't even tell me if these machines will do this. Their sales people no longer know anything about their products or the technology, and do not have this information available. One would think they were sales people from Circuit City stores. After hours of phone calls I did eventually find that none of these DVD recorders will do this.

Here is another problem with Blu Ray disks. These disks hold a lot of data and are very fast. I would like to use them to record and play higher quality Standard Definition (NTSC) video. A Mini-DV tape records at 25 MB per second for the quality. A two hour single layer DVD records at only .65 MB per second. That's less than 3/4 MB/sec. No wonder the quality is so bad. When I produce video on my nonlinear editing system it is at 7 MB/sec, and at that rate the quality looks great. I would like to record at this rate to Blu Ray disks. This would allow an hour to be recorded on a single layer Blu Ray disk, or two hours on a dual layer disk. I do not think this ability had been included in the design of Blu Ray disks, or any recorders or players. Another great use would be to record more video at the same quality as a DVD. This would allow over 10 hours on a single layer disk, or 20 hours on a dual layer disk. They would be great for buying TV series on DVD, or collecting, or for multi angle disks. But again, I don't think anyone in the industry wants us to continue to use standard definition (NTSC) video, even though there are millions of TV shows and made for TV movies that exist only in NTSC.  Apparently all the manufacturers want us to do is constantly buy new equipment, with no regard for our desires, past investments, or huge video collections. I can tell you I am not ready to switch to High Definition. For one, so few titles are available. For another, I have so many irreplaceable NTSC videos. And for me to switch would cost at least $200,000. I am not able to make that kind of investment now. It was only a few years ago that high quality digital NTSC production became affordable. To replace my non linear editor with high definition (1080P), would cost about $50,000. To replace my two digital DVCPro editors with High Definition would cost about $50,000 each. To replace all my TV's and monitors with 1080P would cost about $20,000. Digital high definition tapes cost about $ 50 an hour. Professional high definition video cameras start at about $50,000 each. A video camera without interchangeable lenses is not professional. Most, if not all prosumer high def video cameras do not have true 1080P. Lenses for professional 1080P video cameras start at about $5000 each and go up from there. There are no consumer home 1080P recorders yet, although Blu Ray HD recorders should become available soon. For now, you cannot record 1080P programming.
Another thing I think they have neglected in designing high definition disks is a standard for 3-D movies. This may also be something neglected in the design of 1080P. It is field sequential 3-D. Field sequential 3-D is the best 3-D you can view at home. It requires special glasses that have LCD shutters that are synchronized to the video signal. It works really well with NTSC, and DVDs. There are over 100 3-D movies including such titles as Alfred Hitchcock's "Dial M for Murder" and Andy Warhol's Frankenstein.. I have over 15 Filed Sequential 3-D movies in my collection, Progressive scan and high definition both will help to produce great 3-D Blu-ray disks. But it will take another 3-D fad to bring these back to the market. Will they work with Blu Ray disks ?.I would really love to see a high def 3-D version of "The Mind's Eye" on Blu-Ray.

Playing field sequential 3-D in NTSC is really easy and inexpensive. You connect a small box between the VCR or DVD player, and the monitor. The glasses connect to this box either with wires, or wirelessly. Then you put on the glasses and play the 3-D video. It is awesome.