Professional or Consumer Video Recorders & Players (VHS PAL)

Hi, can you please provide me with a list of make (Sony, Panasonic etc) & models of Professional or Consumer Video Recorders & Players (VHS PAL) that has the following specific Technical Specifications:
S-Video Input /Outputs, Component Input /Outputs (not composite!) video - separate feeds for R, G and B - combined with an built-in timebase corrector. (TBC)
Further to this, would you be able to provide a link to download pdf format for User Manuals of aforementioned legacy make & models of Professional or Consumer Video Recorders & Players (VHS PAL)?
I trust you find this satisfactory and i keenly await your reply?

Kind Regards

I don't think anyone has that "list" readily available. You'll need to start searching the web and gathering information.

Well if nothing else you're certainly optimistic.

#1 - You're looking for 40+ year old equipment here that for consumer units wasn't made to last say 15 years even under occasional use. The professional equipment was much heartier but still there's the age factor as well as the MILEAGE placed on those machines.

#2 - S-video gave marginal improvement over composite connections and finding a working PAL machine with S-Video terminals, again given age & mileage, is doubtful.

#3 - No consumer unit of this vintage will have built in TBC. Commercial units, perhaps, but almost never on VHS machines. U-Matic 3/4" (broadcast) machines may have it but the units we use have TBC downrange from the machine itself and the PAL VHS players here don't / won’t have it. Broadcast 3/4" tape has 250 lines and some units may have had separate RGB separation but you're talking about a $3500 deck as opposed to an $80 consumer unit.

#4 - These tapes had only 240 lines of resolution to start with meant to play on 4x3 CRT screens and they look wonderful playing on that native destination. The problem here comes from showing that 640x480 field on say a 1920x1080 field. Has to 'stretch' close to 7x to fit and winds up looking like absolute Hell. Similar to turning a bandana into a bed spread. It's doable but you're not going to be comfortable with the results.

From the reading I take it you have tapes you’re trying to recover digitally. From a practical standpoint how much time do you expect to spend doing this from ancient analog media that can’t realistically be improved all that much visually no matter how much pixie dust or FCP plugins you throw at it. I suggest farming them out to someone who already has the equipment. Shouldn’t cost more than $25 per unit, less with shorter playing time.
- - - - -
These pics illustrate the ratios you’re dealing with and the quality to be expected showing 480 material on a 1080 display. It’s of a 1080HD transfer of 55 year old 8mm movie film.
1) Std 4x3 480 resolution.
2) Scaled to match the image size from a 1080 transfer.
3) Overscan area captured that was missing from another outfits transfer.
4) The full image in 1080.