VCRs that will last forever

[Ed in Tx]

Originally Posted by waltchan

Yes, the PV-S4990 has a MTS stereo RF modulator. It has four coaxial inputs/outputs. I do own one, but I never know what a RF modulator does. Would you care to explain?

An MTS stereo modulator puts out a stereo encoded signal on ch 3 or 4. Handy feature for people who insist on hooking up their VCR to the TV with a single RF cable! When I was full-time active in the VCR service biz in the '80s and '90s I had quite a few people over the years come in saying the stereo light on their TV wouldn't light up when they played a tape. I had to explain that the RF modulator in their new stereo VCR was actually mono, and for stereo it would have to be connected to the TV with stereo audio-video cables.

My situation in my house here, I bought a stand-alone MTS Stereo RF modulator to run my C-band satellite and VCR through the rest of the house via a single 75 Ohm coax to the stereo TVs in other rooms.

As far as I know there was never an easy cheap way to produce an MTS stereo modulator which I figure is why they weren't included in any more VCRs. Cost to include MTS stereo encoding was the prohibiting factor best as I can tell. Not aware of any single chip ever developed that would do that.

Originally Posted by waltchan

This year Christmas, my Sharp VC-H98U 8-HEAD 19-micron Hi-Fi MTS Stereo VCR (yes), which is used only on December 25 every year, will see its FINAL year recording 6 hours of memorable Christmas performances from its original analog tuner.

Now if you had that DTV converter box A&V plugged into an MTS stereo modulator then you could feed that RF to your Sharp on Ch 3 or 4 and its tuner wouldn't know the difference! Of course direct would be better quality but the stereo VCR tuner would get used at least!



Do you have a picture of an NEC DS-8500? I thought that was the one that used a Panasonic chassis...??? I know there was at least one NEC that did.

I remember working on a few of those SV-F990 Toshibas. Super fancy elaborate high $$$ machine! (EDIT: The machine I was thinking about is the SV-771 with the optical sensors that automatically slide the door down and cassette tray out as you come near the front with a tape, one sold on eBay a earlier this month.)