S-VHS Tapes - Worth the extra?

YorkshireBoy

We've had a Panasonic S-VHS video for 3 years or so, but have always used standard tapes (don't ask!). We now need to replace the tapes with new, so...

1/ Are they worth the extra premium over standard tapes?

2/ Dixons have them at £9.99 for 3 x 3 hours - is this a good price?

Joe_Bloggs

The picture quality improvement should be evident so it would be worth a small trial, just to see whether it was worth paying for the S in SVHS. My SVHS player has an extended play feature that can make a four hour SVHS tape into a twelve hour VHS effort (JVC) . Not bad for a few mindless soaps whilst on holiday. My local newsagent can beat Dixons but they are 'into' recordable media. These days hard disk recorders with 40+ hours are available for time shift recordings.
J_B.

joshm_2

I also have a JVC S-VHS ET unit and use the ET feature with standard tapes, S-VHS tapes and also standard tapes (for when I am recording for someone else).

The difference between normal VHS and S-VHS/S-VHS ET is very noticeable in my opinion, but it probably also depends on the size of your screen and how fussy a viewer you are. Technically I think it doubles the resolution (recording 480 lines instead of 240) so there's quite an advantage (PAL broadcasts 625 lines I think, so you can see that 240 is pretty woeful).

You could probably get cheaper elsewhere but the convenience of Dixons and the relatively small saving may mean that it's ok to buy at Dixons (not something I'd normally condone ).

JoshM