You have to comb-filter the incoming video to record it with best quality.

What should be noted is that it is often fairly simple to add an S-Video output to nearly every device which processes chroma and luma seperately. I've heard of people adding S-Video outputs to their old Video 2000 VCRs. (that was an old format primarily found in Germany, it's main feature was a running time of up to 2x8 hours in long play mode and casettes you could turn around)

V2000 was supposed to be the "ultimate" tape format and be better than either VHS or Beta - plus, since its tapes could be turned over, Philips planned to introduce ultra compact portables and camcorders that used a smaller cassette with tape only half the width of the 'main' formats tape. Sophisticated piezoelectric servo tracking video heads were part of the format - they could physically bend to follow the video tracks - as was auto-tracking, neither of which had been seen on any consumer VCR at that time. Philips intended to introduce V2000 to America shortly after the UK and European launches, but Beta's dropping sales numbers and VHS' increasingly stronger sales made them postpone, then abandon all plans to sell the format in the US. Another factor was that Philips had no company to partner with for the US market to help establish the standard, unlike Europe and the UK where they had Grundig as a partner and co-format developer. The tapes are amazing looking because they look like a large audio cassette - of course, that was deliberate and the tapes were labeled "Video Compact Cassette". Philips had manufacturing and reliability problems with various aspects of the format, such as the piezo tracking heads and the tape loading system - the piezo heads became a feature of certain models and not part of the format specs itself. The biggest problem for Philips was that their previous video cassette system, the VCR format, was a huge success and still doing good business. Grundig had even extended the formats market life with SVR, which was an extended play version of the VCR format - incompatible with prior versions, of course. I think 1986 was the last year that Philips sold the V2000 format although they sold blank tapes for it well into the 90's. From looking at eBay's UK site it appears that V2000 had a good amount of prerecorded titles released.

I remember excitedly reading articles about V2000 in Video and Video Review Magazine; in the early 80's not a month went by that one or the other didn't talk about the format and its soon-to-be launch here in America. They also had lots of articles about the VHD Video Disc system, but unlike V2000, I've managed to put together a nice VHD collection of 3D discs and two players.

Well the Grundig Video 2000 VCRs weren't much better. For example one popular model had ultra-cheap plastic plugs for one cable. That cable connected to the end position switches... so if it got loose, which it frequently did, your VCR would ram itself to death.

Then most people used 2x4 hour tape which was amazingly thin. It was not uncommon for it to be even slightly stretched, typically assymetrically.

Other than that perhaps we should have an "Other Formats" topic