I hate to bring this up on a DVD forum, but does anyone record tv programs using SVHS? Is the quality good and have you tried capturing it for converion to VCD or SVCD?

I used to use SVHS quite a bit. It's a good format capable of great video quality. Close to DVD quality, in fact.

But, if you're taping TV programs, the quality of the video obviously isn't going to be any better than the quality of your source. As for digitizing a SVHS recording, it shouldn't be much worse than digitizing the original source.

I use a SVHS to keep programs recorded on my ReplayTV. I'm quite happy with. For technical matters it has a resolution of 400i, versus VHS (240i) and DVD (480i). <--For those who don't have progressive.

i use the format for taping widescreen versions of my fave films that aren't available on DVD. it's a lot better than normal VHS but still want to replace my SVHS with DVDs.

I've used it for about ten years now to tape television series that I want to keep. Much better quality than VHS but with the other drawbacks of tape.

I'm a new SVHS user. I'm impressed with the quality, but the saturation of colors is about the same as standard VHS. SVHS tapes seem to degrade faster and artifacts occur easily (or maybe it's the brand of tape)

I capture VCD's from SVHS, and it works fine, but since I usually reduce the resolution anywys I could probably capture video at similar quality with a standart VHS. I guess SVHS does make it a little sharper.

There are some things I want to record off TV with the best possible quality, and I wanted to look into SVHS, but I'm unfamiliar with the format. Do you need a special type of VCR or set-up? Where can I find the tapes?

I have a Go.Video DDV9556 dual deck VCR.

You'll need a SVHS VCR and SVHS tapes to record in the SVHS format. If your tuner is a digital cable box or a digital satellite box, you'll see a fairly significant improvement in the recorded image quality if you connect the SVHS VCR to the box with a S-Video connector. If you have a regular cable box and you use a composite video connector or, even worse, the RF connector; you'll see a much smaller improvement.

Actually most SVHS vcr's now allow you to use regular VHS tapes to record in SVHS mode. The quality isn't quite as good as using SVHS tapes but it's a lot cheaper. You shouldn't use the lowest quaity VHS tapes of course but using "Hi-fi" tapes gets the job done. But if you really want best quality then use SVHS tapes.