Hi there, I'm new to this board, and I came here because it seems like there are a few 30k owners on here.

Last December, I bought a 30k on eBay. The seller sold it to me with nine TDK DF-360 tapes and a 4-year service contract with Best Buy, which is good until March of next year. I made some HD recordings via FireWire using my Scientific Atlanta 4250HD provided by Time Warner. Every tape I recorded played back with frequent audio dropouts. I knew it was the playback heads because when I would rewind and play the same section of tape it would play fine. I took the deck to BB to have it serviced.

I got the deck back yesterday, and to see if BB fixed the problem, I used two different recordings that I made before I had the deck serviced. The first was of "Howard TV This Week", a half-hour program that airs on MOJO HD which is a "free preview" of the Howard Stern Show. I have several episodes of this show on a tape and it played back flawlessly. Next, I tried a recording of the movie The Dream Team recorded from Universal HD. I got frequent audio dropouts AND picture noise simultaneously.

I have searched posts on this site trying to see if anyone has come up with the solution to the dropout issue and I haven't found anything. So my questions are: Why would one tape play fine and the next playback with dropouts? Could it have anything to do with the difference in frame rate? A difference between the two channels? Has anyone tried to send the deck to JVC for the firmware upgrade and did that fix the problem? Can BB do anything further to fix the problem?

Thanks in advance.

Hi there, I'm new to this board, and I came here because it seems like there are a few 30k owners on here.

Last December, I bought a 30k on eBay. The seller sold it to me with nine TDK DF-360 tapes and a 4-year service contract with Best Buy, which is good until March of next year. I made some HD recordings via FireWire using my Scientific Atlanta 4250HD provided by Time Warner. Every tape I recorded played back with frequent audio dropouts. I knew it was the playback heads because when I would rewind and play the same section of tape it would play fine. I took the deck to BB to have it serviced.

I got the deck back yesterday, and to see if BB fixed the problem, I used two different recordings that I made before I had the deck serviced. The first was of "Howard TV This Week", a half-hour program that airs on MOJO HD which is a "free preview" of the Howard Stern Show. I have several episodes of this show on a tape and it played back flawlessly. Next, I tried a recording of the movie The Dream Team recorded from Universal HD. I got frequent audio dropouts AND picture noise simultaneously.

I have searched posts on this site trying to see if anyone has come up with the solution to the dropout issue and I haven't found anything. So my questions are: Why would one tape play fine and the next playback with dropouts? Could it have anything to do with the difference in frame rate? A difference between the two channels? Has anyone tried to send the deck to JVC for the firmware upgrade and did that fix the problem? Can BB do anything further to fix the problem?

Thanks in advance.

Unfortunetly the consensus of most people on this board seems to be that the JVC decks suffer a lot of issues with recording, and the tape mechanism sucks compared to the Mits decks. I use a Mits 1100 and do get the occasional small dropout in video/audio, but they are few and far apart(maybe 10 in a 2hr bball game). The only bummer with the Mits is that it doesn't have an MPEG2 decoder on it, and only outputs the HD via firewire, so you have to have a TV/display device with firewire(aka S400, D-Net, i-Link) inputs. I'm getting a 30k from another poster whose deck won't play tapes anymore, all i'm going to use it for is to get it to output via component. Routing the firewire out from the mits to the firewire in on the 30k, and the component output of the 30k to any HD display device. I won't have my DLP TV forever, and this is a niche technology so i want a way to get output over component so i can use with my next TV and/or be able to bring the VCRs to another location and watch my HD DVHS stuff.

Sorry I can't be of more help on your specific problem with the 30k, did you try a head-cleaning tape?

Unfortunetly the consensus of most people on this board seems to be that the JVC decks suffer a lot of issues with recording, and the tape mechanism sucks compared to the Mits decks.
But here's the thing, it's not a RECORDING issue, it's a PLAYBACK issue. Like I said, when I rewound the section of tape where the dropout happened, it played back fine the second time, so it's clearly an issue with the playback heads, not the recording heads. I looked at Mitsubishi decks, but since my TV doesn't have FireWire in, I got the JVC.

i'm going to use it for is to get it to output via component. Routing the firewire out from the mits to the firewire in on the 30k, and the component output of the 30k to any HD display device. I won't have my DLP TV forever, and this is a niche technology so i want a way to get output over component so i can use with my next TV and/or be able to bring the VCRs to another location and watch my HD DVHS stuff.
That seems like a waste to me to spend money on a deck just to use it as a pass through. I actually like the idea of D-VHS because it allows me to store HD footage on something tangible, rather than recording it to a DVR or my computer's hard drive. Call me old fashioned that way. I guess I should start looking at D-VHS as a transitional medium until an HD-DVD or Blu-Ray set top recorder becomes affordable.

Sorry I can't be of more help on your specific problem with the 30k, did you try a head-cleaning tape?
One would think that BB cleaned the heads when it was serviced, no? Also, why would one tape playback fine and the other playback with dropouts? That doesn't indicate to me that the heads are dirty. It's another issue that I'm not aware of.

I've had the heads replaced on my 30k 5 times under an extended warrenty with sears. Each time I sent it in, sears sent it to jvc and they replaced the heads. Once I sent it to sears, they sent it to jvc, new heads were put in. I got it back, tapes that I recorded on mu mits 2000 still had audio dropouts on the 30k, but play perfectly on my 2 mits decks. So I sent it back and jvc, they replaced the heads again with only 30 minutes use on the others. Guess what, sears has it again. If I get it back and everthing works and something other than heads fixed the problem, I'll anounce it loud and clear. If it still has the same issues I'll use it for dtheater tapes and that wil be it for me and jvc.

I dont think it has anything to do with the JVC unit. I had the HM3000U unit for a few years, and noticed the audio dropouts just with pass through with firewire. I was using my SA8300HD. Video was always absolutley perfect on any channel. I concluded it was the cable box and not the JVC.

For example, DiscoveryHD doesnt even output any sound over the firewire. THe HD channels would have intermittent audio drops for split second and would occur randomly. I noticed though HD channels that werent in 5.1 would have no audio dropouts.

To me this has to do with cable company and perhaps the firmware/software on the cable box. Maybe even something to do with copyright managment.

Video was always exact copy of HD channel. Audio dropout would get recorded to.

I got rid of my JVC and all my movies

I still have 10 new sealed JVC DVHS tapes in case anyone is interested.

http://i37.photobucket.com/albums/e57/tn001d/DSC02869.jpg

I think I can give you some feedback on this matter. I have written several posts on this exact issue. I have 5 DVHS units including two 3000's, a 5U and two Mits2000 units. I am also an active DVHS archiver with a closet full of recorded material.

The audio dropout issue is longstanding with the 3000. Apparently it has something to do with the way the unit buffers audio streamed off the head.. Any deviations in the input stream from certain parameters will cause random, brief audio drops. They are unpredictable and are more likely to happen on certain channels than others (this seems to vary from user to user).

Now the way I have pretty much eliminated this is to load the tapes into the Mits2000...use it to stream the information by firewire to the JVC3000, the 3000 has an mpeg2 converter that then provides my displays with component output. This pretty much eliminated the random drops, although tape glitches can still be present.

I have two mits slaved to 3000. I picked up the Mits units new in box for abut $90 each a while back from ABC warehouse. My cable company has everything pretty much copy free so I use these units quite a bit.

Anyway...I hope this helps.

That seems like a waste to me to spend money on a deck just to use it as a pass through.

You got another way to store HD programs that are "Copy-Once" with a removable media? DVRs won't output "copy-once" over firewire to PC. It is near impossible to find an HDTV these days with firewire inputs. If I did I would be severly limited in my choices.

I guess you could go the TiVO route, but I'm not doing that just yet. And that wouldn't help the stuff I already have on DVHS tapes.

Agreed it does suck, but I already own the Mits and got a decent deal on it awhile back.

Well, given all of the comments here, it seems that the 30k is poorly designed. I can't believe that JVC would put out a deck that doesn't playback the tapes properly. I'm getting rid of it as soon as I can get my hands on a Mitsubishi deck. I also found a FireWire to Component converter made by ADS for a reasonable amount to use with the Mitsubishi once I get it.

Unfortunetly the consensus of most people on this board seems to be that the JVC decks suffer a lot of issues with recording, and the tape mechanism sucks compared to the Mits decks.

Actually, JVCs don't have issues with recording, per se. There have an unreliable transport mechanism, but there are no issues recording if it works. :)

The issue is with playback. If you rewind after hearing an audio drop out, you will not likely get another drop out in the same location again.

The reason to use a Mitsu->JVC combo is because the MPEG decoder in the JVC is reliable and in a 5U is very good (versus something like the standalone mentioned) and it lets you play the few DTheater tapes out there (we still watch Ice Age on DTheater every once in awhile, for example).