Hello again, and welcome back to our continuing examination of what's going on in video and how it affects you, minus the hype and drivel you get in the video comics. In fact, one of the aims of this column is to take an 'alternative' look at video and give you some insights you probably won't read elsewhere. Unlike some of the 'straight' video magazines, we can truthfully claim to be totally unbiased in our approach and in our reporting. We don't rely on block advertising bookings from prime video manufacturers and we can say what we think about equipment without fear or favour. That's enough of the sermon, let's get down to business.

One of the questions asked most frequently is whether the time is yet right to get into video and if so, which make or system to get. After all you are probably talking about spending £400 or £500 if you intend to buy your machine, and you don't want to make any mistake when you spend that sort of money. So where do you go for this sort of advice? Your High Street photo/hi-fi store? The discount warehouse just outside town? Or that rather upmarket video and hi-fi 'studio' twenty miles away that advertises in all the magazines? Chances are, if you go and ask in each place you'll get a different answer in each. And will any of the answers be right? Will they accord with the idea you had already got from seeing the advertisements on TV? Bewildering isn't it?!

In theory, any shop which claims to be a specialist in this sort of thing ought to be a good source of friendly advice, but I sometimes wonder. It never fails to amaze me how some of the most video-orientated stores, even in London's Tottenham Court Road, can demonstrate such badly adjusted TV sets. Ghosty pictures, over-saturated colours, noisy signals, well you may know what I mean... I wouldn't buy a set in a shop where they clearly couldn't be bothered (or don't even know how) to put on a decent display. And when they demonstrate video recorders on one of these poorly adjusted receivers it's no wonder you'll see some pretty misleading results. I suppose it's fair game to display recordings on a 13" Trinitron (any picture looks sharper and brighter on a small screen) but when you hear salesmen say one manufacturer's VHS machine gives much clearer pictures than a rival VHS machine it makes you wonder, as they say. Many salesmen are on commission (it keeps them on their toes) and it stands to reason that they'll try and sell you a more expensive machine if they sense a big credit card burning in your pocket. Fortunately not all shops are like this!

But what's the real truth? How do the various makes and systems compare? What follows now is an honest and unbiased opinion. It's only an opinion and I respect the fact that you are entitled to your own opinion, even if, say, you are in fact mistaken. Straightaway I will repeat something I said before — on the video marketplace now there are no 'cowboy' makes. If you buy any current production home video system you cannot really go wrong. You may spend too much or miss out on some features you could have had for the same price on another model, but you won't buy rubbish. Shops cannot afford to sell rogue makes: they don't want customers coming back to the shop making a scene and demanding £500 back nor in fact do they want to see the machine back for an expensive service job until at least a month after the free maintenance guarantee has run out. In terms of quality, then, no manufacturer stands out as a rogue nor, for that matter, as spotless. I repeat, there is no rubbish on the market. Mind you, some manufacturers, e.g. Philips, get top marks for supporting their products with a good spares backup for a long time after they are obsolete, and some of the Japanese manufacturers have acquired a nasty reputation for spare parts which are either pricey or totally unavailable for months. Do, however, avoid buying cheap obsolete or professional systems which appear to be a bargain.

So your choice is down to the machine's styling, features and price, and also its 'format'. The first three of these I leave to your judgement, but you may need a bit of guidance on the format or system, which is quite important really. There are three formats or types of machine currently in production. All of them use tape which is ½" wide but the way in which they record picture and sound signals on the tape differs fundamentally, so that a tape recorded in one format will not play back on a machine belonging to another format group. This is what they mean by compatibility — whereas any audio cassette you buy will play in your home cassette recorder, whatever its make, there is not the same sort of interchangeability with video cassettes. No format is the exclusive province of a single manufacturer: the manufacturers line up into opposing camps depending on which format they have signed up with, and the originators of each format are delighted to admit new members to their 'club', knowing that they could never achieve total market saturation alone.

These three formats are VHS, Beta and Video 2000. VHS or Video Home System can, through its penetration of the rental market, claim 70% of the British home video market and no. 1 in the world status. These figures do rather speak for themselves. For instance, blank and recorded tapes are plentiful and competitively priced, and if you want to swap tapes with people at work you had better go for VHS as the chances are that this is the one they have got. Picture quality ranges from acceptable to pretty good but never as good as broadcast TV. If you look closely at the screen of a TV set replaying a VHS tape you will see a noticeable fuzziness or lack of very fine detail and the picture is covered with countless tiny specks of random colours known technically as colour noise. From normal viewing distances you won't notice these defects and the pictures are subjectively very good. You can record up to four hours on a single tape with VHS now.

VHS was developed by JVC and is supported by many manufacturers. Not among them is Sony, since Sony originated the main rival system. This is called Beta. Technically Beta and VHS share many similarities, so you would expect results to be more or less equal. They are, although the best VHS pictures I have seen had a slight edge on the best Beta results. Tape costs are comparable and you can record up to 3¼ hours on one tape. The number of manufacturers making Beta format recorders is smaller and thus you will have less choice, though no shortage of features. Prices are very competitive.

VHS and the Beta format both originated in Japan; the third is the European alternative. It was developed jointly by Philips and Grundig to keep a segment of the European market for European suppliers. Some people say it has arrived too late to do this, but it does stand a very good chance of success in continental Europe, where they tend to be more European-minded, if not the UK. Unlike both of the systems mentioned previously it uses a tape cassette which you can flip over when you come to the end and the total recording time per tape is up to eight hours. No wonder they call it the Video Compact Cassette or VCC. For all the technical wizardry built into their machines (and there's a lot of very clever stuff in them) they are not cheap and they don't have some of the features the Japanese manufacturers offer. And what's more, the picture is no better.

Given the foregoing I can see no reason for buying anything other than VHS — it has the widest choice of machines and prerecorded tapes, and its overwhelming popularity means they won't ditch the format overnight. If you're a bit short of the ready cash you may point out that Sanyo make their basic Beta machine quite a bit cheaper than any VHS. This is true... but if you want video on a budget why not try the radical alternative? Do what everyone warns you against, go out and deliberately buy a secondhand machine of an obsolete format! In point of fact this can make a lot of sense as long as you don't spend much money on the experience. And experience is what you'll be buying. For £100 or £150 you can have a lot of fun and learn a lot about video. You may well get a whole load of tapes thrown in with the machine, after all, if the owner is changing system he will no longer need the old tapes. You'll probably keep the machine for about nine months and then resell it for not much less than you paid for it. In the process you will have learned what you can get out of video and you will definitely know which new machine to go for. So avoid the temptation to buy the first new machine you see and... buy secondhand, folks!

Where do you find secondhand machines you can trust? The best source is trade-ins from dealers. No, you don't see them in the shop windows, and they won't even offer you one unless you ask because they have no wish to lose the chance of selling a new machine. But if you explain you're starting on a budget you will probably get quite a good machine, with three months' guarantee to boot, which is better than nothing and indicates a certain degree of confidence. If a few phone calls to local dealers do not work you could take a look in the local paper or in "Exchange and Mart", but you cannot get a meaningful guarantee from a private seller and you might just be paying for the privilege of taking over someone else's troubles. Whatever you do, refuse to pay more than £150. The machine you will end up with will be either a Philips 1500 or 1700. Both models are obsolete now but were good machines in their day. The picture quality on them is better than any current production model and the few complaints of tape breaking levelled at these old machines are almost entirely due to user error. Putting a cold tape in a warm machine is a guarantee for disaster! The biggest snag is the tape cost (try and get secondhand tapes) and the 1500 had a maximum record time of 65 minutes, so it's no good for feature films.

These old (only a few years) machines can be an ideal way of getting into video painlessly and on a budget. Think on it if you are not quite sure what you really want out of video. In future articles we'll discuss some of the more creative things you can do with a video recorder. See you next time!