As far as reputation of the vendors, try www.resellerratings.com

I had an earlier version of this deck. In fact I had two of them (both failed). While the tapes I tried to read were made on Sony camcorders, I'm not aware of any inherent problem relating to Sony recorded tapes.

I have heard that the earlier problems have now been corrected.

While not as convenient, you can buy a low priced camcorder and one of JVC's or Panasonic's low prived SVHS VCRs and come in at about the same price as the dual deck.

I have been using an earlier version of this deck. It has worked very well for me. I have had some incompatability with various cameras. But it seems to be an issue witth individual units rather than one manufacturer. For example one tape from one Sony camera would not track in the deck and by using either my Canon GL2 or a cheap Panasonic (I don't remember the model) I was able to capture through them. I have used the JVC with other Sony cameras with no problem. I can capture from the VHS through the DV electronics to the firewire. This is very useful, although I have much more control over the quality of the capture when I use my son,s Canopus ADVC-300.

Please be careful where you buy the deck. There are many scams out there.
Abe's of Maine is located in Brooklyn, New York. However they have good ratings from the two sites I checked. Here is one of those sites.

http://reviews-zdnet.com.com/4011-5_16-306365.html

I have not used Abe's of Maine. I have bought from B&H photo and Videoguys with good results from both.

Good Luck with what ever you choose.

The issue that I'm familiar with is with tapes recorded on some Canon XL1s'. I have 2 and I get a 1-2 frame pixelation glitch every few minutes with both of them. I sent my deck in to JVC for a modification but it didn't help. JVC is supposedly still working on the problem; however I think most people have had good results with it.
Randy

Have an earlier "professional" version. Mine failed after only a few hours use, but since it took a year to accumulate those few hours, I was completely out of luck.

There are problems with starting one side of deck before the other side when trying to get a dupe from one side to other. There is a BIG delay. Much too long, in the automatic mode.

Duplicates are quite good, but you might do just as well with a spare Mini-DV camcorder and high quality VHS deck as this dual deck.

Never had any tapes fail to play from my Sony camcorders.

Definitely would NOT buy again.

Get a Panasonic or Sony model. JVC units are notoriously unreliable.
As far as Abes of Maine goes, they are in Brooklyn, NY. Check Resellerratings before you buy.
I have posted before on this subject.

John

Thanks for all of the inputs.

Craftech wrote: Get a Panasonic or Sony model. JVC units are notoriously unreliable.

Well now you have me worried.

The "affordable" Panasonic looks like the AG-DV1000 but it is out of production with no replacement model so that doesn't sound good. Next step up seems to be the AG-DV2500 at something like $1500. That's eating into my HDV savings account a little more than I would like.

I may be too late on this to help you but as I have said in other posts on the topic - it is a great unit. Thus far I love JVC and have had liitle issue with their stuff. I have a JVC SR-VS30 and it has worked great. I have used it 100% on a feature film, capturing all material and outputting workprints/rough cuts with it. Had it now...hmm...probably a year, with no issues at all.

I tend to use only Panasonic tape stock. I have put Sony stock in it with no issues.

FWIW I have a S-VHS deck from JVC that is something like 15 years (or more) old and it i still running with no issues. Have not even had to replace the heads. JVC gear seems stable to me.

I've had mine for only six months, but my logs show that I have put 8 hours worth of tapes through it and so far its worked flawlessly.

I've got a JVC SVHS deck which I love dearly but I've headr of so many people having trouble with the JVC combo decks that I'd be steering clear of them. I'd discount problems with tapes from Cannon cameras, everything has problems with tapes from Canon cameras, XL1s seem the worst offenders, Cannons just seem to get out of alignment way to easyily. I've met fulltime cameramen who love their XL1s dealry but when pressed everyone of them has hit this problem.
My favourite deck if you've got the dollars, DSR-11. Rock solid apart from the pathetic flap that you'll snap off in the first week.
Plays / Records PAL/NSTC DV and DVCAM, small and large format tapes. It is a bit picky about out of tolerance tapes though so if you've got a Cannon maybe look elsewhere.

Thanks for all the inputs pro and con.

Partly because I really had to have a solution or give up editing I went ahead and bought JVC deck at a pretty good price ($824.95+tax) from a dealer in the Los Angeles area.

Performace has been perfect so far with both Vegas and ScenalyzerLive capure and the playback of my Sony generated DV tapes. The only problem I had was with XP not recogizing the deck properly and I had to force the installation of the JVC Tape Deck drivers. I still get the old yellow warning flag in Device Manager but things work so I am happy.

It might be noted that I have NEVER been able to get Vegas capture to work with a direct connection of my TRV 900 to my XP Pro system. In fact, Vegas would hang on load if I had the camera connected when I launched Vegas. Even if I disconnected the camera and tried to reload Vegas it would hang (actually just load very slow - I'm sure Vegas was waiting for some event that never showed up.)

So the bottom line is: so far so good.

I am curious how the JVC SR-VS30 is working for you. We have just begun to have problems similar to those Randy Brown mentioned. Our deck is two years old. I found another web site forum which discussed the problem at length. They say JVC acknowledges the problem, and that the solution is a firmware upgrade. Opinions differ as to whether or not the upgrade really solves the problem. I have just sent a message to JVC asking for info.

We were uploading video shot on a Panasonic PV-GS200, and also a tape given to us by a client with a high end camera of some kind. In both cases, we got one to three frame digital glitches. From the Panasonic tape, they happen every couple of minutes. The same tape uploaded from an XL1s came in flawlessly.

I didn't see this thread when it was active, but I can (unfortunately) chime in with similar glitches using our SR-VS30. I've had the deck for over two years, and the mini dv side has always exhibited dropped audio frames every few minutes (video is usually okay). I sent it back to JVC when we first got it, and they sent it back saying they coudln't find a problem. I was pretty pissed since I had to pay for shipping, so I just abandoned hope. It's been nice to have a firewire VHS deck, but I would really love to get the miniDV side working.

If anyone has any luck with fixing this, I'd love to hear about it. I'm considering taking it to a local certified JVC repair shop, hoping a mom and pop will take more time with it.

>>> I am curious how the JVC SR-VS30 is working for you.<<<

Still working great. No issues here. VHS and DV sides work as they should.

I have two JVC S-VHS, top of the line, prosumer decks from 1995 and 1997 (HR-S7100U and HR-S7300U) Both decks have been used a heck of a lot. The first was probably on 10 hours a day, for the first 6 years or so. Both decks have been great decks. The 1st one, you have to rewind the tape before you eject it or it'll spill the tape. Other than that, they both still work great. I think you should beware of the cheaper JVC products. I've heard a lot of stories about mechanical problems.

Any comments on Abe's of Maine,
I would avoid them. A while back I needed a new GL2, they had a good price on them and they were in stock and ready to ship out ....or so they told me. I had a shoot coming up in a couple days so I ordered it with overnight shipping so I would have it in time. The next day when it was supposed to ship I never got any tracking information so I started to get a little worried. I called them and they said that they had the cameras in stock, but they were in the warehouse and wouldn't be able to get to them for a few days. So I'm thinking they are in your warehouse, yet you can't get to them...WTF does that mean! So after spewing some nice explitives at the guy on the phone I cancelled my order and had to order from somewhere else.