It's a Japanese-only, dual S-VHS/DV(&DVCAM) "consumer" deck, if you can consider any deck that cost in excess of $2300 "consumer". I bought it two years ago from a dealer off ebay, although I understand they are now more widely available at prices as low as $1500.

The deck, which has a far more robust transport system than any typical consumer VCR, has worked flawlessly for me so far. So as long as you're willing to sort through a hand-translated manual and all those arcane Japanese symbols:-), you should do okay. It has been instantly recognized and controlled via firewire control by 3 different systems I've hooked it up to: Canopus DV Storm, conventional 1394 firewire on PC using the SoFo capture utility, and a Mac/Media 100 system that had a firewire card hookup.

I chose it because, at the time, it was the only deck on the market that I could get my hands on for under $2500 that would play back large DVCAM tapes, and I liked the fact that it had head-to-head, pristine S-VHS dubbing capabilities. Also, because I do documentary work often using people's home movies, having VHS on the same deck for capture is a convenience.

In retrospect, however, the head to head dubbing has proved not so useful because when I chose the deck I did not fully understand the whole issue of black pedastal levels and the difference between Japanese and American NTSC standards. DV, until it is converted to an analog signal, retains a black level of 0 IRE, which is also the standard for analog black level for Japanese NTSC. On the other hand, American analog NTSC black pedastal standard is 7.5 IRE (a really dark grey). Because the deck offers no choice in head to head dubbing to upconvert the black level analog output to 7.5 (or in the hardware analog outputs on back either), you end up with a VHS dub lacking proper visual dynamic range, with muddy dark areas from clipped greys and an overall perceived darkening of the picture.

If you plan to make VHS or other analog copies of your material, you would need to make sure you have a method of converting black levels, preferably a hardware method without the time-consuming need to render all footage to a new black level in software. In my Canopus system, I could select which pedastal level the analog outputs of the hardware would use, so it worked out great for me. I could edit the DV footage in its native 0 IRE black space, ouput to DV tape still at 0 IRE, but run DV signal back into Storm for analog conversion out at 7.5 when I need VHS/analog copies.

So the negatives of the WV-DR7 as I see it are:

1) Japanese symbols for most functions on remote and onscreen display
2) no choice in IRE level for analog output
3) no component video inputs or outputs
4) no balanced audio inputs or outputs
5) built in tuner is meant for Japanese broadcast spectrum and is worth almost nothing for American terrestrial or cable frequencies

Its pluses are:

1) price
2) versatility for capturing DV and VHS/S-VSH footage from one device (provided you have computer hardware that can accept analog input)
3) playback of DV AND DVCAM format in EITHER tape size
4) instantly recognized and controlled by different types of firewire hardware and capture utilities
5) remote controlled, consumer VCR type convenience, including timer recording if you want it
6) two sets of analog inputs and outputs

More than you asked for, probably, but I hope its useful to you.:-)

Elizabeth Lowrey
Amore Productions