I used S-VHS extensively back in college. It beat the pants off of U-Matic. More than a few forum members have at least one S-VHS deck around for videotape preservations.
S-VHS straddled the world between consumers who wanted better video quality for their home video projects, and low end broadcast. The broadcast end competed mostly with Sony’s venerable U-matic format, which was the backbone of many a small cable company or college. One low power tv station near me, (now long gone) was new enough in the early 90’s, they were S-VHS from the ground up. I rented their editing suite once.