Shatner did it. 😉
I think the device on the right is an external clock timer!
Some of the U-matic decks I used in college looked similar. The studio had been built and equipped when the campus was built in 1975, but due to lack of funding the whole thing was in mothballs until 1986.
One of my instructors liked those old dinosaurs better than the front loading models, as you could "pop the hood* to do routine cleaning and maintenance.
Super VHS was marketed to professionals. We had an editing system for it back in college, one of the first models Panasonic put out. I actually learned how to edit videotape on those behemoths. Most of my own video projects I shot on S-VHS. And a then brand new local tv station in the early '90’s here was almost exclusively S-VHS, save for a couple Betacam decks.