Thanks for the thread. I should probably mention that I live in the US and therefore use NTSC. So it seems S-VHS doesn't necessarily do better with everything else equal. Sounds like it varies upon the wiring, in which case it would be hard to find a better vcr than the one I have. I know some vcr's do have s-video. In fact, at my college, I saw a vcr with component outputs.
So is anyone here very familiar with Hi8? My camcorder does have an s-video output like most others.