Does Svhs play regualr vhs thru the svideo cable?

the quality of VHS playback absolutely will not be improved by using the s-video cable. VHS has the luma bandwidth limited intentionally so that the chroma/luma interleave band (3 MHz to 4.2 MHz) is removed. When SVHS and Hi8 became available, they had invent the s-video cable so that high resolution luma (about 5 MHz) could be kept separate from the 3.58 MHz chroma sub-carrier. Luma and Chroma are recorded as separate bands on all consumer and most professional analog tape systems. Re-combining luma and chroma to make a single composite video out is a problem because the chroma is no longer phase coherent with luma on playback. The only way you can get the benefit of better resolution of the SVHS and Hi8 systems is using s-video connectors. Using an SVHS player with VHS tape, sorry the player detects that it is a VHS program and limits the luma to 3 MHz automatically. While the s-video out will be active, the quality will be strictly VHS grade. There may be a slight advantage to not using the composite out to feed the Dazzle but it would be insignificant and certainly not worth buying an SVHS deck just for this purpose.