These days collecting MVS is significantly cheaper than collecting TG-16.
Which is ffffuuuuuuuuuuuuuuccxxxxtttt.
I have a CMVS based on this same board, construction is very similar. I also have the NeoBitz component encoder, personally, with my TVs, the s-video looks no worse. I guess a lot of TVs don't have s-video anymore so that would be the main reason to use the more expensive board.
Even though I have to reseat the cart a dozen times to get it to register, I still love this machine so much. I usually leave Metal Slug 3 in there along with either KOR2003, Rage or Dragons, or Super Baseball 2020. Neo Geo games had to be designed to be a hit at home AND the arcade, same ROM, so tricking people with box art or licenses didn't work. If a game wasn't fun everyone would know it wasn't fun because they could see in in any arcade. This lead to very high quality releases as normal, and make it a great system to get into. There are some bad games, but most are at least mediocre if not great, and even a mediocre Neo game is usually full of charactor and graphical flourish.