Hello everyone,                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  Just purchased a pre-owed V8000 VCR which is to be used only for playback.I've connected it to my BV3 and registered it in the connections menu,also connected is a sky+ stb and a sony dvd recorder.                                                                                                                                           I played two videos the first day and everthing was fine ... good picture and sound.A few days later i played a third video but this time barely a picture could be seen and you could just make out the audio.Suspecting a dodgy video i retried the first two tapes but they too are now unwatchable.Just wondering if the heads have gone or have i missed something in the setting up !                                                                                                  Anyone any ideas on this?..thanks in advance....Nick    

Hello Nick

Welcome to Beoworld and very pleased to see that you have signed up as a gold member.  I am surprised that no one has replied to your enquiry but VCRs don't seem to be a popular topic these days.  I have two, the V8000 and the VX7000 and they are both slowly deteriorating over time.  When they eventually give up the ghost, I don't think that I will be in a rush to repair them.  The weakness is of course in the recordings - I still have 30 tapes but their quality is now very questionable.

I am afraid that I cannot offer a solution to your problem but it does sound very similar to one that I recently had with the V8000.  It too was playing back OK until I inadvertantly put in a very bad tape.  The tape transport jammed, the speed was wrong, the video disappeared and the audio was bad.  I probably spent too much time trying to get it to work but I didn't appreciate that it was a tape problem at that time.  When I finally ejected the tape and put in another one, that didn't work either.  Neither did the next one too and I thought that the machine was now broken.  After a few days, I had another go.  I put in one of my better known tapes and fast wound the tape to the end and back.  Pressed play and everything worked fine.  The tracking seemed to be a bit off but that was corrected and the unit is working once again. 

So maybe, these units are just becoming more sensitive to deteriorating tape quality.  I can't think of a solution to that one and  I probably will never play those tapes again.  Now that we have the PVRs, it is perhaps time to put these machines into storage until they aquire antique status.

Regards

Geoff

I have a number of VCRs. The best made one is probably the V2000 one! However try another tape and wind and rewind it before trying to play. I guess the odd tape as knocked it out somehow. The AV9000 my daughter uses did the same and was fixed by the above trick.

You can try cleaning the rotating heads with a cooton swab or find yourselves a head cleaning tape. Maybe this will do the trick because it is almost certainly dirt on the heads! V 8000 is maybe outdated but still a nice machine and in my opnion the best video B&O ever made. (quite easy because they had some awful machines, who remembers the infamous VHS 82??

Depends on your definition of best. The VX5000 was the most advanced but was prone to break down due to overheating. The VX5500 cured this by removing all the clever electronic extras that no-one used anyway! The VX7000 was simpler still but was probably the most reliable. The quality of materials was not as good on the V8000. It is however the one most likely to work out of the box with today's TVs! These are of course all VHS recorders - spare a thought for the V2000 models which were a superior system but not marketed as well.

Depends on your definition of best. The VX5000 was the most advanced but was prone to break down due to overheating. The VX5500 cured this by removing all the clever electronic extras that no-one used anyway! The VX7000 was simpler still but was probably the most reliable. The quality of materials was not as good on the V8000. It is however the one most likely to work out of the box with today's TVs!

These are of course all VHS recorders - spare a thought for the V2000 models which were a superior system but not marketed as well.

ernie:

You can try cleaning the rotating heads with a cooton swab or find yourselves a head cleaning tape. Maybe this will do the trick because it is almost certainly dirt on the heads! V 8000 is maybe outdated but still a nice machine and in my opnion the best video B&O ever made. (quite easy because they had some awful machines, who remembers the infamous VHS 82??

why infamous ?

Thanks for the advice....have tried rewinding 2 tapes then playing them to no avail,however the third one i got a decent picture and sound,i think this confirms Geearr's idea that these machines are sensitive to tape quality.All my tapes are Guitar Instructional ones that are 6-13 years old ,each one cost me £25-£30 and i have over 80 so i am keen to find  a way to preserve the information on them.Anybody have any ideas how i could get the tapes onto a digital platform....HDR1 or HDR2?...Nick

bucko:

i am keen to find  a way to preserve the information on them.

I have been using a USB attachment called an Elgato EyeTV Hybrid that connects my VCR to my Mac.

I then capture the videos into digital form and then edit them.

Elgato is well known in the Apple Universe but I am sure there are just as reputable firms in the Windows World.

VHS 82 was a Philips clone with plastic gears inside. It made a horrible grinding noise when loading the tape and the plastic gearbox didn't last long........ VHS 90/91 were unmatched in buildquality but they came from the Far East!

Where do you live? - I may well have a spare B&O VCR you may have. I'll make sure it works first though!

Peter-Thanks for the kind offer i'm in Sheffield.The tapes are playing fine at the moment though....your tip seems to have worked....Nick

bucko:

Peter-Thanks for the kind offer i'm in Sheffield.The tapes are playing fine at the moment though....your tip seems to have worked....Nick

Another Sheffielder! There are not many of us here :(

Hi John,

Might be even less soon as i'm thinking of moving to maybe Leeds,Manchester or York.Lived here all my life and could do with a different environment...this place is a little too quiet at times!

Nick

One way of getting old VHS tapes to digital format would be to copy them over to a DVD recorder. After the analogue TV is out (since three years here already!) people often want to get rid of those machines for little money, since they are very awkward for time-shifting purposes once the built-in tuner becomes useless.

After that, it's a good idea to rip the DVDs to a computer anyway for backup since the DVD-R's may not be very long life (I suspect VHS tapes will outlive them, if stored properly).

I have some VHS recordings from 1985 that are still just fine - but it depends on the quality of the tape and how they have been stored. But in the coming years, it will be a problem to find a working VHS deck to play them! I have a working VX5000 paired with my MX6000, but mostly it sits there unplugged, just for the looks.

A bit of-topic but anyway: I have some videotape recordings at work that date as far as 1978. They are recorded on Sony U-Matic tapes. The tapes are still playable. The recorder (Sony VO-5630, not the original recorder) is still working and needed only one little repair: new belt in the tape threading mechanism. Of course the quality is not very high, the camera is black-and-white, it has extremely low contrast and everything brighter leaves a long ghosting/trace if the camera is moved. Some later colour recordings are better. Only tape-related problem is that the joint between the transparent lead-in tape and the magnetic tape is easily broken during winding. Nothing that couldn't be fixed, though! The material in the tapes (around 50-75 pcs.) is highly valuable as pieces of our school's (where I work as an IT/AV-support) near history that is otherwise largely lost or un-documented. Some of the teachers seen in the recordings are still working or just retired. Great example of the high value of the recording equipment when new (and to my great assist) is that all of the tapes include very detailed description of the recording, dates, sometimes even complete name list of the persons seen in the recording. 

Keeping high-quality VCR decks is getting more and more important. All new VCRs (or combo-devices with DVD-VHS) are very plastic and cheaply made and can cause damage to the tapes (or to the recorder!) if (and when) the tapes don't wind as easily as modern tapes. In most cases new VCRs don't even play older tapes eventhough they would be Ok if played with a bit better decks. The tapes seem to survive if they are properly stored. At school we have a lot of old VHS-recordings that have been played back again and again for several years but still work. I my personal belief everything magnetically taped will last very long and with the help of the internet the equipment needed to play/transfer them (or to repair the decks) can be found relatively easily. I really don't believe any modern digital format to outlive a good magnetic recording.

P.S: I have two non-working Beocord VX5000 in storage and hopefully one day a working one...

The recording density on 3/4" U-Matic is immensely less than on even SP VHS, so they will last decades if the tape holds together physically. Old magnetic tapes can have problems with the oxide layer separating from the backing tape, needing baking beforehand, or cooling during playback to prevent them from clogging up the playback heads immediately - and sometimes you can only play them once and they are gone after that.

I have some 1" open reel video tapes somewhere - perhaps even a 2" quadruplex reel, can't remember Those were real VTRs...

I have found this especially fascinating: an Ampex 1963 domestic video recorder. Great website! The Sony AVC-3200TE seen here is about the same model the U-Matic tapes have been shot and which I have!

Now as we are in the topic; does anyone around here have one of these?

lausvi:

Now as we are in the topic; does anyone around here have one of these?

Just remembered... somebody does, and it's even for sale!