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 V 8000 is maybe outdated but still a nice machine and in my opnion the best video B&O ever made.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 wrote:

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 wrote:

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

I have been using a USB attachment called an