I have a Panasonic VCR from 1994, that automatically adjusts the picture mode, irrespective of the Country I live in. So the NTSC, SECAM, PAL I, PAL II and PAL III picture modes are never an issue. I have just serviced the unit a day ago and works well, as the day it was purchased. 😊

Not sure why you didn't come across it when looking at info online about this model but one cause of this symptom on these is simply that the metal thing that sits below the head drum on the main pcb that is meant to ground the chassis to the pcb doesn't make good contact due to oxidation or whatever. On some other samsungs with this mech they put a ground wire on it as well but not on any of these multi-system ones for whatever reason. It's of course pretty simple to fix that by cleaning it a bit with contact cleaner and bending it to make sure it makes contact or alternatively soldering on a ground wire or similar. The carbon brush that sits on the head drum - the ball thing that was under the spring you were wondering about in the video - being dirty/not making contact can also case symptoms like this. Not sure if either of those could have been the issue here too and you just ended up fixing them accidentally during the process or if it was indeed the connections inside the drum in this case. On the SV-7000W I have here there was a crack in the PCB originating from one of the standoff holes that caused the tracking signal to be cut off I had to bridge as well but that seems to be a less common thing.

@video99couk

7 ай бұрын

The issue here affected just one of the playback heads. Head earthing faults affect the whole picture. But it's interesting to note.

@GavinGration

7 ай бұрын

Correct - this affected these machines even when brand new - poor design - I soldered a fresh ground link on ours - got rid of the flecks.

The first "consumer" VHS machine with built-in standards converter was the Panasonic NV-W1 which came out in 1991. It too could convert to and from all world standards, including PAL-M. It prominently features a world map with push buttons and LEDs allowing you to select the target standard geographically. It cost 5,000 DM here, which is roughly 1,700 pounds at the time. In the 2000s I managed to acquire two working machines off ebay at 50 EUR. Meanwhile their value has gone up again. The Samsung SV-5000W and its predecessor, the SV-3000W (which I also own) are very much modeled after the Panasonic W1, very similar design and functionality. The Samsungs also feature a map, but just as a design feature, not with the select function associated to it.

I've got one of these. Fortunately, it still works without any problems.

Very impressive problem solving skills there brother. Lost art! Thanks for your insight.

Those were common machines seen in TV stations in the 90s. They are a bit cheap looking but I suppose it was just the way things were made then. Useful in some cases though.😂 Early Panasonic decks were so well made they weighed a ton.

Thank you Colin

My brother had a late Samsung 14" TV / VCR combo which had a very similar noise issue that initially I thought was head contamination but it became obvious it wasn't as it kept coming back when attempting to play known good tapes. He didn't use the VCR so we never tried to get it repaired, probably just as well as if it was a similar cause, it would not have been easy or probably even worthwhile on such a low-end deck. You did an amazing job on this unit. I remember reading the review of this deck in What Video magazine back in the day. I had no need for a multi-standard VCR so just kept using JVC S-VHS decks until I went digital.

I looked inside an S-VHS VCR recently, and it also uses a ribbon cable for linear audio, but it sounds excellent for linear audio(it lets you choose hifi, hifi L, hifi R, linear mono, or a mix) despite being pretty basic overall for an S-VHS machine. Perhaps a stretch, but I wonder if they use an in-phase & out of phase signal (like XLR) to reduce noise?

Wow! Just discovered two examples of this model in my store cupboard. How exciting! I'll have dig these and power them up in the coming week now I know how useful these machines could actually be. Thanks Colin.

The mechanical part reminds me of the last Samsung (and also some Sony) VCR/DVD combo machines. Maybe a complete head swap would work?

@CanizaM

4 ай бұрын

This is a DX-9R chassis, the second-last design from Samsung (last one that was also used by Sony was the TS-10). Cylinder mount is different from both the previous and next chassis. The very last Funai VHS chassis have a different cylinder mount too, in case you were wondering about those.

I remember back in the day the machine to have was the Panasonic NV-W1 which also did the same trick with digital standards conversion. I Could not afford the NV-W1 and as I was only interested in NTSC and PAL I ended up buying 2 dual standard Panasonics F55 and a standalone Digital standards convertor as my logic was the heads would wear ( they were my only VCRS) so by separating it all out it would be cheaper when one part failed. I also remember when i was dumping all my VHS to DVD ( Home recorded stuff and bought VHS) that you could not get a pure NTSC 3.58 HIFI machine cheaply in the UK, the digital standards converter(That i still had) introduced some artefacts when going from NTSC to PAL.( I already had a PAL DVD Recorder) My solution was to buy an analog standards converter that converted NTSC 4.43 to 3.58 and a NTSC only DVD Recorder. Someone had bought an NTSC only DVD recorder i guess when they were on holiday realised it didnt work in the UK so it was very cheap on ebay! I left the analog converter in the circuit once when i was doing a PAL VHS to PAL DVD it had a TBC and this was how i found that an analogue converter stripped out Macrovision.

@video99couk

7 ай бұрын

Many UK sold Panasonic DVD recorders can record in both PAL and NTSC, which can be handy.

Interesting machine. Excellent repair and commentary. I agree about later VHS machines - with the mechanism mounted on top of the PCB, and pressed steel instead of die-cast mechanisms. I was going to suggest what someone else has said, namely the earthing contact for the upper drum, which might be the spring & pin thing. But that would have affected both of the heads.

Well done Colin, what a smashing repair :-D You have a smashing machine now :-D I first thought the tapping break up was due to a bad earth on the top drum, common with old vcr's. Re soldering the heads, You are much braver than i am lol.

Interesting. I had a Hi8 player with a picture that looked just like that problem with flecks of snow everywhere and all that was, was a bad bad ground connection to the drum. I bought it for almost nothing as the owner thought it had a major fault. I ended up making a new one by ripping out a contact from an old relay and using that. Simple.

@video99couk

7 ай бұрын

Bad head earthing gives a subtly different effect. In this case I proved that the noise was only affecting one head.

picked up one of t hose for 20 bucks. Works great. Plays S-VHS too!

@DoubleMonoLR

2 ай бұрын

Not in S-VHS quality though unfortunately, being SQPB (S-VHS Quasi PlayBack)

As someone who used these (and earlier models) in a video post production facility I'd say the previous model the SV-4000 gave a much better standards conversion than this later SV-5000 version. They were mainly used for making NTSC VHS viewing copies from PAL broadcast tapes as the conversion quality was good enough for VHS, but when DVD-R replaced VHS for NTSC viewing copies a Snell & Wilcox standards converter was used. Not sure why these fetch such high prices in 2023, as you'd get a much better conversion capturing in the native video format and using software to change the frame rate/line standard as these Samsungs just repeat or delete frames leaving a jerky motion (eg for PAL to NTSC it just repeats every 5th frame twice).

@video99couk

6 ай бұрын

What's good about these is that they can handle the really weird stuff like PAL-M and possibly SECAM-EP recordings. I wouldn't use this for normal VHS/SVHS tapes recorded in NTSC, there are better machines for that. I always capture in the native frame rate.

Colin, have you tried Video up scaling old footage using A.I. There is a lot of 100yr old A.I upscaled footage now online, and it would be interesting to see what results could be produced from tape.

@digitalz1988

6 ай бұрын

I play with Topaz and Neat Video for fun on 90s music videos recorded on beta/VHS from Eutelsat in the UK i.e. really rough, but the results can be amazing. Neat is great for temporal noise so deals well with things like dropouts in film, analogue tape (or analogue satellite), Topaz 's ability to 'find' detail is remarkable. However used badly these result in additional digital effects/noise I personally find very hard to ignore - people can gain doubled eyes, background details that flick in and out or even vanish. In some cases I prefer analogue snow to the upscaled mush. I would love some software where I can vary the AI model during a clip! By means of a bad example, I thought the low-res version no longer available was much better than this official HD mess with skin blur and buildings that merge into sky - kzread.info/dash/bejne/oKary5lyeNvHf9o.html

@CreeBreej

6 ай бұрын

@@digitalz1988 Very similar to you, i also have old Beta recording from MTV UK and various channels which just isnt available anymore. I have sampled some footage from the tapes using a Sony HIFI Beta which is watchable in its original state but would like to improve. Unfortunately, there is just to much time involved to fix everything such as colour correction, grain, distortion ect even b4 any upscaling. I have seen some good results AI results online though, but i assume they have a clean source to start with.

@ivok9846

4 ай бұрын

ai is just advertising gimmick, it can't and won't be able to magically fix anything. or do anything. because it has no arms legs and brain. it can just scavenge the web, with varying results, depending what you feed to it. you don't have to do everything, you can just deinterlace and upscale. in hybrid, by selur. other than that you need something to capture with, ie hardware. some say gv-usb2 is ok.

00:00:10 I think there were no actual SECAM S-VHS machines because that format didn't exist. S-VHS machines sold in SECAM markets were actually PAL machines, who converted from/to SECAM during record and playback.

Wow, that was some ninja level investigative work. I thought I was doing well getting one of these apart to change out the power supply caps... Not exactly built to be serviced as you say!

I have one of these. Great machine, only used to transfer the odd occasional tape.

This PAL VHS tape you have, was the one that was recorded in Britain, via a BSB DMAC receiver.

@video99couk

6 ай бұрын

It was a BSB DMAC receiver which had been modified to D2MAC.

@northernplacecorporation

6 ай бұрын

@@video99couk A British BSB DMAC receiver? Oh... I was getting into my realization that it WAS a BSB DMAC receiver (modified to D2MAC) all along.

I just bought a worldwide VCR yesterday.

Hi there. I believe that SECAM stands for sequential colour avec memoir. My French isn't so good though!

Really enjoyed this one! Did you go through the effort of adjusting the head switching point to exactly 6 or 7 lines before V-sync using the oscilloscope?

@video99couk

7 ай бұрын

No, probably should have done. But bear in mind that it's only required for playback, I'm probably never going to record using this deck.

@crashbandicoot4everr

7 ай бұрын

@@video99couk Messing with the positioning of the PG magnets will affect the position of the switching point in recording as well. I learnt this the hard way when I took apart a Panasonic NV-7500 top loader's head drum to lubricate the bearings.

Surprise success.

Grounding is the biggest fault on these units.

@video99couk

7 ай бұрын

I've heard that but in this case it was just one head that was affected.

@12voltvids

7 ай бұрын

@@video99couk usually it's in the preamp, where the head switching takes place.

Excellent work - swanky machine for sure

I'm not sure if the HiFi heads correspond to left and right channels, Both channels are encoded into FM and stereo separation happens later after decoding.

@video99couk

7 ай бұрын

Yes, that sounds right, so the two heads would be so that one is always on the tape.

PAL M (Brazil/60Hz) has a color carrier frequency of 3.575611 MHz, in contrast to NTSC which has 3.579545 MHz. For real SECAM I have a Panasonic NV-HS900F and a SECAM compatible DVD recorder as a TBC. Capturing Memories showed on its channel 4 months ago that you can adjust the head switching point by turning the drum motor. I would always try to fix a tracking problem without head adjustment, as it is very difficult to find the right track (100% audio sync).

I believe the noise problem is related to the ground spring and pin being dirty, When you removed them they kind got cleaned up in the process.

@video99couk

7 ай бұрын

But then it would have affected both head channels. And it didn't.

@Capturing-Memories

7 ай бұрын

@@video99couk I couldn't tell if the noise was on one field from the screen. Shouldn't you have to capture it and remove one field to find out for sure if the noise in on one field only? Not questioning, just trying to learn.

VHS should never have seen the light of day when BETAMAX was far superior.

Hello. I just have to hear. Re-center tracking you adjust on. Is it correctly understood that the mono audio head is also a tape control that is part of the basic setting for Tracking that you adjust?

@video99couk

7 ай бұрын

The audio head block has the track control head mounted on the same block, which is very much part of the tracking control loop. On this particular model, it's position sets the tracking centre, but I am not so sure that applies to all VHS machine. Don't go adjusting audio heads on other machines without reference to the service manuals.

I have 2 of these, never fail

Interesting. Whe question is, did they ever do a S-VHS machine like that. Is that a Techmoan mug in the background? Looks like the diagram of head connectors is shifted one connectio up to Ground, 7-8-9 should be connections to 8-9-10. Speaking of tracking, I have some problematic tapes, with TBC on the image rolls from down to up, like a roll of film, ith TBC turned off it sometimes stays in place in the middle of blanking intervals, distorts from left to right, or rolls just slower, it happens on both commercial and recorded tapes, is it tracking issue, something to do with acpacitors, or the tapes are just toasted? Though the tapes do have stable picture on rewinding VCR.

@video99couk

7 ай бұрын

I don't believe any true SVHS machine was built with SECAM capability. This has QSVHS playback, but that's not useful to me. I agree about the head connectors shift. Your fault could be many things but capacitor failure is probably the most likely, could be difficult to sort that out.

@SFtheGreat

7 ай бұрын

@@video99couk I don't know if S-VHS even supported SECAM at all. But if there was a PAL/NTSC with some exotic versions like PAL-M in S-VHS, that would be interesting. SQPB is indeed not a useful feature for transfer. Capacitors it may be, as when using previously I never had such problems. Indeed, each capacitor would require testing to determine which one's faulty.

Yeah, as flimsy as it feels, the picture does actually look very nice afterwards

28:00 Looking at the head schematic, the head wires on 7,8 and 9, should be going to 8,9 and 10.

@video99couk

7 ай бұрын

I thought as much. Clearly the diagram I showed couldn't possibly be right.

@frankowalker4662

7 ай бұрын

@@video99couk As soon as I saw it I knew there was someting wrong. I had to pause it to figure out what.

I really loved my Samsung with Jet Drive mechanism , superfast and realiable machine , of course , it´s not a Sony , but...

Good morning friend, I'm here from Brazil, I watch all your videos on your channel and I'm also a writer. I'm a technician with much less experience, I need a tip about a defect if you can give me some help. I have a super VHS JVC model HR-S7900u with audio noise after about 20 minutes of operation. It starts to make that noise, it keeps popping, the audio goes down and the noise overlaps the audio on the tape. I believe it could be the audio head or the amplifier stage of the audio head. because when I pass external audio through the inputs and outputs of this same super vhs there is no noise and the audio does not turn down after 20 minutes, there is no defect. If you could give me a tip or advice. because I am a beginner technician in these devices. The image of this super video is normal, only the audio makes noise and loses gain when playing any VHS tape. This video is mine for my own use, it could be the audio head or audio amplifier stages or source electrolytic capacitors lacking filtering somewhere on the board. I need technical help.

it wasn't special in north america the new one cost 700 dollars

@video99couk

7 ай бұрын

Not a cheap machine then.

These were useful back in the day for converting from standard to another, Their lack of S-Video and line TBC render then useless now, Sur it can be used for some oddball problematic tapes but nothing special about them anymore.

@TTVEaGMXde

7 ай бұрын

What is still missing here is which European devices can play PAL M. I don't know whether the TBCs from Panasonic and Pioneer DVD recorders are involved, as they don't have PAL 60 at the output.

@Capturing-Memories

7 ай бұрын

@@TTVEaGMXde A case could be made for PAL-M, Not that there aren't PAL-M VCRs available now, but importing them from Brazil could be a hassle.

@video99couk

7 ай бұрын

I will be using it only for international recordings, particularly SECAM where it may do a better job that my other SECAM solutions. This might even play SECAM EP recordings (though the manual doesn't specifically say so) which my older SECAM players don't. As I said at the start, I generally use S-VHS machines (with TBCs and S-Video) for VHS tapes.

@Capturing-Memories

7 ай бұрын

@@video99couk JVC made nice SECAM S-VHS VCRs, they have SM letters at the end of the model such as HR-S7600MS and HR-S9600MS, But users reported that line TBC is disabled in SECAM, Not sure if this is a JVC limitation or any brand, But you get the benefit of YC out with them. and yes they are not cheap but can be had in not working condition since they do share a lot of components with other color standards models if the repair requires parts.

Lovely consumer-grade VHS😅

even i dont have sony VHS recorders anyway

Like Ben Heck, regrettable acting.

@video99couk

7 ай бұрын

No idea what this comment means.

@Capturing-Memories

7 ай бұрын

@@video99couk Wait until he sobers up and he will come back to clarify, Lol.

@jameslaidler2152

7 ай бұрын

*le sigh* The Ben Heck Show. Ended a while ago. Was sponsored by the company Element 14. The opening of the show had a list of what to expect in the episodes, including "Regrettable Acting" with a clip of said acting from one of the episodes. Check it out.

A job that should have took 20mins max to fix took you ages. Very unprofessional how you did this. Made the chassis slip when you try to unscrew the head, but I take it you’re still learning but you don’t have a clue in what you do. But like I said your learning. Just amazed on all the videos on KZread showing how to fix stuff and it’s all guess work and not the right way. You need to go back to basics and learn electronics. Never needed to take the head apart like that in the first place.

@video99couk

7 ай бұрын

I don't care if you make comments like this. It doesn't bother me. I had proven that it was ONE HEAD which was at fault by watching the symptoms carefully. Perhaps you missed that vital point. Apparently it's all guesswork, well if that's so, I seem to do pretty well don't I? And if you had actually watched my content, you will see I can get pretty deep into the electronics at times, like when I replicated the POR circuit from a defective hybrid module, or reverse engineered the SDIF2 to S/PDIF conversion in a DAT deck.

@michaelmitchell8218

7 ай бұрын

@@video99couk you haven’t proven nothing. As I said before you slipped with the screwdriver which could have done lots of damage and also touch a video head with your finger, which is a big no from a professional standard. You never seem to have the right tools there and not even the right scope probes which you should have. You don’t have a video head jig to hold the head in place to work on. We saw nothing on a scope to see what video signal is like,etc. many scope signals we didn’t see, took you forever to get tracking right if you ever did get it right. Also we just see it on a small tv from a distance which the picture would look better on that. Don’t tell me you’re deep into electronics if you work like this. Did VCRs for over 30 years and this is not how it’s done. Like I say you are an amateur which is fine but don’t act professional when you’re not at all. If you was a professional you would have used a scope and all the right tools to do the job. Also wouldn’t have took that time it did to fix. I don’t get what the interest is in vcrs now ? The quality is crap and it’s a dead format, even SVHS and all the other high end that was ok but nothing great now.

@video99couk

7 ай бұрын

@@michaelmitchell8218 I explained why I didn't 'scope the RF waveform, and why it would have been a preferred route, didn't I? But I've done so on other videos as I mentioned. Somehow I'm "acting professional" when I should be acting some other way, apparently. Then you ask why I work on audio and video gear, well I thought that was pretty obvious since I transfer tapes to video files. Perhaps you think I shouldn't do that either. Anyhow, if you don't want to watch my channel, please don't. But if you do, you might find some of your comments appearing in a video I've been thinking about doing for a while.

@michaelmitchell8218

6 ай бұрын

@@video99couk well stick to transfers and not repairs because you don’t have a clue. Let’s get one thing straight in electronics you scope, it’s the most important tool. That’s why I know you’re not professional and don’t have no electronic background. Do you know I spend most of my days repairing fucks up that people like you have done. KZread become a pain on here, because people watch videos and then think they can do it and end up messing it up. I just saw your video of getting a tape out of a camcorder lol, its a joke you say “ should I put 3volts or maybe 4 volts in the motor” then you use the wrong tool to pull a connector out and it slips. You seem to like slipping on things don’t you? You did get the tape out but again it was guess work, you don’t seem to understand service manuals very well. Anyway transfer and buy decent video machines that work and not crap that the BBC have put in the skip. Sorry my friend your work would have fail in are workshop. I give you one thing Samsung did make junk vcrs and getting them to work right is a job at times because they are completely junk machines.