The first video cassette recorder for consumers, in 1972!!!!! And a decent video quality too!

I'm impressed with the picture quality and sound on those recordings, especially considering the age of the tapes and players.

My school in England had a Philips N1500 and then N1700 back in 1973 (onwards) and I remember being fascinated by it when I was 9 years old especially the (I think) red and green threading and unthreading buttons on the top!

Fond memories! My dad bought one of these in the late 70s. We had to send away for rental films through the post, and very few titles were available :-)

Wonderful collection of machines. Great history lesson on the VCR format. You have great tips on troubleshooting, design flaws and upgrades. The tip on your favorite machine along with which one is gentlest on the tape is worth gold for any current or future collector of the VCR format. It shows that you love what you do. I know it is an expensive and time consuming hobby. As of the past 3 years i have collected, repaired and enjoyed the video formats of the early 80's "format wars" (CED Selectavision, laserdisc, VHS, CVC Microvideo and Beta.) The VCR format is something that i wish to own in the future. I like working "back in time" by collecting formats as they were created in reverse order. Before i dig into the VCR format i want to collect the VCC Video2000 and V-cord I and V-cord II formats. The open reel to reel video formats will be the last machines that i wish to explore. Currently the CVC Microvideo format is my favorite to collect and use. P.S. i have noticed that many hard to find machines (CED Selectavision, VHD, V-cord I and VCR to mame a few) and their respective media are becoming available on ebay. It must be due to the current economic slump. Take care and keep saving those relics of our video format history.

The content on that videocassette is historical. Old dutch television from the early seventies. The quality is great for the age of that videocassette. The videorecorder is plastic fantastic and still running. Thank you for that.

What you say about Cartrivision machine is true. However in 1975 when I bought one from Olson electronics and spent about a week tracing out the connections and figuring out how to tap into my Tv's video and audio circuits the skip field didn't matter. I was 17 at the time and my friends who thought I was crazy to try to make this open chassis thing work. I invited my friends over and played back a Star Trek in full color they were begging me to build one for them. I did from one more and used a small Sony monochrome monitor that had video out and played back through a modulator to a color set. Could never get them to understand how I was getting a color picture from a black and white TV. Olson was selling them for $150..00 plus $50.00 for a Eumig zoom camera that was powered from the Cartrivision machine. Did need quite a bit of light though. It was great fun for a 17 year old nerd, skip field or not.

Back when I was around 10 or 11 years old my primary school (in the UK that was the school for ages 7 to 11 years old) actually had a Philips N1500 machine. I remember it being wheeled in on a huge trolley with a massive 21 inch TV on top of it and the teacher playing some sort of history video on it. I also remember that when it was put into rewind at the end of the video it ate the tape and was wheeled quickly out of the classroom with looks of embarrassment being quickly hidden on the teacher's faces :=) I have a great affection for this machine, thank you for covering it on your channel, it brings back some very fond memories for me ;)

Great video Colin very Informative

The picture quality of the N1500 and 1700 seems to be much better than VHS. Thank you for showing these machines.

This is a wonderful video!! Thanks for sharing!

I do love the smell of these old VC30, VC45 and VC60 cassettes..

Incredible; I had no idea these existed back then. I would have killed to own one, but couldn't afford it, let alone a car. Besides, Australia didn't officially get colour TV transmission until March 1975, sigh. I did finally manage to buy a Sony Beta VCR (SL-C5) just in time to record Brideshead Revisited in 1981. I am very impressed by the quality of the recorded images from so long ago!

BTW the SVR4004 was also available in a variant for the first system. This was mostly sold to schools and Pollin had some fairly smashed up ones available for sale cheaply some years ago.

My interaction with the VCR was in grade school. in the late 70 and early 80. At home the first video format was VHS second half 0f 1980. (frontloaded)

Hi Colin, great video, real nice avenger! Still looking for a Plymouth cricket.. All the best Richard

Muito interessante com certeza o primeiro videocassete valeu por postar,esse vídeo thank you.

Very interesting! Being born in the late 1980's in Sweden I did not come into contact with anything other than VHS apart from one Philips V2000 deck at a flea market. However around the year 2000 I was the kind of teenager that read old consumer technology magazines (seems like I haven't changed much on that point). I owned a bunch from the mid to late 1970's and vividly remember the articles about video recorders. VCR och VCR-LP was the main thing, but I remember that SVC was mentioned. The main use case seemed to be time shifting, but I guess that the price of the units and only two available TV channels made it a niche. :)

I think the back tension system was taken from Philips' open reel tape recorders. The idea is that the torque varies with the weigth of the reel - when the reel is full it is heavy and presses hard on the friction material under the plate, but at the same time the outer diameter of the tape roll is large. When a reel is almost empty it is much lighter and therefore only gives a little torque but then the outer diameter is small and the resulting tension should therefore be almost the same. The problem is that there is no feedback so if the tension is wrong the machine will not correct it. Also the machine can only operate in horisontal position as the weight dependent friction system naturally only works in the direction of gravity. This was why they stopped using it on open reel decks as people started to expect them to be able to play vertically.

Amazing video. Congrats!

I have 2 N1700's - one bought new for around £600 in 1978. IIRC Central TV in the UK used these machines as backup in case they had broadcast failures. Our school had an N1500 for black and white school programmes in the mid 70's.

I have a Grundig Reel to Reel taper recorder. It was bought brand new in France and that’s where I bought it from. The really weird thing was the controls were all in German! Which is rather odd because this tape recorder was bought brand new in France and the instructions even have an English section. Now I live in the US so Grundig is not a name you see around here. They were around in the 50’s but they withdrew in the beginning of the 60’s. Back to the tape recorder. When I started playing with it, I noticed two buttons. One said stop and the other said halt. Now, being an American who can only speak English, (I know a little German because I have a German Uncle and I once sang a German song in Grade School) my brain thought this, well I recognise halt that can mean stop but there is a dedicated stop button. Maybe halt is pause? I tried stop and the recorder froze but I could hear the motor going but the tape wasn’t moving. I scratched my forehead and decided to read the manual. Once it explained what all the German labelled controls did, I thought to myself “Why would they do that? That is the most counterintuitive thing they could have done! Even for a German electronics company that is weird!”

Great video. What I'd love to see is what the most common problems with these machines are and the steps you take to repair them, what size belts it takes, where you got the parts etc. Cheers!

Great memories of the 1500 and 1502. We had both in the AV department of the school I worked at in 1979. We used the 1502 mainly for off-air recording since the digital clock was much more accurate than the hit and miss mechanical one on the 1500. The format was already out of date by then as VHS and Betamax were available. The tapes were pretty unreliable and I became adept at dismantling and repairing them, which was a nightmare with all the little springs and cogs which you had to put back together.

Hi Colin, just seen your video and subscribed to your channel, your really fantastic and no your stuff! I got a brand new 1702 in 1979, I never had any issues with it and all worked fine till one day I unplugged it, when I reconnected it I plugged it in to a three way adapter, I saw a arc in the plug and the Phillips died. That was around 1983, i covered it up, put it on top of the waldrobe and iv never looked at it since. I suppose I must have blown a internal fuse? The green mains on light and cassette illumination light failed somewhat earlier. Iv a stack of tapes too. I suppose one day I will get the old girl going again. I remember the secondary school I went to in the mid 1970's having a stack of 1500's, The picture quality was always good. Your very lucky having those 2 Grundig machines, iv only ever seen pictures of them. I remember there being a mod where a 1700 machine was modified to play both VCR and VCR long play tapes and freeze frame being reinstated. How though I dont no with the 1500 series head drum recording guard bands and no slant azimuth recording. Mid 80's I moved on to Betamax and then VHS. I will never forget the Philips machines and iv a great fondness for them. I don't suppose heads are available for any of these machines now except like you say removing them from another machine. I did manage to get some BASF LVC 180 three hour tapes years ago. They were about £18 each. I never had a problem with them. It would be great if you demonstrated a 1500 working even though you say you don't like them. Thanx so much for taking me down memory lane. Regards Lee.

I now realise I actually have one of those BASF LVC tapes -- but not an SVR deck to check it out. Picked it up at a flea market aeons ago. I knew what it was then, and was curious about the coaxial spool mechanism. And it was dirt cheap. :^)

Seeing the cassette apart and the arrangement of the spools, reminded me of the Bosch (BTS) 1" B format machine I used to operate on occassion.

My late father was a le to buy a N1500 in 1974 because His cousin worked for Philips as a tecnician, working on televisión and later vcr. It was a customer return machine which my uncle ma naged to repair and my brother and I over and over replayed Bohemian Rapsody from Queen and The Noses Show, a very comicial british programa with funny slapstick scenes! My father wasn't very happy with us rewinding and playing back all the time because he was very worried of tape and headwear

Neat machines, I know the N1500 is not your favorite VCR, but a much better offering then we had in the US, the infamous Cartivision system. It was normally sold as a TV/VCR combo and cost $1,500 in 1972, it also used a coaxial reel but recorded with skip field recording which recorded 1 frame and played it back 3 times. There was Sony U-Matic as well but that was even more expensive (but worked much better).

I would love to see a review on the Avenger. Looks like a lovely car.

Actually there is a "professional" VCR in that format, called the VCR601. It lists a playing time of 65 minutes on a SVC 4 tape. 14,29 cm/s. Apparently one of it's features is that it can lower the tape tension when the tape is not in use. I do have the service manual of it if you want it. Not sure how compatible it is.

Great video Colin. Lots of juicy details. Speaking of Euro gear, I have three Euro VCRs, two Grundig and on Philips (I think). I can't recall the model numbers. But, the one machine says Grundig Video 2X4. As I recall, two are NTSC and one is PAL. I forget where I got them.

i used to repair these back in the day , not sure if i have happy memorys about them or not :)

I am visiting from Techmoan. Cheers!

15:30 I wondered after pressing 'cassette' and the machine delaced, whether FF and REW would work faster BUT I suspect those stacked spool cassettes were never designed to do that.

I remember the N1500 from the junior school I went to. The analog clock was somewhat "amusing" to me even as a 7 yr old kid. The VCR never worked properly, always had a bad tracking error (or probably tape damage, no doubt the tapes were used over & over, and were probably 5 years old by the time I got to "enjoy" one). Aside from the clock, which was like something from an electric cooker, I actually like the styling of the N1500 much more than the later models 😊 My other very early memory of a video recorder was a top-loading umatic in the lobby of the local branch of Barclay's Bank...just one of those random memories from the 70s. By the time I got to secondary school it was all Ferguson Videostars. Always struck me as a bit odd that anyone would want a naff Ferguson badge on a fairly decent JVC-made machine! The audio, in particular, even on lo-fi linear was way better than my dad's dreadful SL-C6mkII Betamax! That really was a crappy machine. My first job in the video field was in the engineering dept at Technicolor Videocassette in Wembley. I think they had about 20,000 vhs duplicators. JVC BR-7000 and Panasonic AG-6810. I definitely preferred working on the JVCs. Spent half my time just replacing the little IR tape sensor boards...if a tape got stuck, the not-very-bright "factory staff" would just yank the cassette out, the chewed tape would catch on the IR led board and rip it off! I'm sure JVC in Japan were mystified as to why so many little PCBs were sold as spare parts! Almost killed myself with a BR-7000...pushing a stack of about 12 of them on a cart, through swing doors, the deck on top slid off, literally slid over my head, and all 30-odd kilos of very angular metal hit the ground with a thump. Not quite sure how I escaped death there. Aside from being a bit wonky after its fall, the deck survived too! "Health and Safety" wasn't yet a thing in the late 80s! And that concludes my trip down vintage-video memory lane! 😄

I’d love an N1700. It’s just a shame that they’re so rare, so expensive and so unreliable. I do, however, absolutely love my Betamax (a Sony SL-C9 UB) along with its tapes dating as early as 1982 and as late as 1999

Was the tape formulation changed when the VCR-LP format came out? Sony did that when they introduced the L-500 tapes and the SL-8200 with the X2/βII speed.

I got an n1702 from an uncle complete with service manual which was interesting it explained how all the modulation stuff worked. It worked but it was problematic the picture was never stable although it had a very good what you might call 'base quality'. The sound was very good though.. Flawed machines I would say. the biggest issue seems to be the stacked cassette although grundig seemed to have got it to work properly. later I got a grundig 2x4 v2000 which was god-like.. I believe the manual (of the N1702) eplains how the mechanism has to be cleaned every 10 hours of operation or so. I guess that explaines why the cassette holder comes of so easily you are supposed to get in there and clean stuff. There was a metal strip at the beginning/end of the tape which would simply make a connection to stop the machine there was a problem with the glue. my uncle had replaced that with an optical sensor and he would use schotch tape to remove the magnetic material and make the tape transparant at the beginning/end. So right at the start the machine needed to be hacked to get it to work properly (sort of). So quite good quality when it comes to basic picture quality like chroma bandwidth but problematic right out of the factory. You can say about vhs what you want but at least they got the tape transport right. Well in terms of handling the tape, can't compare to the grundig 'direct drive' mechanism, vhs was always a bit 'cheapish' but otherwise well done. vhs would have this 'swing wheel' to drive the spools, flakey but the thing isn't supposed to last forever anyway. It would work properly for say 8 years and then it would be time to get a new recorder anyway. It seems the grundig v2000's were designed to last forever which is a bit unrealistic. But I'm rambling on. There seem to be different design philosophies between a german v2000 and japanese VHS. After a few years you would get HQ VHS which had a bit of improved luma bandwith. And after that came super vhs which had full 5mhz bandwidth. So you don't want the recorder to last forever anyway. One thing that dissapointed me about S-VHS was the chroma bandwidth it was still VHS after all.. I guess they figured I wouldn't notice. Now it's digital and high quality and all but I still miss that era it seems things are more interesting when they aren't perfect.

Hi, love watching your videos, they're awesome. I have a 1700 that is not functional would be nice to see what is on the tapes that came with it. I don't suppose you offer a repair service as I wouldn't know where to start.

23:40 Motor on the left looks very similar to one I found in a Garrard record deck. Deffo mains voltage !

It's interesting to see how Grundig already established its convention of the right-hand mech on its early SVR model. AFAIK all VCRs developed in-house by Grundig (including their early VHS units, before sourcing the mechs from Philips and others sometime in the late 80s / early 90s) had the mech on the right, and the controls on the left. Any ideas why?

I really would love one of any of the machines from this family - I've got too many projects on the go at the moment at take one of these in to my life, but soon I'll pick up an 'N' series machine. Any suggestions as to which one might be the most viable of a project, I'm only interested in one from the family, not fussed as to which sub-format?

Do you do digitialsed transfers? I have a VC-60 cassette which I've come across while clearing out my Folks house would love to know what's on it.

When I throw my VCR 4000 away in the early 90s I already knew that this would be a failure. The main problem of the VCR recorders were the tape transport and the two video heads. Because of the big drum the relative speed was very high, so clogging and braking of the heads were common. Did you see the vertical stripes in the pictures at 14:49? I tried hours to got them away, but no way. It seems to me a design flaw. Perhaps the colour carrier frequenz.

How much would these sell for nowadays?

I remember my school having one of these before they changed over to VHS

We had an early Philips VCR at school in the mid 1970s! It was always breaking down! 👎 I always thought concentric spools were a bit weird! 😂😂😂 I was waiting for you to say that the N1500 circuitry was ENTIRELY DISCRETE! 👍 I always thought it was? But it isn't? I've never heard of "sticky shed" on cassette formats, but I encountered it on SONY EIAJ! I successfully "baked" the tape, which temporarily removes moisture, allowing successful playback.

I am restoring one of these machines currenrtly just wondering is there anywhere you can still buy the drive belts for ? i need pretty much all of them if you had a link or something would be fantastic i have the N1500 Model the first model that came out thank you great video btw

Hi Colin. I have finally got my hands on this, n1500 and of course all the belts are goo 😀 But I have a question about the video output. Do you use the "ant out" or the "TV out fbas"? Is it a 6 pin din or something?

Hi Colin!

I am in Australia,I need used tapes,are they still around ? I have the N1700

I can see a lot in the 'SVR' that migrated to the V2000 machines.

The 1502 was the model my school had. The physics teacher (apparently!!) didn't give the unit the required pause between moving the relevant control to the stop position and then to the eject position resulting in him getting a face full of unspooling tape. Allegedly.

The SVC/SVR format is really just called SV. Note the cassette has Super Video Cassette and the recorder has Super Video Recorder.

3:15 Is that a microwave oven laid on its back you have the 1502 on ?

Would you be interested in seeing if the Teletext data is recoverable from the tapes? I'm thinking the cricket one would certainly have Teletext data. Not sure about the Dutch tapes.

25:05 Magnetic brakes - for tape tensioning I guess - as why would you need them on head or capstan ?

Do you know the purpose of the belt brushes?

So what is that knob in the middle of the top of the SVR ? Playback speed adjustment ? If so, I guess that's on the board you replaced the chip on !

When was this one manufactured?

11:10 Loeki the Lion was also used on Westward TV (ITV in the Westcountry) in 1980 and 1981.

Very interesting. Nice to see old Dutch television from the seventies (I'm Dutch). Where did you get that tape?

Philips was there first in 1972, so why didn't that become the standard?? Were VHS and Beta a ton cheaper?? I keep wondering.

Ive just bought a Grundig SVR and Im dying to plug it into the tv. It works mechanically, but havent tried it before.

is that a dutch tape?

hi my brother had a V2000 in the past the RF socket on the backs of the models he had used to break and fixing it was a right pain a lot use a cable that can out of the back will a RF plug on the end to save cost of repair

40:00... 'sticky tape' - i.e. damp - hence the oven (or a dehumidifier) helping. 'DEW' being the warning message via LED and instruction book ! Best solution is to keep tapes and players in the same room for over 24 hours so that moisture issues sort themselves out first. Perhaps more an issue with videotape cameras which are subjected to varying atmospheric conditions.

10 years ago I saw a Luxor player for sale that was claimed to take both standard and LP.

13:06 Not seen one of those before !

I have a box of about 10 tapes for this machine.

The Video you show looks a bit wobbly. Don't you use a TBC when digitizing them? Or was the instable picture already like that on the tape?

it loads the same way U-Tape or U-Matic loads

4:11 n1500 Tapes must be bought in holland ;-) Ster reclame!

Even the russians copied the machine ;-) The machine was called the Spektum 203 and Saturn505

Do you purchase these? I have an N1700

39:50 "Dogs" I'd suspect. Spool driving dogs, in full.

22:58 "Normal service will resume shortly."... ...The next line is missing :(

This video player was connecting to black and white TVs, right?

I thought it was gonna be like an 8 track at first; the tape would be an endless loop, which is logical because the tape kinda looks like an 8 track tape.

If I only could find a N1500 in good working condition

Is Scott your son or grandson?

In 1974 a 60 minute cassette cost about 20 pounds.

📼

1:20 I spy with my little eye - an EVS800 !

"Motors sometimes squeal so might need replacing. I think not - just lubricate the bearings - like an engineer would !

Uhh... what's with the silence at 23:53-23:57?

actually a vid on the car might be more interesting ...and more relevant !

Quintessentially European. Not Japanese. No NTSC models were produced I suppose.

Lorenskog - Norway, 05. 03. 2021. Hello. My name is Jan Krosby. I was one of the first to buy a Phillips VCR video recorder in Norway, back in 1973. During the time before Betamax and VHS arrive the market, I did a lot of recordings. I have been a entertainer (magician), and have done many TV performance I recorded. At that time it wasn¨t so easy to transfer (copying) the tapes, specially when the recorder break down, and nobody could repair it. Suddently it was to late to do something, other than take care of the tape cassettes. On the tape it was many personly shots of my family as well, and other important recording. What I¨m looking for is a VCR N 1500 or N1700 to buy, or have some of the tapes transfer ti a DVD or memory stick. If you can help me, I looking forward to hear from you. My E-mail address are: post@jankrosby.no - www.jancrosby.no ( my "stage name" spell my surname with "C"). Thank you. Best regards, Jan Krosby

Rather too much action takes place off shot !

it was an interesting but also a really horrible format