Guides can be adjusted - but preferably by a qualified service technician with years of experience. They are not meant to be user-serviceable and should only need a tweak ONCE during the life of the VCR.

@@RoughJustice2k18 I have a Panasonic NV-SD400 VCR and every time I use it I have to take the screwdriver in case the signal gets bad because the signal does actually get bad very often. Finding a technician for VCRs in Peru is extremely rare, so what I do is follow this guy's videos instead :P

Sounds like the VCR that recorded it was out of alignment; it can happen over time as the parts begin to wear out. Thing is, often the misaligned VCR will play back its own recordings perfectly, so whoever recorded it would have been none the wiser!

Yes crt displays work better for retro games. I have a nice collection of crt. Color sets 1.4" 5" 8" 10" 13" 19" 21" and 28". All work.

The fact that they actually worked as well as they did was a miracle.

@@12voltvids Did they use the same dot pitch on the smaller sets? I think the larger ones were what 0.31? The trinitron was 0.25 but the phosphors are all in line. I still have a working NEC EGA monitor which has strong color and good color balance.

I laughed so hard.

@Gamer121 it was a joke..

Dirty heads is what you are talking about, this is a more advanced issue where the tape path has gone out of whack. VCR's that have been dropped, banged around, or heavily used might have this more commonly than your average VCR.

Yeah analog monitors make things real easy digital monitors not so much.

Step one, clean tape path.

FindLiberty, oow picky picky :-D if the path was dirty then i would, the reference shelf can get really nasty if it's not been cleaned in a long time. People expect machines to work without maintenance.

@@FindLiberty This wasn't a how to clean your VCR video. This was an alignment video. The machine was clean as I cleaned it when I fixed it a few weeks ago. This was a staged repair. I messed up the alignment for the video.

Exactly what I did, align the path by literally having a look around the head drum. If the tape runs in alignment to the drum ridge, it's pretty close to the optimum setting.

Yup, I just bought one as "used" and it does not work

They make it so you have to use a special "tape guide adjust tool" so that peasants like us can't fix things. I use a pair of (cough, cough) TOENAIL SCISSORS that has pointy tips that 'grab' two of the slots on either end of the center post. Then I put it all back together, watch Apollo 13, and cut my toenails.

Back in those days we (service engineers) were warning a living fixing these so even if KZfaq was around we would not be showing you how to fix. The only reason i do this now is because i don't make a living fixing electronics, I make a living making KZfaq videos.

@@12voltvids Clearly, not everyone is like you. There are thousands of KZfaq channels (professional businesses making a living) willing to share the knowledge of their trades. My whole life I freely shared any knowledge I have and I have more work than I can handle. Isn't it a bit of a stretch to call a repairman or service technician an "engineer". Engineers design and build complex things. Apple, John Deer and other control freaks also want to keep people from fixing their own devices. I think it's pathetic to horde information and knowledge. In the good old days a schematic came with most devices. Most people can't be bothered to fix their stuff, or aren't mechanically inclined enough, so it will never be a threat to repairmen. Also, a number of people will butcher a repair attempt, resulting in a more lucrative repair for technicians. I just don't buy your reasoning. If people are good at what they do and give good service, to their customers, they will always have more than enough work through referrals and reputation.

@@gordthor5351 There are still TV and old tech repairmen in my city of 100,000 people making plenty of money fixing people's old tat they just bought on eBay for a stupidly overpriced sum or found in a dump. Yes they charge for their service, no they won't let you watch them, but they aren't vehemently protective over their knowledge. If someone is inclined, they can learn from some yahoo on KZfaq that just learned it from a blog post and try and do it themselves if their IQ is that high to do so, or they can find a repairman to hire to fix it for them and get it done and enjoy it. As the saying goes, "those that can, do, and those that can't, won't". No one entity can threaten another because the people needing this service is too infrequent.

I just use a flat head driver. As to which way you turn that depends of what way it shifted.

I just did this on a Betamax machine without a scope. It was a pain in the butt to get it perfect but I did it, after spending hours trying tapes recorded on many different machines. If you have a scope, it's better to look at the hi-fi audio waveform as the hi-fi audio tracks are much narrower than the video tracks. I think he demonstrated Betamax tape path alignment in his SL-5200 repair video. As for the best Betamax machines, the SL-HF1000 is the best for NTSC and the SL-HF950 is the best for PAL/SECAM.

They work their way loose

This is because HDTV's are not designed or capable of accepting an analog RF signal that low. They will wait for the signal to improve to re-sync, which can cause delays of 10-30 seconds.

The tapes that do not play right were recorded out of alignment on the recorder.

@@12voltvids Aha. Some of them are VHS-C tapes, put into an adapter. Got 10 tapes from a customer, and half of them played fine, while half of them were jumping/rolling like in your video :)

@@OuglandMedia cameras were especially bad at going out of alignment because people dropped cameras and knocked something out of alignment or broke something internal. Some can be recovered others not.

@@12voltvids That sounds right. Some of the tapes works fine in the original camera they were filmed in, while playing them in a standalone players can cause problems. I have so much to learn, so I'm happy I found you channel :)

You have to adjust the tracking on a tape by tape basis and key it in with the remote. This is why more advanced VCR's will have auto tracking adjust. Also running a headcleaning cassette will clean up a lot of video signal quality problems.What is shown in this video is when the tape path is totally out of skew due to age wear and use.

Have you tried cleaning the heads. If the lock screw comes loose the guide posts can shift.

12voltvids Thank you for getting back. No I haven't tried yet. So far I have only played it.

Could be a dirty control track head. Of a bad capstan motor if it unlocks every 3 seconds. Is the tape recorded in ep? Could also be the supply reel sticking once every rotation or the tape has a damaged control track if its just one tape. The tape end sensors are used on some machines to start the loading cycle and some machines they don't shield them so light shining in the top can trigger them. They are located on either side of the cassette basket right at the front if the tape.

@@12voltvids The tape is recorded in SP. Additionally (and this is an important factor, I should have mentioned in the first place) As soon as the next piece of footage on this tape begins (about 15 mins from the start of the tape) everything is fine, and there are no issues. This leads me to think it more related to the tape, than the mechanism running it.

You answered your own question. Has the tape been stored say on top of s speaker or another magnetic source such as the top or next to a crt TV over the years? If so the magnetic field from the degause coil, or magnetic field from speakers may have damaged the control track on a portion of the tape. Open the unit and watch the reels turn. If the distortion happens at exactly the same place as the reel is rotating then you have solved your mystery. I wrecked one of my beta test tapes because it was set on that blue service mat that had magnets in it. I say had because I ripped them out.

Tapes definitely do deteriorate especially if they are second or third generation which really affects the color quality. I'm just right now digitizing a bunch of tapes for a client and some of them are second or third generation but were recorded with home video cameras from the early 80s and the color off some of these cameras was well let's put it this way they're closer to black and white then color the camera is himself for just horrendous back then. But yes tapes do deteriorate it's usually the color that starts to go first because the luminance are black and white information is recorded as an FM signal where they frequency is modulated to represent the brightness the chroma which is the color signal is amplitude modulated as the tape deteriorates the signal level reduces and just like with AM radio a station that's distant will fade out and be weak or as an FM signal from an FM station remains loud and clear until it gets to the point where you can't detect it at all and then it just goes right away the noise

Not familiar with that model so I wouldn't know where to look.

@@12voltvids ok, thank you very much for your prompt response, greetings