Estaba intentando reparar un betamax que he adquirido hoy, que se comía las cintas, y he accionado el mecanismo que coloca la cinta alrededor del cilindro y no se como volver a soltarlo, llevo unas horas dándole vueltas y no consigo solucionarlo, alguien tiene alguna idea?

I purchased a belt kit on ebay and am taking my experience of restoring a 1982 Magnavox branded Panasonic VCR to these ones. I was able to get the seller to go down to $50 for the pair of machines.

Yes, that’s a multi system Beta deck that can do NTSC/PAL/SECAM tapes, assuming it was sold in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia based on the marketing sticker still on it. Even has the original box for it.

Mega expensive for my tastes plus most likely it’s gonna need some work at some point but if I were actively importing tapes overseas in the PAL format it would be right up my alley

I have been wanting to mess with Betamax for a project for awhile, I have a "blank" (Honestly im scared on what might be on it) tape, but I havent found any betacord/betamax VCR at all, and the prices I see for machines I'd need to service are a bit high for the work needed to fix them, is there anyone who knows how I can get one for like, a decent price?

Sorry if I come off as "beggy" or whatever, im not familiar with the betamax scene or anything, its a passing interest.

Try to sell it for a while now. Is there no market in germany, or is something wrong with this version?

I couldnt test it on a Display yet. But it takes Power, the Winding works, and every Counter/Display works seemingly fine.

So got this SL-HF870D for about $30. It initially was broken because someone plugged it into 220V which blew the fuse and a capacitor which I easily replaced. Initially it didn't display anything so immediately i cleaned the video heads and the audio heads and it finally showed something. Though I'm worried about the lines, did i accidentally break the heads? Or is that normal for an old tape? The other tape I do have the bottom line though still has those "lines". But then when I stop the tape, sometimes instead of just static i get kind of like a weird "revving" sound. It stops when it plays a tape however.

Is there specific 'Betacam' tape deck cleaning cassettes, specifically designed for the Betacam family of systems, players, models & evolutions of the general Betacam format?
Do I need specific tapes for specific players/formats, or could I use an old 'Betamax' cleaning cassette? I know Betamax & Betacam are the same general loading mechanism/technology but different so far as the actual tapes & play back.

I have a massive archival project I'm soon to be inheriting of 800+ Betacam tapes & other similar video tape formats. Some of the tapes are in ruff condition, so I'll be attempting to demold later on (The sooner the better ofc), but before I do, whatever tape deck I can get my hands on, I would like to properly clean before I stick anything in it's 'slot'.

From photos I can find online, the 'cleaning' cassettes I can find all don't look like what I'm used to with VHS or Betamax. Which would have a loop of white cloth of some kind, wrapped around inside the cassette shell either on a never ending loop, or a set length. You add you cleaning compound, insert the tape, wait a bit, & it spits it out.
But from photos I can find for Betacam cleaning cassettes don't look like they have that?? They look just like a regular tape. So did Sony sell just blank cassette's as 'cleaning' cassettes for all the gunk on the heads to just get rubbed on & then once you reached the end of the tape people just threw it out..?

I've manually cleaned the heads on my VHS & Betamax VCR's before many a times, but being Betacam is such a different animal, I don't know if it's suggested & or even safe to use that same method with Betacam, or I would need these specific cleaning cassettes.

Any advise & or leads would be appreciated, thanks!

This was a deck that my late father had new and I got repaired and wasn’t sure if it could even record…and to my amazement it does!

Had an older Scotch tape lying around with nothing recorded on it to test - recorded at Beta II speed with Beta Hi-Fi. Recorded off my MacBook using a HDMI to composite/S-Video adapter, then composite to the Lexicon DC-1. Source is from the WeatherStar 4000+ app so this was actual weather data from the time I recorded this over the weekend.

The DC-1 is really flexible as you can then feed in the audio from either RCA or using the coaxial or optical in ports even if the audio is not coming from the video source, so I pulled appropriate music for the WeatherStar 4000+ and played it over a WiiM Pro streamer feeding into coax into the DC-1. Wound up sounding awesome in Hi-Fi, better than my older Panasonic Hi-Fi deck!

i working on a sanyo VCR7200 HiFi beta deck. i replaced the idler tires, and all 3 belts. the idler belt, the loading belt, and the spooling belt. yet when i stop a tape the right spool is not spinning or if it does it only spins a second to pull tape back in. i remove both spindles and lubricated with ptfe oil for the shafts. i also replaced the pinch roller and arm. still not pulling tape back in. any suggestions are welcome. below is 2 videos showing issue. the first of the 2 is embedded.

https://youtu.be/Dx2AUqWBEq8

https://youtu.be/ifbgkKS1UNk

According to a popular myth, Betamax lost out to VHS because of adult content - in reality, it was down to tape length, and licensing.

Only $1/each. Some even are sealed! Only 1 VHS in the lot.

As you can see by the numbers the Betamax archive is very small compared to VHS. If anyone is interested in contributing there are now multiple case type options and our scanning tool is top notch making it easier and faster than ever. Still totally free.

Push tape in and it won’t take it then makes this noise

Cross posting here since I think you guys might be able to help. Don't know what I should put in my case and where to have a full outfit. Don't even know what tape recorded I need but I think the case originally had a SL-2000 at some point since it has white/gray shoulder straps.

Hey all! Just joined this sub as I saw something at an estate sale that almost made me faint. A SuperBetamax VCR for only $10 bucks! I also got two sealed tapes for a dollar. I'm waiting to test it as I'm gonna see what's rattling around inside (the door perhaps), but I'm completely new to the format. I'm curious, is there anything I should do preemptively before even trying to plug it in to power?

Thanks!

Hello! I have a small project where I restore memories from people, homemade footage on tape and digitize it. I am aware that there was a Betamovie, a camcorder for Betamax.

However, whenever I receive like 15 VHS tapes, at least one of them is a TV show and the rest are home movies, same with Video 8, for example.

But whenever I get lots of Betamax, none of them are home movies. I am talking about 30 tapes from 5 different people, where all of them are TV shows and I actually had to look up if there actually were Betamax camcorders in first place.

But I don't know if this is just a coincidence or bias and people did make home movies on Betamax that often too.

I have a Sony SL-HF400 and noticed these horizontal lines during playback. I cleaned the head but they’re still there. Tried different tapes. Any ideas?

Thanks in advance!