PYE V2000 20VR22 VCR - Overview of the first machine 

still working after 35 years or so, respecting that great technology!

I managed to get one of these Pye 20VR22 machines in the late 80's as an ex-rental deck to playback recordings made in the early 80's. The 3 tapes mainly contained recordings made on a Philips VR2021 in 1983 and they played fine, but some recordings made on a Grundig 2x4 Plus in early 1982 didn't playback as well, there was a lot of break up on bright white text, a bit like worn heads, but it could have been an incompatibility between Philips/Pye and that early Grundig machine.

Identical in every way to the Philips, great picture quality but the main issue was wear on the heads, the life expectancy of heads was really quite short, but an engineer taught me how to clean the heads which was great

I owned v2000 for many years and found the Philips to be more reliable than grundig, the picture quality was the best of any vcr of the era, but the heads were extremely susceptible to debris from the tapes, luckily I was taught how to clean the heads by a vcr engineer friend, a cotton bud and white spirit worked wonders, and as you’ll know they’re bloody heavy

There’s a small screw on the rear of the machine which will change the transmission frequency slightly

I wonder why this wasn't the dominant format, looks superior to VHS, and a two sided video cassette? How cool is that? And also that automatic tracking looks pretty amazing, also visual search is much cleaner than VHS. Even with 4 or 6 heads there is always tracking errors when doing visual searches.

i HAVE vr2022..The machine lights up but i am struggling to find any TAPES TO TRY IT OUT..I also own several Betamax machines..

First: you are not on the Video AV Channel this is the Nr.8 on this Philips TV-Set. The picture have no runtime compensation so the picture is falling on top to one side! Second: one of the videoheads are dirty clean the Head with a still standing Toilett paper and with Alcohol like Isopropanol - for this action you must remove the top cover and/or the Toploading plastic part of the cover (cassette cover). Do not clean from up/down! Only hold the paper to the head with a light press on and rotate the head drum (scanner) with the hand slow. Do not move the cleaning paper up/down. Hold it only in one position and move only the Head drum (scanner) by hand in one direction (i.e. clockwise). Do not use a cotton stick! Only a toilette paper or a kitchen roll with Isopropanol Alkohol. If the Picture search and the still is not going without stripes inside the picture so the Piezo mounted Heads are defect and/or the Powersupply +/-150Volts are not available for the DTF (Dynamic Track Following) are not working any more. Best Regards Volker from Vienna

Had one in the very early 80s. Used to love the 'go to' thing, where you'd note the time on the video at the end of something you were recording like neighbours at 1421 or something, then press 'go to 1421' and it'll take the video back to that place on the tape. bloody great video which we had for over 15 years, but had to get rid of because they stopped selling the tapes in our town :-(

Ive got the Philios 2022

Some of the Grundig machines didn't use the DTF and relied on conventional tracking like VHS/Betamax which might explain playback issues. The Grundig machines weren't great, and indeed Grundig had various back-channels to dump Video2000 and switch to Betamax during the format war so they never seemed that convinced by Video2000, they clearly had a more Betamax outlook with the 'Beta' tape wrap and conventional tracking, maybe they wanted to keep the mechanism they used adaptable. It ended up started the shitstorm with Sanyo and the Video 2000 camp, _the second battle of Poitiers_ and cascaded through the format war, an often untold bit of the saga.