I want to tell you how much I enjoy your videos and all the things you repair. I too like to fix electronics, appliances and the like, and I appreciate your great narrations and explanations. Please keep it coming as I appreciate you sharing your gift with all of us!
It's absolutely incredible how 37 years back when machines were made to last. and were and are made to service and give tune up's when it was needed. Love your video's. and at 37 years back I would have been 14
I just got one of these for my birthday. Sadly, it wasnt as 'works great' as the ad said but this is a great reference video for repairs. Thanks for this.
Thanks for the visual memory... I used to service those (and the first Beta 1 version) for Sony. Watching your video here makes me wish I had kept my B&W Ampex 1" reel-to-reel beast (about the size of a small dorm refrigerator). It's fascinating how video cameras, recorders and editing equipment has improved considerably over the past half century. No more messy magnetic developer spray and long diagonal 1" tape splicing attempts. Someday all those mechanical parts will even be miniaturized and every able-bodied adult will be able to lift and carry around their very own black and white video camera and tape recorder for use anywhere that AC power is available!
I had the opertunity to get an Ampex VPR7900 back when I worked in TV production. It was a spare kicking around the studio that always had problems playing tapes made on other machines, so nobody used it. The engineers best attempt still left a machine that nobody trusted to use, and eventually they decommissioned it and I was told I could have it if I could get it out of the building myself. I had to pass on that because it would not fit in my car. Kicking myself now that would have ben a great conversation piece even if I never managed to get it working correctly. I do have a Sony 1/2" reel to reel machine that partially works, but the only tapes I have for it are all falling apart and stick to the metal parts so I have just left that one collecting dust.
@@12voltvids I can't believe the belts of this machine 😦........ I mean.. you get a cassette deck from late 90's.. and the belts turn back to black tar.. they become a liquid stain on the pulleys 🤢........... this belts are like what?? 15 year older?? 🤔....... and they are still there and working 🤷♀.......
I just picked up the same model which the original owner claimed had less than 10 house of play on it. It sat in his garage since 1979 I think he said. I loaded a tape in and it doesn't load it the whole way. I push the loading with my finger then I can play and it only plays in black and white also. Gonna watch this video while I try to fix this. So happy this video exists haha.
You did a video on the SL 2000 'portable' recorder/player. I had the Zenith clone. Had the HV 2200 camera, the 10 meter extension camera cable and the 'portable' travel case. Everything could fit into it for location work. The bag was ~ 3 ft. long, ~20" wide, and ~ 12 " thick. Finally had playback problems that I could never get fixed.
Brings back memories. I remember working on those way back when. That's when you could charge enough money to make it worth your while. Everything made these days is pretty much disposable.
Beautiful machine. I`ve seen many Beta machines including my Sanyo VTC 5000 Betacord Pal model from 1982 it`s just a heap of plastic compared to your beautiful Sony Betamax machine.I`ve been a huge fan of yours for quite some time.
Hi, enjoyed this, I worked on all the sony series Bata, half in , 3/4 umatics, converted to editors, 1 in. with pizeo heads, all great machines with the best suppot and documentation. The cameras were good along with the 3/4 in eng recorders then the batamax eng and editors with time code for broadcast series. Course panasonic and jvc simular, The superstic editor was a great mod with the audio corection when crusing the raw footage for voice cues.
That's a really old looking machine for I think you said 84. In '84 we got our first video recorder, and it was a SL-C7, a total beast of a unit. It did seem to like to eat tapes, pretty much from the first day we plugged it in. Thanks for the video!
Loverly old machine :-D, im amazed how they managed to use one motor for both functions, the gearing by flywheels must have been very accurate. I could not see what you did, all belts looked in the same place and no extras were visible to the angle of the camera. Shame the end sensor went faulty ;-(, my old machine had a 12v bulb and photo transistors for end detection, the bulb could die after 1/2 a million years LOL :-D. . My bodges to make a machine run untill the new belts/jockey wheels came in was adding a small drive belt around a pulley to allow the worn original belt to grip better, rubber to rubber tire lol. The jockey wheel had a worn tire so it didnt drive propperly, remove the tire from the wheel and add two turns of ptfe tape to the bare wheel, then put the tire back on But inside out to use the fresh smooth rubber on the inside, it kept the machine going untill the owner could get or afford a new jockey wheel. Dissesemble faulty felt clutches and washing with detergent to remove muck/oil so it grips slightly better, usually good enough for it to be reliable. Coating faulty brake pads with rubber solution so they work. All evil bodges and more, but i would do anything for people that could not afford a new machine, if it was free then i would say "It will last a year, save up for a new one", some of my bodges kept machines going for six years, i was happy to help ;-D
Lovely old machine. I once had to repair an old Grundig VCR, and though it was VHS, it had the same sort of tape transport. In Europe they were referred to as "Charlie Decks". I still have my old late 60's Sony Trinitron TV, one of the first solid state ones imported here, and after a friend looked at it, still very much alive thanks to a Digibox with an RF output.
Wow Dave, I bet ya that this machine would confuse Nasa engineers. This unit is built like a tank, not like some of the later bottom of the line vcrs that were all plastic crap mechanical components. Very Cool !
When I see this machine it brings me back in my childhood. It's make me very happy and remind me all of things because of this machine. And also I want always to see inside mechanism how its moving while its play the tape its look like a robot thats why I play the tape while the top cover is open. Today I want to collect many models of betamax. I love it❤
Thanks 12V. The mechanism of this Beta VTR is build like a tank. You replace the belts and cleaning idlers the VTR start again. Hope in the next future you service a SL-2500!
@ 12:40 O, M, G... I these years, what I lie I have lived... ;O) @ 13:10 LOVE the crow in the background! Just something about it makes me smile. Don't know why... I LOVE working on old stuff. Especially when it's been cast away by someone for junk. When I was younger, I'd go to the thrift stores and look for things that needed fixing. It's nice because when it's been cast aside, if I can't fix it, nobody gets mad, LOL! @ 16:12 It's funny how industrial things were back then. Induction braking, because digital speed control really hadn't been developed to the affordable point yet. So awesome! @ 20:18 I've had about enough of that noise! LOL! @ 23:23 Thank you sweet Jesus! LOL! @ 24:34 It's interesting to watch the belt stretching from the induction brake here. @ 26:02 It took me a few times to go back and see. It looks like you replaced one of the drive belts with a rubber band, LOL! I've done it before, just to get things working until I could get the proper part. @ 31:06 Thanks for the info! I was getting ready to say that the heads are most likely either worn or dirty.
The elastic is under the slipping belt, to give it more grip is all.Heads are fine. They were replaced on that unit when I first got it, and it never saw much use after that. My SL7200 also has a new head on it. One out of a B2/3 deck, so if I needed a head for my 5200 I would pull it from this one of the 7200. I don't have a micrometer to do the eccentricity adjustment mind you so that would be a problem.
I just picked up a 1980 Sony BI SLO-383 last week looks new and works fine. at least the parts of it I know how to test, might be willing to let it go if there's a collector wanting one.
Great Job, Sir, I love these machines and I have one National Panasonic L15 VHS system. Your videos was very detailed and informative and the way you explained was great. I liked the ways you responded to color comeback - änd there the color, ahaaa haaa....". Wish you Good health , peace and prosperity. Best Wishes.
Remember the demo tape that came with 5400. Even the screws are made in Japan. Hope to fix my 5600. It powered up,. but after some months stored, no power...
Very interesting...so it's normal for a motor to run when you press the eject button, even if you don't have a tape in? That's to thread the tape? I just bought a vintage Sony Betamax SL-5600 from a thrift shop a few days ago and I'm trying to get it to work. When I press the eject button, I kept hearing a noisy motor running and I had no idea what that was for.
Another question: this model has manual tuner. Mine has varactor. Does this mean there´s less space and components are disposed in other way? On right side. Also, is NOT necessary to dissasemble the heavy main deck ? 6 Kg. Also has many other cables.... and wiring on rear. Thanks
I remember this model had a nightmare problem in the transport mechanism in that when you were recording and paused, it left a small crease in the tape which produced video roll on playback.
Also, I had the same problem with a Sanyo VTC 9350. Rewind wouldn't work until I disconnected the sensor! Also, this machine is from 1978 according to a Sony ad, so it's actually 38 years old!
See I knew it was a great piece of historic hardware from the early days of home video. I have an older SL7200 which is a single speed Beta1 deck but it needs a bunch of belts, and I already research the cost. About 130.00 just for the belts, so that one will not be looked at.
The SL7200 was a great unit back in the day and had a pretty decent picture quality as well. I know that it is also tough to find parts and repair any Betamax recorders made prior to the SL5000 (the first front loading Betamax).
Hey 12volts, can I ask about a Sony C6 UB, so I picked up this machine many weeks ago. It had been stored in a damp place so the top is totally rusted just to give you an idea. Anyway fast-forward and I've cleaned and greased and the picture was black and white, flickering and sound was slow. I found out that I needed to adjust these pots on one of the boards, I did that and it was massively better, colour was back, more stable picture, right speed but still a little flicker which meant it may need some of the caps replacing. Rather than get the soldering iron out I have another one of these boards out of an identical machine so I swapped that. Pressed play and the screen was black and sound really fast, I just figured that well maybe it's not compatible with the other machine so I put the old one back and it's still a blank screen with fast sound!!! Meaning a new fault has occurred, maybe on the other board as one of the cables from the swapped board plugged into the other. Any help would be greatly appreciated. This machine was a freebie that was in the local advertiser, I've spent a lot of time on it and I really want to fully restore it.
I have no idea how old that one is. I bought my first Betamax when I worked for Sony, and it was the SL5200 shown in this video. The 8600 and 7200 I pulled from the garbage can and rebuilt them.
Can you explain how the chroma/luminance is mixed together as a composite NTSC signal on 3/4" and Betamax? I know it's converted up from 688kHz to 3.58MHz, but how is that signal then mixed with the luminance? Wouldn't there need to be some kind of modulator circuit? I've looked at serval Sony 3/4" deck schematics (such as the BVU-110 and VO-4800), and they have a single transistor called "MIX AMP" and the luma/Y goes to the base, the chroma signal on the emitter, and the regulated 10.5V DC power supply is connected to the collector.
Works exact the same way. On record the composite signal is seperated from the lumamance. It is down converted by hetrodyne with a carrier to 688 and directly recorded on tape as a dsb signal. The lumamance is FM modulated. On playback the FM signal is demodulated and the chroma is added to a carrier to convert it back to 3.57954583 MHz and simply mixed. There is a little more than that, there are delay lines ect to make sure that the signals are properly aligned when added. It's fairly complex and i have forgotten much of the process as I haven't done much with these old machines in 40 years. More modern ones had everything burried in an lsi chip. I remember beta 3/4 and 8mm investing the phase of the chroma 180° for the even and odd fields. VHS stepped forward 90° on each field so VHS took 2 frames to get back to starting phase and beta started each frame in phase. Oh God it's coming back to me now. I tried to forget all that crap.
Easy to change that date. Ronson lighter fluid will remove the ink without a trace. Before computers we did the same and people would change dates and bring back wanting warranty work.
+12voltvids - another great video, thank you. As a matter of interest, what would the consequences have been if those chassis brace bars were removed? They really did build them like tanks back then - so much better in terms of construction and engineering than the cheap tat we often see nowadays.
Hi! This is Very Interesting... I have one. Mine looks a little different. SL7200A. It does turn on I used it several years ago. I try to open it it sounds like it wants to open but doesn't. After watching your video It Probably doesn't open because it has a tape stuck in it. I have about 70 used tapes.. I got it in the Early 80's and I used it to death. Snicker... I am not sure I want to take it apart but thinking about it after watching you fix yours... Looks like fun to fix!!! But Finding time...
I read there are 2 ways to wind the tape,. First units used the identical Umatic tape path (M) and later machines (front loaders???) used a simpler left side winding technique. Is ir true?
I have a Sony SL-HF2100 which was working great until we had a power outage last week. Now it doesn't turn on at all. Any suggestions, I checked the fuses and they are both good.
What do you do if your betamax player plays in black and white and some times but rarely see the color try to come in does it need cleaned or something?
You used that white band to fill up some slack that the rubber band had developed over time. Since it's clearly seated below the rubber band. So I reckon a quick workaround to remove slippage on a drive belt? Dead simple idea, but it'll have to pop in your head while at work though. :)
Correct. Take up the slack. Learned that trick back in 1980 when I worked at a broadcast center for awhile while in College. Engineer did that when a machine started slipping and he didn't have a replacement belt on hand. Naturally this is only a temporary fix until a new belt can be sourced.
Bought a 5400 tape kit on Ebay "PBC" brand. It has many years and blister never was open. Rubber is still of high quality? 5400 and 5600 use the same belts???
A rubber band wouldn't last very long on a unit like this. The belts designed to slip as this uses a break to slow down the drum to the correct speed. I should haul this machine out again and see if it still works it hasn't been used since the video was done it'd be interesting to see whether this one even turns on now. One thing I know that it does have new is a new head. Back when I work for Sony the SL 728600 that I have where two of the machines that I did training on. The instructor found a couple of old machines that have been just lying around that have been written off put them up in my bench and let me go at it to repair it. Both of the 7200 and the 8600 required a new video head as it was worn out. These ones were very complex time consuming jobs to change same with the 5000 series Emily 6000 series that had the three piece Head drum with the center cylinder that spun. Once I had them fixed I asked the instructor was going to happen to them he said take them home we don't need them we're not going to sell them we're just scrapping them they're written off. I believe he did expect me to remove the head though and put the old one back on but that didn't happen.
my Sony SL-HFR70 doesn't eject, eats the tape. So I'll have to pull it out of the rack, and see if I can fix belts. It ate a prerecorded tape that was in it for years, hooked up, but not used. I only have like two dozen beta tapes. I have a Sears and Sanyo mono beta VCRs too. I may also have the Toshiba in storage if I didn't get rid of it. I think the Toshiba was much better than Sanyo, when it worked. Don
That would be the one with the solenoid that activates the planetary gear set to transfer power from the loading motor between the threading ring and front loader.Does the solenoid click when you turn the power on and off?If not, there is a thermal cutout on that solenoid. (you can measure the solenoid and see if it shows resistance, if not the thermal cutout has likely opened) It is under the tape wrapping the coil on the top of the winding.They had a high fail rate. Of course the unit won't play either if that happens, as the same solenoid also engages the pinch roller.There are switches on the side of the FL that also cause load/unload trouble. I did a service on the FL on one of my SLHF1000 decks, which use the same mechanism.
They used to use so239 for video, then that changed to BNC. Audio was always 3.5 or 1/4" in the early days. The reason was these early machines were used in many industrial applications where lots of different hands would touch. Having different physical plugs eliminated dummy's plugging then in backwards. It wasn't till rca released their VCR and demanded rca connectors for inputs and outputs. Those standard plugs that you connect audio equipment were invented by RCA. They were much cheaper to make than the 1/4" and mini / sub mini (3.5 & 2.5 mm) but they became the standard
Although the original post is 5 years old, I would like to tap into your wisdom and ask why I hear audio and get blue screen for video out of my SL-HF400?
The blue screen is likely your TV generating a blue screen when there's no video signal active. On your slh400 there are two soundtracks one is the Hi-Fi track which is played by the same head that plays video the other is the linear track which is recorded on the edge of the tape if there's no video say caused by a bad head or dirty head the system will switch to the linear soundtrack and you'll hear sound
This format was better than VHS and never broke down, We had one till that stopped making BETAMAX cassettes at which time we had to switch to VHS which was mediocre. I just wonder is this one only record for 2-3 hours,Chroma problem as well as the SYSCON control circuit, I wonder did super BETAMAX use PCM signals fed to the Video Head drum so the audio gets combined with the video signal, I wonder does it have a circuit that has the facility to output PAL as well as NTSC as PAL is a modification of the NTSC TV system so that the phase of the VCO changes on alternate fields, would it be possible to create two PCB coils to replace the burnt out coils.
Stopped making Beta cassettes? Really? That was this year that they stopped making Beta tapes, March 2016 to be exact! Most stores stopped selling them but Sony kept making tapes for the Beta format in the USA. I have 3, factory sealed tapes that were given to me that were bought in 2014 by someone that was still using Beta to record from analog cable on a very old machine. The machine still works, but there is no more analog cable so he finally was forced to get a DVR. Until the Sony stores closed their doors here in 2014 you could still buy Beta tapes at the Sony corporate owned stores in Canada.
I Just Got A SL 5400 It was not working at First it would not Play FF or Rew. But after Cleaning the Rubber Tires It Will Play and FF but not Rew. Do you know what would cause it not to Rew. Let me know thanks
Rubber tire. It is probably driven by a plastic wheel right. If the drive wheel is metal it has had the rewind kit installed. If plastic it is the old drive wheel. Another thing that causes slow or no rewind is the upper drum becoming all shiny and smooth. Tape sticks. Upper drum should be dull in color if it is shiny where tape runs over it upper drum needs to come off and rubbed with a paste made from comit cleanser or grity tooth paste to remove the shine.
Just got a Sanyo VTC9300 that looks very much like this one inside. If i'm getting black streaks from white parts of the image is that a worn out head? Perfect picture with darker images tho.
If the tape was recorded in SuperBeta then black and white streaks are normal when played back on a non Superbeta machine. Same when a standard tape is played on a Superbeta machine and the switch is set to on, the contrast will suffer slightly.
Don't think they are SuperBeta as my SL-HF100 plays them fine and they don't even have a hifi track on them. Just bought a pre-recorded tape to test as you did. If it is the heads I have found one going cheap. Also ment to ask if you had any plans to do a teardown of your Sony CV2000?
Stay tuned. The next Betamax to go up on the bench will be my SL7200!Its a brute too, and I will be tearing that one down to see if I can make it work.
would it actually be possible with current technology to make a (mechanically) much simpler and smaller device that could play all kinds of tapes vhs/beta/video2000? even properly working vhs players are getting harder to find now
If someone wanted to spend the money to develop such a machine.There was a machine several user ago called GO Video, which was a dual deck VHS machine that would allow making as close to a perfect copy as possible, including copying macrovision encoded tapes as it did what was called an RF dub (borrowed from the broadcast world) where the signal from the playback heads was just amplified and recorded straight across to the record deck without any demodulation, signal processing and modulation artifacts being added. At least that is how they marketed them. I never orned one, but did work on a few of them.As far as a single unit that could play all formats, that would be impossible due to the different size of the transport parts (video drum being the biggest obstacle) but a single deck, with multiple transports would be possible as they all do basically the same thing. Separate the video into luminance and chroma, convert the chroma to a lower frequency, and FM modulate the luminance information onto a carrier to be FM recorded. That could all be handled by 1 chip set no problem. If someone dd make such a machine they could probably sell quite a few of them to people to archive their home video collection, but the problem is the cost. Such a machine would probably have to retail for 2 - 3 grand, or more just like the first generation multi system converting machines (Panasonic AGW1 for example) and that would put it out of reach for the average person.JVC for example had an SVHS / MiniDV deck a few years back. Sold for 2,000 in an era where VHS decks were 100.00.Mind you my MiniDV Sony portable deck was close to that, and my current HDV/DV deck was also about 1,200.00 and the camera that went with that setup 7,000.00 and it sits collecting dust only hauled out when I need to transfer movie film to video.
Yes at such a price there would not be many buyers. I was inspired by this Kryoflux device that can read lots of different floppy disk formats by reading the "raw" signal and using software to decode the signal. Then in combination with some kind of adapter the same mechanism could be used to "read" the different kind of tapes. One can dream :) Btw, I would also like a device that can clean tapes because this fungus thing on tapes is a real problem Do you know if such devices exists? i once bought some chinese thing that had a "clean" function and it was the biggest piece of plastic crap ever, it couldn't even properly rewind, let alone clean.
Thanks for the great videos. I’m hunting for a EIAJ 8 pin VTR cable or connectors. If you have any for sale or know where I can get them, please contact me. Thanks!
Hi .I'm Haytham from Lebanon. Ihave betamax video sl8080e. Ihave tracking problem. I'm electronic maintenance. So can you please help me. Thank you for your time
The Pinch-Roller Solenoid on my SL-8600 won’t activate in Play Mode. The solenoid activates fine in Record Mode, but not in Play Mode. The unit was working fine and this fault just started happening. Does anyone have any info about this fault?
I wish have born before these things came ouy to market. But Wait!!! they were VERY EXPENSIVE .... Just about in my country the Z600 Sound System (full system with rack) costed around USD $8000 .. and for $9500 USD you could but a DATSUN.
I have one of these exact models. And it's not working right. From my research, I believe this is only the 2nd model ever made. Guess that's why it's the "X2"??
I can't believe the belts of this machine 😦...... I mean.. you get a cassette deck from late 90's.. and the belts turn back to black tar.. they become a liquid stain on the pulleys 🤢......... this belts are like what?? 15 year older?? 🤔..... and they are still there and working 🤷♀.......
It was more of a, let's see if this thing works without putting any parts in. Why? Because i don't want to spend any money on it. It's not like this machine is being used for anything.
@@12voltvids I understand, is that I like these devices, they marked a time well, an example of this that is more than 3 decades old and is still in operation, this is no longer seen in modern devices that are disposable.
Nope, added one under the original to increase the grip. Old engineering trick I learned back in 1980 when I was working at my first gig at a community TV station. One of the Panasonic NV9800's possibly the very unit I have as it came from the station I used to work at, had a slipping capstan belt when I was editing a project. I called engineering. He opened the unit up, went to his office and came back with a box of rubber bands. Watch and learn was his only comment, with a sheepish grin. He took a big thick rubber band and put it around the flywheel and then put the original belt back on, and I was back up and editing in a few minutes. He didn't have the right belt in stock, and taking one of the edit out of service was not acceptable as we had news stories to edit for air later in the day, so we needed the deck. Next day he got the belt, and swapped it. Wrap around pulley or around both will get you going in a pinch as a temporary fix. I have seen people put rubber bands in themselves and wonder why things don't work properly. Elastic band is too stretchy, so for something like a capstan belt it will stretch and contract, which would cause the speed to vary greatly. Talk about increasing wow and flutter. Adding one under the original, the original belt will keep it from stretching, and provide enough friction to prevent slippage until a suitable replacement can be found.See you just learned something!
I've used rubber bands a lot of times when I didn't have the right size belt. And yes, the tape speed was very unstable! I'm very curious how the SL-8200 switched between the X1 and X2 speeds because it was a single-motor machine too!
The 8200 actually was a 2 motor machine.It had a big AC motor like this one for the drum, reel drive, and through a clutch operated the threading mechanism, but it had a separate belt drive DC servomotor for the capstan motor.
Oh. That's interesting! VHS machines never used AC motors. I don't know why u-matic and beta used this design. The VCR drained a lot of power when operating. Something like 70-80 watts.
They didn't need fancy servo motors that's why. Ac motors spin at the line frequency. A simple magnetic brake to control phase and you are off t the races. I remember an old Jvc that used a belt drive drum with a speed control the same as this beta but I forget if it was an ac motor or just a cheap non servo DC type driving it.
Some of the old Philips reel-to-reels were simple to adjust for 50 or 60 HZ, you simply turned the main motor pulley upside down, selected 110/127V and away it'd go in the US and Canada. The 60 HZ pulley groove was slightly smaller than the 50, to accomodate the higher motor speed on 60HZ. Happy simpler days. Wouldn't be surprised if at least some of their VCR machines did the same.
My old Akai audio Reel to reel tape decks do this. You change the belt for line frequency, but there is also a switch to change the run capacitor value for the 2 frequencies.
I used to have an 8 track recorder. I wonder what ever happened to that unit. I remember back in the 80's I couldn't wait to decommission my analog gear because tape hiss used to drive me crazy. I used DBX noise reduction to try and eliminate it, which it did fine, except that DBX had a nasty habit of introducing its own warbling / buzzing noise due to compression / expansion calibration issues between the record and play compander.
Back in the day when units were made to last and be repaired. Nowadays a Sony BluRay player is a WalMart throwaway $39 U.S. special. I have a 2nd generation Sony BluRay unit that is leaps and bounds ahead of the current generation garbage.
Plus it wil play bootleg disks unlike the new ones. New stuff is all throw away.It is the consumers fault. They demanded cheap crap. By buying the cheap crap that walmart was selling sent a message to the manufactures that this is what the consumer wanted. Cheap crap sold, high end stuff stayed on store shelves. Answer to that, make cheap crap.
+12voltvids I bought my bluray player used on ebay. I wont buy that walmart crap. The same mindset killed plasma sets and brought cheap unrepairable garbage lcd sets to the populace.
Exactly. Plasma cost much more to make, so people focused on the negatives, that being weight, and power consumption to tarnish the plasma panel. I still prefer plasma over lcd panels. OLED on the other hand I think does have a future if they can get the price in check.Can you imagine what a 4K plasma would have been like if they were actually be able to pull that off? I have 4 1080 plasma sets, 3 720, and an ancient 480p in the garage plus a few sets in need of repair that I haven't sourced parts for yet. I intend to keep them as long as I can keep them working.
A 4K plasma panel would have been breathtaking! My 1080p Panasonic plasma panel with a good BluRay source has 80 to 90% of the picture quality of a 4K LCD set. That just tells you how good plasma was and how poor LCD panels are.
I notice a lot less eye strain with plasma compared to LCD. WOW! You have me beat with your plasma collection! I thought I was a plasma hoarder with 1 1080p set and 2 720 plasma sets. I found them actually fun to repair because their design is so elegant and Panasonic troubleshooting is about the best in the industry from my experience. Iam on the lookout for another 1080p set. It's like an addiction finding and repairing these sets. And the reward is a long lasting great looking set. And it just plain feels good to save something that was built to last but a minor issue caused an early failure.
