This VCR was introduced in 1989, and it was Sony’s very first VHS VCR, because they were still making Betamax VCR’s during that time. Prior to this, JVC introduced the VHS VCR in 1976 in Japan, and then RCA in 1977 when it was introduced in the US as the very first VHS VCR as the VBT-200 in the fledgling “Selectavision” line, but Sony on the other hand was making Betamax VCR’s at the time. Panasonic also jumped on the bandwagon with the Omnivision VHS VCR, and Quasar made the VHS VCR as part of the “Time Machine” line where it replaced the Ill-fated VX VCR. Quasar’s VX VCR was short lived and it was an absolute failure, because it uses a larger tape cartridge to play and record movies and TV shows on them. The Quasar Time Machine VX VCR is now considered a collector’s item. The Sony SLV-555 has all of the features than what you see on any of the Sony Betamax VCR. It’s really cool!
Sony devoloped both VHS and betamax. It was actually a co-developmebr with Matsushita / JVC abd in case you were unaware JVC was a subsidiary of Matsushita which was panasonics parent company no different than Aiwa is a subsidiary of Sony. Toshiba sanyo and NEC were also involved in the development of the consumer VCR. They had all agreed that beta was the best of the 4 systems they were working on. Sanyo had a format called v system that they released for a short time. It used a tape that more resembled an 8 track tape that played right to left and the cartridge slid in sideways with the tape opening on the left side. Sony announced the betamax along with sanyo Toshiba NEC. JVC and Panasonic were on board initially and then secretly JVC took the disgarded VHS format, made a few changes to make it different enough so as not to get sued by Sony and brought it to market and then licensed everyone else to make VHS. Panasonic was more involved in this than many know. They were big rivals with Sony. They hung out their smaller subsidiary brand with the launch to judge Sony's response. If the lawsuits had stuck JVC would have been a sacrifical company. Lots of board room dealing on in the background for sure. Anyway it permitted Sony to claim co-developer of VHS when they launched. Had Sony not had a hand in VHS they would have never been able to claim that on their sales beochers of the day. JVC would have sued them but because JVC basically stole the design from Sony 12 years earlier and they knew it they let it go. The boys over at Sony wanted everyone to know the truth though to they shouted it out loud on the initial launch. "The co-developer of VHS" on their advertising material. A little more than co-developer however the M loading system was a Sony development. Sony thought it had too many moving parts and pushed the U loading system that the 3/4" umatic system has used since they devoloped in 1972 for industrial VCR. All Sony VCRs used U loading including the initial 8mm, however they did use the M system that they also devoloped on an early 8mm camera, the CCD m8, and the betamovie also used an m loading system in 1983. M loading was more compact than U loading even though more complex.
I still have a Sony SLV777 that i purchased new when the local Sony Center was having an end of season sale. A superb example of VHS at it's best, it's video quality was streets ahead of other brands. I rebuilt it a few years ago with the mod kits that were available, the new capacitors returned the display to it's original state. As the saying goes, they don't make em like they used to.
it's a sad reality when it comes to tape in 2024. i got into cassette in 2010. it was fun, it was cheap. top of the line sony decks. the fancy dd walkmans, the small beautiful metal bodied walkmans, and all the fancy blank cassette formulations. all for pennies. on par pennies... but it's all turning to dust now. the tape formulations are disintegrating. the plastic gears are cracking. the heads are wearing. the parts are nla. but i sure had a blast for a while.
@@TD75 i grew up in the 80s too. for me it was about experiencing the things i wanted as an 80s kid, but my parents weren't going to buy eight year old me a tc-k700es. or a wm-dd30. they did buy me some sony metal sr, but i only had a low end non-metal capable mini system. i wanted the 1987 sony store experience. one of all the tape formulations, all the walkmans from the glass display case, and the top of the line three head decks. it wasn't a trend in 2010. i was able to buy many top of the line decks (k75, k777, k700es, k730es, k950es, k555esR, 555esL, and a few others from other brands), top of the line walkman, and bougie tape formulations for nothing. it was trash back then. i wouldn't say it became trendy until "the vinyls" era took off in 2012/2013. and that's when i stopped buying the stuff. most of my decks do work, and thankfully a lot of the more resourceful community members have had some of these cracked gears recreated. but a lot of tape formulations are falling apart, and nobody is making sony's discrete laseramorphous heads. or even the sandwiched ones. it really is a dead end hobby if you want to experience the best it had to offer.
This is the first Sony-designed VHS mechanism released in 1989, although they had a few VCRs from '88 (SLV-50/70HF) and '89 (SLV-M77/M88) which were rebadged Hitachis and Sanyos. Oddly enough the service manual I have for the '555 calls it the "Mechanism II".
Right then was the opportunity for Sony to build a combo VHS and Beta machine. Pity they never did, probably piracy concerns. But dual VHS machines were made by various manufacturers later.
I wonder if those dual deck VCRs were dubbing the tape by directly sending the RF signal from one head amplifier to the other. They should, as that would give the best possible quality, bypassing all the circuitry that converts the tape RF to composite video on the playback deck, than convert it back on the recording deck. That's where most of the generation loss comes from, lots of noise added by converting the signal back and forth.
I am now in my mid 20s, I got into VHS because the electromechanical technology is super interesting to me. I like to take videos on my VHS camcorder, I like the low-res surreal vibe of the picture quality. I transfer everything to digital for storage and sharing. Who cares if it makes a comeback, its a very cool and underated hobby. Everything is dirt cheap and you are gonna learn alot about electronics and mechanics. I never understood why vinyl is the one that made a mainstream comeback. Seems extremely boring to me...
Vinyl made a comeback because to the deaf they can't hear the difference and the limited dynamic range means that soft passages are boosted up above the noise floor above their tinninus level. Analog tape is the same.
Our first VCR Top loader in 1984 unlaced the tape on stop, rewind, and fast forward. Except rewind and fast forward scan, of course. Sylvania. Great repair of that Sony. We had a Sony VCR later on. Not like that one.
Funny thing about not having a clock I had an old Hitachi VT-64 (1985 vintage) that I repaired the clock died and killed it's ability to rewind. Would play fine and fast forward but no rewind. I found that the tape end sensor responsible for rewind was between logic states not high and not low. Checked where it was going on the schematic and it was going to both the main control IC and for some reason the microcontroller on the clock (record timer) module. Disconnected the series resistor going to the clock module (since it wasn't working) and rewind was restored the engineers decided to pull the tape end sensor low to stop recording when you were recording using the timer. Wasn't the DC to DC converter (common fault) on the timer module either the mask ROM micro on the timer board died and it was pulling the rewind end sensor down. I had a parts unit and replaced the timer module and everything was good. It's my curse I always get the weird faults no way would I have figured this out without a schematic. FYI these decks are a multi board design and a nightmare to service I'd never work on one again.
i find it strangs that my slv 825 still have the orginal blue gear and stil not broken,that slv 555 mechanics looks very the same as the 825 ,nice vid again Dave,have a nice working day 😉
The gas struts are cheap to replace. Mine lasted 10 years but surprised a replacement strut was only $35AUD. Fun job was to knock out the old strut from the chair base.
Não sei se vai entender o meu idioma, eu sou do Brasil e me encanta cada reparo que faz, também sou exigente no alinhamento destes vídeo cassetes da Sony e aqui por volta de 1992 saiu um SLV X68BR e a cabeça dele é tipo assim. Na próxima tome cuidado com as cabeçaa cilíndricas de imagem onde já me cortei também 😅 e sei que é um técnico super experiente, meus cumprimentos!.
A year earlier Sony introduced the SLV-201 and SLV-801 (or 202/802 in some countries) in Europe. These were the first VHS machines here. Actually made by Hitachi, in the Beta look.
Yes i turned it over and it dropped out. I saw it go in. It's called editing or would prefer a Carlson marithon to help you sleep. I hear those funny gummies are good for that too but I have never tried them. I've just been told that.
Perhaps Sony released that in pal countries but the first in north America was the 555 abd 757. The shop i worked at was a large Sony dealership. Largest independent in western Canada. We were taking pre-orders for 6 months for them. Sold hundreds of the 555 and 757 at the launch. I remember the huge stack of them in our stock room and how fast the pile went down. They flew off the shelves and they were not cheap.
OK, an off topic for you to consider. I've been reading about capacitor polarity and how to test them. It looks like a mini O scope is needed. A sensitivity of 1 mV is required for an accurate measurement. So the question is which one would you get for an sometime check out? Thanks Dave.
Capacitors that are polarized are marked. You are talking outside foil on small non polarized caps. Not really important these days. Carlson harps about it on old tube gear and that was an issue on old large paper / wax caps because of their physical size. They was a good chunk of realestate that was exposed and could pick up induction. The new small ceramic and mylar caps are very small so induction really isn't a big issue. You can however with a scope determine which lead is connected to the outside foil. When you connect the leads and crank the gain you will see a slightly higher detection of ac influence when the probe is connected to the outside foil and the ground to the inside foil then the reverse. It's however not a huge deal these days unless you are using the old stlye caps and they all had the outside foil identified as it was important on those old large caps.
Again it's not important on the modern ones because the foil size is so small that you're not going to notice much in the way of induction on the new ones. If you really must measure it you can with a scope but it's not going to make much if any difference in anything that you are installing it in. That wasn't true with the old paper capacitors from 60 or 70 years ago which were physically much larger because the surface area of the outside foil was much larger it did make a difference but the modern caps today being so small there's not much difference between one side and the other they are not electrically polarized in other words they won't blow up if you put them in opposite way because they are not polarized only electromatics and tantalums are polarized and they are clearly marked
@@12voltvids Thanks, saving me a lot of money. BTW with the ESR meter, if the cap's value is more that on the chart, how do you handle that. Ex. the 2200 mF caps that you've shown if they're bad how do you measure them?
Did Sony ever used TBC in their video machines? I know some Beta machines did have digital still pause which indicates it may have used some sort of frame buffer but Sony never publicly advertised a TBC except for few Japanese machines that beared the TBC logo on the front panel.
Some of the hi8 decks did evs3000 and 7000 and some of the pro decks. Tbc is not really important. Even for capture. If you have a good capture card it doesn't need one as it's built in. The cheep ones, dazzle, hauppague ect complained if there was segments of unrecorded video (snow) but the better units made by companies like Sony, Toshiba and Panasonic had no issues with vcrs with no tbc. An external tbc will do a far better job as well. Keep in mind that every tbc will reduce the picture quality not improve it.
@@12voltvids I think line TBC in particular is essential, that you cannot find in consumer capture devices, Some DVD recorders have some of that capability, Line wiggle can only be addressed with line TBC.
3 line TBC are garbage. They reference the previous line to the next one and are pretty useless. Full field are much better. Again if you compare captures on my equipment and you will see that captures made directly from tape with no TBC look better then captures using a tbc. I have a few high end tbc and they set collecting dust. Even the cheapest VCR will look as good as the best JVC deck I have with a built in tbc. the same cannot be said when I was capturing with the hauppauge card. That one was noticeably worse without a time-based corrector. If you want a good cheap time-based corrector go find yourself a DVD recorder. You don't have to record to the desk just loop the video through a DVD recorder and it will correct the timing errors and give you broadcast quality stable output that you can then feed to your cheap capture card. Some of them like the liteon we'll even convert pal video to ntsc.
@@12voltvids I do exactly that. I found the old 2003 Thomson DTH8000 (their very first DVD recorder) does a fantastic job. Although with really horrible tapes sometimes it screws it up and locks the vertical blanking at the middle of the image. Now I mostly use a Sony, and capture the video from its HDMI output. The TBC of the Thomson is better, but I don't like the idea of converting the source to digital, processing it, converting it back to analog, than convert it back to digital again with my PCI capture card. By using HDMI capture, I eliminate a complete cycle of unnecessary D/A - A/D conversion. I also have a Samsung with an HDMI output, but I will probably sell that one because I don't like it doesn't have S-Video input.
I have a Toshiba that upconverts to 1080. It has both svideo and composite. 9 our of 10 of my clients want DVD and USB. I can record the DVD and send the HDMI out at 1080p to the HDMI capture box. 2 copies at the same time.
I laugh at the "comeback" crowd, While I do believe it is crucial to have working machines of any format video, audio, film and photo, The only purpose of that is to digitize the media and bring it to the modern world so no one keeps abusing that media by repeated playback.
Exactly. I get a good laugh at those that are buying old camcorders so they can record home videos with them. If you want bad quality just add a filter and render out at low resolution. Personally i hated the quality of home video and that's why i was the guy shooting home videos of my kids carrying a 20lbs professional camera on my shoulder or taking a big monster camera on vacation. It was a pain in the ass as I had to babysit it everywhere. More than once i was denied access to a store or business where i needed to bit something but my 12,000 camera was not going to be left in the car or at the front counter. Some store employee says you can't come in here with that camera u say no problem you just lost a sale, and by the way I'm carting this around because it cost 12 grand and I'm not leaving it in the car. Had small cameras delivered good quality i would have used them but they looked like crap.
@@12voltvids the fact is you can't bite nostalgia/fun. there's no more logical reason to go today with old camcorders than old cars. i don't believe in tape comeback too, but maybe for archiving market we may see some new vhs players again, who knows... chinese still produce cheap audio cassette mechanism, maybe they'll dive into this if there's enough demand. but ok, vcr complexity is another story than audio cassette... not the same thing to build. and i don't say that because i got the old camcorder virus recently :)
I collect old broadcast cameras and consumer models. I have all the formats. I have 3/4" umatic portable,. 2 betamax portable and 2 Sony single tube cameras. As far as camcorders go I have, vhs c, full size VHS, broadcast svhs, 2 betamovie one tube and one ccd, broadcast betacam, 8mm, hi8, digital 8 miniDV, HDV, ACVHD disc, 4k cameras. I think i have all the formats covered.
@@12voltvids i didn't doubt you're a real enthusiast (a very good one btw, thanks for sharing with us) so you understand why some people want to use for fun some vhsc or 8mm and get the "authencity" of the era. or maybe i didn't understand correctly your point on that. i was recently taken by the "videomovie" virus, and restore some models of interest for me (GF-S1000, GR-S707 and some others more or less high end) and even plan to do some footage with them.
Theres a place reserved in hell for every tape format ever made, i say good riddance! none of them were reliable and they were all a mechanical nightmare waiting to happen. I feel sorry for those that recorded their precious wedding and child christening's when their tapes got destroyed on playback, very unstable formats that havent got a hope in hells chance of ever returning (praise the lord)
Hey i still need that cassette speed tape i dont know where to email you i can give you my email and just delete my comment once youve got it or something.
