JVC also known as Victor Company of Japan is
a consumer electronics and professional video equipment manufacturer that was founded in 1927
as the Victor Talking Machine Company of Japan. JVC has a long history of producing innovative
products that have helped shape the consumer electronics Industry. In the late 1920s JVC
only produced phonographs and records and by 1939 it had created Japan's first locally
made television. In 1953 JVC became majority owned by the Panasonic Corporation but later
released its ownership in 2007. In 1970 JVC introduced the video sphere which was a portable
CRT television inside of a space helmet shaped casing and an alarm clock. But one of JVC's most
important innovations came in the late 1970s when JVC developed the VHS format to compete with
Sony's Betamax. JVC then introduced the first VHS recorder the model HR-3300U to the consumer
market in Japan on October 31st 1976 and to the U.S market in 1977. It retailed for $1,060 USD
representing $5,623 USD, $7,512 CDN and $5,102 EU in today's economy. JVC then strengthened
its ties with Matsushita, Hitachi, Mitsubishi and Sharp to back their VHS standard and this of
course triggered the videotape format war that lasted from the late 70s until the late 80s and
for which VHS ultimately emerged as a superior format. In 1982 the company also introduced
the VHS-C for video cameras which competed with the Video 8 format and they later invented
hard drive camcorders. And while the company helped develop the Video CD alongside Sony and
Philips which eventually led to the DVD format, in the late 1990s JVC dropped the ball as Sony and
Phillips continued to develop the DVD while JVC, Hitachi and Matsushita developed the digital
VHS or D-VHS format which was released in 1998. The D-VHS was technically superior to the DVD as
it was capable of holding up to 50 gigabytes in 3.5 hours of video outputting a resolution of
1080i through a component output while still retaining backward compatibility with VHS and
S-VHS tapes. However the DVD was more compact, less prone to failure than VHS tapes and the
fact that D-VHS was still associated with VHS made people adopt the DVD format over the D-VHS.
Nonetheless JVC still continued selling their dvhs recorders until 2007. In 2008 JVC and
Kenwood established a joint holding company called JVC Kenwood Holdings Incorporated, the two
companies merged in an effort to quickly maximize the car electronics business today known
as Mobility and Telematics Service Sector. Today JVC is still a leading manufacturer of
consumer electronics and professional video equipment, the company's product lineup includes
a wide range of televisions home theater systems headphones and camcorders among other products.
JVC has also continued to innovate in recent years introducing new technologies like 4K
Ultra HD resolution and smart TV features that allow users to stream content from popular
services like Netflix. Another area where JVC has excelled in recent years is in the
development of professional video equipment, the company's lineup of professional cameras and
other video equipment is used by broadcasters and production companies around the world and
is known for its exceptional image quality, reliability and ease of use. Overall JVC has a
long history of innovation and a reputation for producing high quality consumer electronics and
professional video equipment and there's no doubt that the products they developed in the early
years helped revolutionize the video industry making it possible for consumers to capture and
share their memories in new and exciting ways. JVC remains today at the forefront of the industry
consistently delivering Innovative products that meet the needs of consumers and professionals
alike. And back in 1988, JVC manufactured high-end VCRs in Japan like the model HR-S5500U. It was a
Super VHS capable of over 400 lines of resolution and Hi-Fi stereo. The VCR also incorporates a
feature called "Digital AV Tracking" also known as "Digital Auto Tracking". It's worth noting that
this feature was more commonly found in higher end VCRs or later generation VCRs released in the
1990s. Digital Auto Tracking was designed to improve tracking performance and stability video
playback, instead of manually adjusting tracking, the VCR utilized digital signal processing to
analyze the video signal and automatically adjust the tracking. The VCR would continuously monitor
the video signal and make real-time adjustments keeping the image stable and centered. This
precise tracking control resulted in a clearer and more stable picture during playback, this
was particularly useful when playing rentals with worn out or damaged sections which mitigated the
effects of tracking errors and picture distortion. There's no doubt that this was a high-end VCR
and back in 1988 the unit had a retail price of $175,000 Yen which was equivalent to $1,280 USD
and representing $3,290 USD, $4, 360 CDN and $3, 020 EU in today's economy. I own many JVC products
and amongst them I have quite a few VCRs from their early days. But recently, it was garage
sale season and I happened to find this Super VHS player from JVC for only 25 dollars. Of course
Mrs. RRG was thrilled that I was taking home yet another broken relic of the past to embellish our
surroundings. But as I often explained to her, this one is special and I intend to restore
it to its former glory and give it a new life. Hello everyone and welcome I'm the Retro Repair
Guy. First of all thank you and welcome to all the new and existing subscribers, I really do
appreciate it and you know I keep saying that because I keep getting new subscribers. I want to
say a huge huge thank you to all of you. And if you're joining us for the first time you're going
to see that this channel, I'm not going to ask you right away at the beginning to subscribe and hit
the notification and all that if you haven't even seen the content. I will ask you to please stick
around until the end and I promise you, you'll like it and then if you liked it and you want to
see more, please hit the thumbs up, notifications and of course subscribe because if you want to
keep seeing more of this, and it really really helps me grow the channel, by doing that it costs
you nothing but it helps me. So, I just want to say thank you for that in advance but please stick
around until the end. Anyways aside from that um we're looking at an S-VHS today. Now the S-VHS is
a really, really beautiful machine. I didn't pick it up at a thrift store this time I picked it up
at a garage sale (yard sale), this was just before the wedding. Now for those of you who don't follow
the community notes or haven't seen the video before, yes Mrs. RRG and I have finally, finally
tied the knot it's been many years but, we finally tied the knot and I guess you haven't seen this in
other videos! So, yeah there's no ball and chain but actually, the ball and chains on my ankle
that's why, it's always been there, you just never saw it. But seriously, I'm very happy and here's a
picture of us at the wedding. My God Mrs. RRG was more beautiful than ever that day and I really,
really had, it was a pleasurable, beautiful time, we had a beautiful day. We did it outside and it
was beautiful weather, everything was perfect. So, anyways I'm very very happy for that and with
that out of the way, back to this VHS. Yes, I bought a garage sale. I took my daughter there
just before the wedding and we were looking around because it was spring, so the garage sale season
everyone's going nuts and selling all their stuff, their treasures. And I didn't buy too much
because I knew Mrs. RRG would have my head, but I did buy a few things, mostly for my daughter
actually, she had never been there so she's like "oh wow wow can we buy this, can we buy that" you
know she's five years old. So, anyways that being said when I saw on the saw this S-VHS player
I said "oh my God like wow it's in great shape and everything" it was beautiful looked amazing.
The person didn't have the remote. At first they were asking $50, which I thought was a bit much
because I put time and parts and everything in there. Especially you know the kind of work I do.
So, there's that and then the fact that I've been looking around in thrift stores and I can't find
any S-VHS. So, I knew it was still worth something but when I got home and I looked on eBay some
people are still selling for a few hundred bucks. Now asking is not actually selling but that's
what they're asking for for this particular model. Now it is a very good quality unit made in
Japan in the 1980s beautiful and everything. So, for me it was really worth it but I ended up
paying $25 for it. I'm really really really happy and anyway so that's what we're looking at today,
but like I said really great quality unit. So, anyways without further ado let's
just jump right in and take a look. This video is sponsored by PCBWay. They make
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them out. The link is in the description below. I connected the S-VHS output to the monitor. The blue screen is from the tuner of the S-VHS
player that displays instead of white noise. The channel number is jittery and doubled
but for some reason seems clear on camera. The unit already has a tape inside. I
tried to fast forward then play to see if anything was on the tape. It plays a
distorted image for a second then stops. Thinking it might be the tape I
took a movie from my collection. While this one doesn't stop, the
image and sound are still distorted. The unit has Auto Tracking but also
has a manual tracking adjustment, turning it actually makes it worse, So, let's go ahead and open it up. The first and most important order of
business is the power supply this unit is over 40 years old and it's a miracle
the power supply hasn't belonged yet I need to remove the heat sinks and shield
to reach all the capacitors and at the same time it's a good idea to remove the old dried
up thermal paste and replace it with new one. However, there doesn't seem
to be any way to access the screws without removing the whole Transformer. So, of course I went ahead and removed it. Before continuing I wanted to make sure
that the capacitors I purchased were not longer than the old ones and, as is
often the case, they were shorter. I'm replacing the capacitors with nishikan's upw
UPA and uhe lines depending on availability as they are all low impedance capacitors made for
such applications the new capacitors are also rated for higher heat tolerances of 105 degrees
and longer lifespans of thousands of hours which is perfect for this power supply that tends to get
very hot testing the first old capacitor I removed shows 13 ohms of resistance while capacitors
generally all have some resistance I compared it to the new one from the UPA line that shows
zero exactly what is ideal for a power supply with everything removed I began
to clean the voltage Regulators with 99% alcohol and a swab to
remove all the old thermal paste. There were also traces of overheated glue
that was stuck to the board so I very gently scraped it off before cleaning
it with alcohol and a soft toothbrush the underside of the board also has old overheated
flux stuck to the board that I gently dislodge then clean with alcohol it's important not
to make any marks or scrape off any coating with that out of the way I began by
installing one of the large capacitors I then added thermal paste to the voltage
regulators and reinstalled the heatsink I then continued to install
all the other capacitors I randomly checked one of the smaller
ones only to discover a whopping 72 ohms of resistance which could have
caused a serious problem soon enough I then installed the remaining heatsink cleaned
the Transformer and re-soldered it to the board Because of the heat I wanted to double check for
any cold or Croc solder joints so I ran around the board re-soldering suspicious joints
and of course I cleaned it all up again I then had to re-solder the
connector I had removed and replaced the little foam pad
that was holding it in place And finally, I couldn't leave these
old chooses in this bar supplies old and heated up a lot and the hotter
the fuse operates the shorter its life so I replaced them with quality fuses
from Eaton electronics and Littlefuse. Moving on, I also cleaned
the power cord thoroughly. And here's the completed board recapped
the soldering redone and cleaned up. Something I don't talk about often is fuses
we often take these for granted first of all um you know it is 40 years old it's seen a lot of
heat because in a power supply and the more it's exposed to heat the less it's going to function
properly okay now there are different quality fuses there's glass fuses there's these ones
that you see with kind of white paper around these are actually ceramic fuses and and you know
they pack sand inside stuff like that and that's for audio applications sometimes they say there's
less vibration Etc et cetera there's all kinds of okay reasoning behind it the point being is that
like I said these are now are 40 years old and of course uh we also have a technology behind
that right innovation in the last 40 years Etc plus the fact that it's old so if you're going
to do all that work you're going to be changing capacitors everything in a power supply spend the
extra buck and uh buy yourself a nice fuse and if you want anything and you know there's fast acting
medium and um uh slow so the thing is is that they each have their application this one happened to
be a fast blow for the power supply uh because you want the current to cut you know fast if anything
happens not to damage the rest of the equipment um but like I said they each have their
application they each have their thing if you want to read more about fuse
I'm going to put in the description um there's a nice paper written by little
fuse that I really like the way it's written it's beautiful and it really explains and
helps you select fuses uh so go and take a look at that it's really interesting I
linked it for you there but like I said if you're going to do all that work spend
the extra buck and buy yourself a new fuse There's an old repair sticker at the bottom of the
unit and I see fingerprint marks in the thermal paste all over the heatsink on the main board and
that always makes me nervous and I start asking myself how many people have been in here and
what exactly did they repair or attempt to repair because of this I began with
a good visual inspection. The heads also have a lot of dirt on
them and the drum has smudges all over it I began by cleaning the heads pinch roller and
guides to assist the situation A little better Just cleaning a few of the smudges on the
drum shows how much dirt is coming off. For the pinch roller I'm using Rubber Renue
while for the rest I'm using 99% alcohol. The swabs are low lint Precision
Cleaning swabs from MG Chemical. I wanted to see the effect it
would have on the picture if any I could see some improvement but there was still
a long way to go the bench roller barely put pressure on the tape I cleaned it several times
but this one was beyond saving this of course made me anxious because it's not easy to find
40 year old specific parts for a unit but luck struck again and I found someone with 11 in stock
just 20 minutes from my house and at a low price of 12 dollars so while I waited for that to come
in I continued poking around there was a board on the side that I could not find in the service
manual so I took it out to take a closer look. The board has a Mitsubishi IC that
seems to be an Automatic Frequency control chip this would tell me that this
board is responsible for maintaining the correct playback speed of the tape which of
course is critical for maintaining accurate synchronization between the recorded video and
audio so I went ahead and recapped the board. I replaced all the capacitors with Michigan
audio capacitors from the UKA and UFW lines. I of course re-soldered many joints and
then cleaned the board with alcohol. I really wanted to clean that front panel and
I also wanted to access the potentiometer knobs underneath that are responsible for the
picture sharpness and vertical lock as well as other buttons so I could clean
them with electrical contact cleaner. For this I would need to take
the panel apart completely. I truly wanted to take the rest of it apart to put
the chassis in the sink but I had to stop myself. It was then I took a step back and asked myself
why do I always go too far with everything. Well I think it's time for a bath. With the panel taken apart I began by
cleaning all the switches and knobs with electrical contact cleaner I don't plan
taking it apart again and it's probably been a while so I sprayed them twice and turning the
knobs to make sure it cleans them thoroughly. The pinch roller came in and I'm not kidding when
I say I was lucky to get the original parts sealed in the bag the same day removing the old one
is not that difficult but requires patience and finesse you need to remove the spring underneath
that's responsible for the tension you then need to carefully and gently lift the plastic slit
washer holding it down the guide arm assembly also needs to be removed in order to lift out the
pinch roller assembly and of course it has its own spring and slit washer normally the loading
mechanism is removed which gives easier access to everything but doing so means adjusting it again
and it's working fine so all I did was unscrew the front and gently lift to the right side to be able
to lift the pinch roller assembly out comparing the two side by side I immediately see that
the new one on the left is a little thicker but measuring it with a digital caliper confirms that
and while it doesn't seem like much it's a huge difference in this case before putting the new
one in it's important to clean the area and apply new Grease the service manual provides a full
diagram with all areas that should be lubricated when servicing the unit the installation
was simply the reverse of the procedure. Because of all the manipulation grease
transfers from skin to the pinch roller and other components so it's important to
clean everything with a bit of alcohol and a swab I then used my trusty blower to
remove any dust or debris left behind I also cleaned the old grease from
the guide rails and applied new one I noticed a few things I did not like where I
suspected someone had previously repaired or attempted to and because I can't stop myself ended
up changing the capacitors in those areas as well I then went through a bunch of adjustments but
that's boring and ruins the surprise so it's time to reassemble the unit a couple of notes I'm
going to give you on the repair first of all when it comes to the pinch roller this is one factor
out of many okay but first let's let's look at the pinch roller the pinch roller now when I showed
you there's a difference in thickness it didn't seem like much I think it was .025 millimeters
something like that it doesn't look like much but think about a um typewriter you're putting an
extra sheet sometimes so you can get some extra grip because it's used up the ruler okay it's
just an extra sheet it's not very thick but it's grabbing on think about two three extra sheets
on there okay now I don't know the thickness of a sheet but I know it's not you know as much
as it was missing here so I'm just saying that um a couple of sheets missing and it's not you
know rubbing properly or grabbing properly first thing you want to do I always tell people use
rubber in you now rubber renew it renews the surface if it's too slippery that's one problem so
a lot of times it's just that you put some rubbery new a couple of times sometimes and it becomes
like rubber you want to feel like a rubber tire that's what it is right you want to grab okay
if it still doesn't work well of course you'll have to replace it now sometimes at work in this
case it's still slippery but it was much better but it still wasn't working why one way you can
quickly test it just barely put your pinky on it okay don't put pressure of course you'll stop it
but without putting pressure just barely touch it it was stopping all the time it was barely barely
grabbing the tape it was just turning just to say it was turning when I changed it I really had
to apply pressure if I wanted to stop it I was putting my finger on it it wasn't stopping it was
turning so that that's one quick way you can test it but of course start with the rubber in you see
if it's grabbing on now a VCR has many many many uh Parts everything is moving it's all mechanical
okay there are so many factors so many things that make it like I said this is just one part of it if
you want to get into fixing it you're gonna have to consider a few things first of all if you're
picking up a VCR like this that is you know 40 years old first of all yes I've said it before
you're looking at capacitors okay there's lots of capacitors in there that are 40 years old that are
73 ohms of resistance have you seen or you know whatever they're not giving you the proper they're
not filtering properly anymore and on top of that they are not um you know providing the correct
voltage so there's a lot of electrical adjustments as well so you're going to adjust it to what
to something that you know against something that is no good in the first place so that's one
thing then there's all the mechanical adjustments there's the head cleaning there's so many
factors just on the audio and tracking there's three adjustments there uh you know for the tape
then there's the height adjustment where the tape goes around the head that's spinning so there's
all you know the whole drum assembly so there's so many things and so many factors you can just
look at one and it's very hard to say all this is your problem and if you're interested by the
way uh go take a look there's a guy named Jared Owen. Now I'm not giving a shout out to Channel he
already has over a million subscribers he doesn't need it but I'm telling you because I actually
was consulted for that video and my name's on the description below, you can go and see it. But it's
a very interesting video because it shows you in 3D the whole functioning of a of a VCR. So, go
and check that out from Jared Owen it's really nice and, like I said, I consulted on that video
and my name is there so anyways go take a look at that. And like I said, consider all of these
things if you're going to be repairing a VCR. Well this time I knew it was going
to turn on but there's still that little thought in the back of my
mind that sees it's catching fire. I use this tape in the initial
testing because it's an older one that's not in great shape and I didn't mind
sacrificing it in case anything happened. Now that we know the Machine Works let's
put one in that's in excellent condition. The tracking adjusts fairly quickly however,
I'll need to skip this part because it has music. The pause is very clear as well. And while it might not show on camera, I would
say it looks almost as good as a regular DVD. Well I think we've also completed a great Quest
that began with a $25 Relic from a garage sale. And while it might not be immortal, we've
most certainly bought it a new life. Well I hope you enjoyed this restoration
and if you stuck around till the end and you really like the content please hit
the thumbs up notification and of course subscribe because these are all things that
are free that really help the channel if you want to help the channel further I'm going to
ask you to head on over to retrorepairguy.com that's retrorepairguy.com. From there you can
buy some of the stuff that I repair here on the channel and there's also other ways you
can support the channel there's things that you can either purchase you can donate you
can donate equipment to the the show you can even buy T-shirts here on YouTube and
down below there's even a super thanks, there's all kinds of stuff like that these are
like super comments kind of like the super chats um there's all kinds of stuff like that that
you can help out with and of course people are asking me all the time do I repair stuff go
on over to my website as well there's an FAQ on that that's very detailed about Restorations
if you're interested to get in contact with me and I would ask you to read it before you
get in contact with me and aside from that I just want to say a big thank you for watching and
I'll see you soon with another restoration. Bye bye.
