Sony SLV-N55 VCR

so in my infinite quest for a new VCR to replace my 20 year old RCA actually 23 year old RCA backtrack a little bit the RCA works fine but I'm finding that the picture kind of shifts a little bit when you when it plays back its own recorded tapes and these are on new tapes the other thing is it's only a two head mono model so it you know the sound quality is awful the video quality could be better and so I went over to savers and I found this this is a Sony model is this SLV in 55 this is a great little VCR I know this because I used to have one I actually bought one of these brand-new in about 2003 no 2004 and actually November of 2004 to be exact and I got rid of it a couple of years ago when I started when I stopped using VHS I gave it away or sold it on eBay I'm not sure which and I kind of wish I hadn't but this one I got for seven bucks and it I tested it in the store and it actually worked so I also picked this up one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve VHS tapes six hour tapes pretty sweet I actually still use my VCR a record stuff off television when I won't be around to watch it I don't have any desire to offer Comcast any more of my hard-earned money so that they can force me to rent a DVR I I just don't believe that I should be giving them any more money so I refuse to rent to DVR I refuse to pay for an HD box I just refuse I I will not absolutely will never rent a modem from them Comcast is probably the most evil company in the world um so I have combated my anti Comcast Ness by using a VCR to record shows that I either won't be aired later on or I just want to like for example live TV news it's not that I watch the local news but things like that it's nice to have something to record on - now I'm gonna shut up and we're gonna plug it in we're gonna actually take the cover off and take a look inside just to see if there's anything living in there you know if anything I should know about drugs or yeah a lot of people use these CRS store valuables and you just don't want to the skills of eCos no anyway let's take the two screws that's all it holds the cover on I actually take took mine apart from the reason at all I had it but I don't know if it really works I haven't tested it for video quality I just I put a tape in it I listened to it run I fast forward rewind the tape and then you know make my decision from there everything seemed to check out okay unfortunately I don't have a remote for it so I think I can get one real cheap so that's not really a big concern so this is one of Sony's last VCR models and it's pretty evident that the quality isn't what it used to be in this particular model the case is extremely flimsy if you watched my last video the Hitachi from 1981 I believe it was RIT - it was built like a tank well that's not so with this particular VCR it's actually built quite poorly I'll be honest but this one looks pretty clean obviously not from a smoker's household I mean it is absolutely pristine in here it'd be really funny if this actually turned out to be the one I sold wouldn't it surprised me the head is in good shape with a few smudges on it I'm gonna clean that up yeah there's actually quite a few smudges on there so I'm gonna clean that by hand with a clean towel not a towel but a chamois and so once that gets cleaned up in the audio head is it this actually has an automatic head cleaner that is incredibly useless it's this device right here and when you eject the tape here I'll put a tape in it and you can see what I mean what it does is it brushes up against the brushes up against the head and don't eat okay this actually has automatic clock setting it only works if it's hooked up to a local TV station that's where it gets its signal I don't think that service is still available tape in oh that was a brand-new tape you know valuable lesson is if you move a VCR from a cold place to a warm one a couple of things you want to do first I guess I didn't let it sit long enough unfortunately I didn't I didn't see any moisture on it so that's all right we didn't hurt anything let me go grab something to clean the head with all right so I just cleaned the heads by hand and they are a little chilly and that is what happened here just by the way this is an eight minute and eight hour tape so the tape is ultra thin which is why that happened VCRs used to have what was called a do sensor and it actually sends condensation and if it sensed any condensation the machine would not accept a tape unfortunately this VCR does not have that feature and that caught me off guard but we'll take a good look at this mechanism while we're here it's pretty straight forward it is still a stamped steel chassis I mean I guess they did that up until the end but this is much better quality than anything you'll find with a Magnavox or Phillips or sanyo stamp on the front the unit did play when I put it in the silane I had it in the store so I have every reason that there every every every reason to believe that this unit is a functioning unit which is pretty rare for savers because it's really more of a dumping ground for stuff that doesn't work seriously that's my luck with savers lately just stuff that should have been thrown away instead of donated for a tax write-off but people have no scruples so they do stuff like that and of course savers doesn't know how to test things half the time so they don't bother which is kind of upsetting but that's the world we live in it's kind of like caveat emptor which is why I'll never buy anything from savers that cost what I can if I can pay that much on eBay and get one that I know works then I will do that often their prices are so far off the mark that top you know but I figure for $7.00 I can't go wrong I mean if it works you know it may last me the rest of my VHS days which are not over yet but anyway there's uh this is a pretty straightforward mechanism it's so simple and so cheap but one of the bad things about them is the automatic head cleaner because when you eject the tape it brushes up against the upper drum and they've been known to tear out heads they're actually more harm than good and the one that I had I actually took the head cleaner out and I just taped to the inside of the cabinet I ever decided to put it back on it really is quite useless I don't know why those ever became a standard feature in Sony decks but here's the cam assembly normally you find them underneath the deck or somewhere in this vicinity but this is the drive motor for the the entire system the entire transport is driven by this one motor similar to a Funai from the 90s which was quite common but yeah pretty straightforward this gear looks like it's designed to shear off if it ever jams you can see that it was intentionally designed with with braking points so I believe that if anything were to go wrong this gear would break and that would be it for the Machine once the head reaches room temperature I can put a tape in it and we'll test it out this is the optical sensor that senses the tape position and actually call it corresponds to this hole here and there are metallic or reflective I think there's like a reflective band somewhere on each reel and once it sees that reflective band it knows the tape is over the tape speed sensor is rates they are underneath these reels I can pull the whole the whole deck off for you so you can see what that looks like it's just held in by like one screw I lied you've got to take the faceplate off first it's get a good look at the display here its oversimplified it just shows you whether it's on timer or not whether it's playing on high v mode or not and whether this is tape it or not plus there's play rewind fast-forward that all shows up on screen that display as well to remove the deck you just take out I believe it's only like four screws it's two in the back I know I took the deck out of mine for some reason I don't know why I did that it's also good to note that this machine was manufactured during capacitor gate and I want to take a look at all the capacitors to make sure none of them are blown apart and they all look pretty good to me you know I really believe that somebody bought this machine as a lasts just the very last VCR they ever bought and they never used it they probably let it sit on the shelf and collect dust maybe played a couple of old Disney tapes on it for their grandkids or some stupid thing like that or they're like me and they bought it that's a very tail end of the VCRs popularity and when DVD players were still just a little bit how to reach for most people and I actually worked at Walmart when I bought in mine so I got the employee discount that was kind of nice I'm trying to remember exactly when I bought it and I think it was in November I know it was November but it was in 2003 not 2004 but that's when I bought the one I had that was a last VCR I ever bought it's the only BCR I ever bought come to think of it huh all right so there's one more screw back here I'm gonna try not to scratch the the upper drum while I'm but my god is this thing cheap I mean really it's just you know they wanted to continue making VCRs just while they can still sell them so they did and and this is what they came up with oh there's another screw here and another one and another one I'm only taking this off for your benefit what a nice guy all right to lift it off I'm gonna have to put the camera down and we'll have liftoff and put the camera right here in this VHS tape go should just pull right out I know there's some connectors in the bottom that will have to be undone hopefully there aren't any it's not plugged in right there we go it's that one it's that one so now we can just pull it right out hey you're just amazing how cheap the construction has has come Mac you can still buy a VCR today I know they still make their sold primarily to businesses who still use cassette tapes for archival purposes you know they're still sold at churches and schools as a school district I can buy a VCR from from a from one of the vendors that deals with our supplies brand-new in-the-box the old Panasonic commercial line is what they're selling now but this is um this is it man it's all there is to it very simple design very effective I mean it does work I mean they managed to basically strip out all the components that were not completely necessary for function and I mean the belt is still good nice and nice and springy not mushy at all is the main board one big giant board one thing you've got to worry about when you pull these apart this is the cam sensor or the position sensor if that gets out of alignment you're gonna have a you're gonna have a hard time um so when you have the mechanism out just make sure that it lines up correctly it looks like it lines up with this here and when this when this little notch here has to face backwards no wait no that's not it what does it line up with ah it lines up with this with this gear here so make sure that this this little hole faces forward yeah if you get it out of time you're gonna have a bad time all right the other thing they've done is they've they started mounting a lot of the sensor directly to the board and they just poke through certain keyholes in the in the mechanism or the transport mechanism you've got your these are your tape speed sensors or real speed sensors and they run off of and are the reels on this thing that's what they are they stick through these these uh these cutouts and there's a little fork there's actually little notches in that wheel and it uses the optical sensor to sense the notches there's one in the other these are your tape end sensors that's how it knows when the tape is over we've got these things here these are micro switches I think now they are optical sensors probably the sense probably positions and stuff and such what else do we have in here of course there's our our transport position sensor and that's about it I mean there's really nothing to it put it back together the board revision date is 2002 to nineteen of 2002 I wanted to point out this one here this is and of course once again mounted directly to the board is the record tab knockout sensor yep in the old days all of these sensors and switches and and other components would have been mounted to the transport mechanism and then they would have wires connecting everything together so by doing it this way they've not only saved the money and in wire just wire alone they have saved a bundle but they saved my money and assembly as well because in the old days they would be assembled at a line one person would mount the upper drum then it would go to the I who Mountain saw the you know the spindles and the cap stand then go to the next line where they add the sensors and belts and I mean just all those steps and then you'd have like three maybe four different circuit boards sometimes five or six circuit boards depending on the machine and each one would have to be manufactured designed modified you know it's just in the number of components just mind-boggling so I mean they did the right thing by designing it cheaper easier to build machine you know it sucks but you know because he don't have the same quality that you had in the old days but and I think even reliability may have improved just because of this the simplicity of the design the reliability of the machine overall you know would have improved in my lifetime I've owned three VCRs brand-new VCRs my first one brand new was actually a tv/vcr combo that my parents bought me for my I think it was my 12th birthday and I had that machine well into high school actually I think I got it rid of it when I graduated the VCR had finally kicked the bucket and all that went wrong with it though was a tape end sensor it was a Funai product and the tape end sensor had failed but I got a lot of use out of that machine I recorded almost day and night I was recording stuff off television I would set my timer every day for the week and yeah once a week I'd set my timer and then I'd record all the shows that I couldn't see when I was at school I come home and I watch him you know while I'm doing my homework I had a lot of fun with that thing but you know it didn't last forever and eventually I think my sister killed it off it's usually what happened I get something new and then eventually go to her she kill it the thing we had so I'm gonna put the rest of this together and I'm gonna we're gonna power it up and see it run all right give it another try again this is the same brand-new tape that we tried earlier I'm gonna stop it stop stop stop stop stop oh no it's okay it was all right this is by the way the stop position if I turn it off it should replace the tape back into the good they're gone again play good stop fast-forward now this is kind of a design flaw that I wouldn't call it a flaw so much of that we call it a an undocumented future but it has high-speed rewind and fast forward as you can clearly see but if you'll notice the tape is still wrapped around the head that's a lot of stress on the upper drum that's I just don't like that design look at how fast this thing goes I remember mine was just incredibly fast that's an eight-hour tape we call it flash remind and its really good about sensing the spindle speed because it's slowing down all of it so it doesn't rip the tape right off the spindle never rewind oh this doesn't have Auto rewind I think it does if it's turned on that I think that's the setting in the setup menu so let's rewind it want to get that in action while we're here play stop rewind and you're going to eject I get a quick clip of that head cleaner in action very useless see what I mean every time it does a transport action seems about at all okay we have a menu that's a good thing the cheap select t120 alright that's okay that's normal I go back to menu alright we have to actually have the tuner maybe get the tuner set up on this thing first so that it can actually the only channel that works right now is channel 3 because I'm learning through a cable box so let that do its what I find interesting is that I'm finding like so far I found about 5 different analog channels that are still broadcasting the History Channel okay we're gonna try playing a tape a tip that I'm currently watching I started it on the RCA and let's see if it well it plays got the clock set alright I hear noise but that went away no if I pause it because this is a warhead it should be like amazing and so far it is oh yeah that's what a forehead does that was cool let's do that again watch carefully yes all right so we got it going and things are good all right now what we're gonna do is try to record on one of my new tapes tapes gone grab my tape see how she records shall we what I'm gonna do is actually set the machine to the proper tape speed using my remote which is over here and that's done through the setup menu the wrong menu has a TV sorry menu all right Advanced Options tape select we got T 160 t120 T 180 T 160 and that just sets the the tape speed for record that's all it does power save it's all good okay yeah we record this record for a couple of minutes and then we're gonna play it back and feel like we have a problem here it actually found oh my god it's worse than the RCA I mean like really bad like awful I wonder if I have bad tapes I'm gonna you know what I'm gonna try a different tape here because the other tapes are all like this I think they're just bad tapes well and tried a different tape at a lower speed and or a higher speed I should say and yeah not doing so well I'm getting a lot of shaking and I'm wondering if it might be some kind of a some manipulation of the signal that Comcast is doing their cable boxes that prohibits you from you know recording so I don't know I don't know let's try a different tape speed and see if that changes this has been filled with a bucket load of failure while the kind of turn the TV down and I hate these keep change the function normally yeah whatever well not happy to report this but the Sony even though it does work technically it sucks I can't get it to record a stable picture and the RCA for 1990 or 89 just us that much of a better job and based on that I'm gonna have to keep this VCR for forever I guess until I find a better one so guys I mean the Sony just plain socks and not only that but when you when you press play for the first second or two of of tape play you hear this high-pitched buzzing sound so there's something going wrong we're going on with that thing it's just it's junk so we're just gonna use the OL RCA it works it does does the job it's never had any trouble at all as long as I've owned it and and it just plain works so we're gonna go ahead and eject this tape I don't objective but stop it rewind that worked I have it on SLP which is low quality mode hi long tape playable low quality look at how perfect this picture is it's not really shaking it's a little little off but I mean it's is it's crisp it's clear and that's an SLP now if I do with a short play recording and see how that was this thing is just dead nuts reliable I mean I can't I can't I can't justify swapping it out with a different machine i I just can't so that's it man all right let's see how this thing play how it records on SP mode and for those of you not familiar with what that is VCRs typically have two to three recording speeds and the higher speed the higher tape speed usually equals higher video quality but shortened record time on a blank tape whereas the lower speed setting is yeah this is pretty good where the lower speed setting is the other picture kind of stabilizes perfectly that's what we're looking for so if a 23 year old VCR can do a better job at recording than a 10 year old VCR that just tells right there that that's kind of a problem so anyway as I was saying the shorter the the SLP mode is the longest plate mode meaning it has the most amount of recording time for one tape so there's your weapon for today we're going to shut the TV down and clean my house up a little bit just kind of a mess you know what I might just go to bed it's getting kind of late so

Channel: BBISHOPPCM's World

Views: 16,502

Keywords: bbishoppcm, Videocassette Recorder, slv-n55, four-head, belts, home theater, tv, vcr, old, vintage, technology, Sony (Business Operation)

Id: r0GNtwBfLRc

Length: 33min 2sec (1982 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 08 2013