Sony VHS VCR SLV-720HF Overview

[Music] Sony SLV 760 HF a VHS VCR with some amazing features and Incredibly good build quality this one here has an amazing array of features and the coolest one you're looking at right here and that is the jog shuttle control we'll talk about that here in a second but let's go back and show you the cool styling on this thing look at it high-fi stereo written in big letters there on the front you knew you were getting high quality when you bought a Sony product and I've always liked Sony's VCRs no matter what kind they are I was happy to own one when uh I was in my young 20s actually I owned an RCA VCR which I highlight on my channel as well but later I thought I would upgrade and when I did I went with a Sony so this is a one similar to the one that I had although not not exact uh but u i spied this one at a thrift store and I was like you know what I can't resist I've got to buy this VCR really good shape too you can tell by looking at it somebody kept really good care of this VCR so let's go over some features real quick right here are a bunch of them on the sticker on the front multi-brand remote which I didn't get with it four head dual asouth design APC 2 adaptive picture control front AV puts high-speed rapid access high-fi stereo in that little symbol there and then of course autoc clock set see it's showing it right there what is autoc clock set well autoc clock set would pick up a carrier signal over uh over the air from a a you know a channel on your you know dial and uh it could pull in the time sync and set your clock for you which was kind of cool I believe here in St Louis our PBS station was the one that would set that clock for for you so you'd have to tune the VCR in via the built-in tuner and leave it on that station for a little bit and let it set its clock of course you can set it manually as well um you also have um a front input on the front course a front input on the front right there behind the little door so you could hook your camcorder up to it and record uh from your cam Corder or you could uh select your inputs here so you got your L1 and L2 and tuner and your tape speed control which is shown over here and of course SP and EP were the only uh uh the only speed you could choose from there was no LP and let's see Channel up and down your eject button your pause button and uh your record button over there on the side so what does this jog shuttle do well what it would do is and it it required a little bit more sophisticated uh mechanism to do this but if you turn turn this towards the left you would start playing the video slowly frame by frame backwards as you continue to turn this up the dial it would play faster and faster and faster until finally you got to the end of the range there and then it would just be playing in a review mode in Reverse with no sound now this way you go with it turn it up and it does the same thing and forward so you could do frame by frame by frame by frame fast frame by frame and then it would take off and go crazy so that was kind of cool too this thing has an amazingly still pause on it as well with no digital aspect to it it's not doing a digital Freeze Frame it is it is actually scanning the tape with that uh still image um it's got a little bit better onc screen capabilities here in fact if I hit play it tells me to please insert a cassette so what a what you know what a caring VCR to tell me that I have not inserted a cassette yet the menu system on it looks about like this and you've got your timer set and check your tuner preset clock set VCR plus which is a a thing that they did in cooperation with a TV Guide which was a magazine that had a listing of your favorite shows on it now we just have onscreen guides but back then you had a news you know a magazine that came in the mail and it had Little Numbers next to it and you would type the Little Numbers in and it would allow you to record that particular show just by entering a number it was a very very clever system that they set up so again here you got your timer set and check uh tuner preset so that would just you know set the available channels for you clock set which is right here and uh set VCR plus channels and then there's an advanced options there as well so let's let's take a look at the uh the inside of the unit it is kind of cool the way it's set up so across the left of the circuit board here we've got the uh tuner section and you got a little circuit board there that may have something to do with the Hi-Fi audio uh extraction off of there and you've got your uh video head preamplifier there that you can see attached to the video drum via that uh brown ribbon cable there that of course right in the middle of your screen is the video head and there's uh processing over here and as well as the uh this is the power supply part of the unit here so uh there are no um rollers inside of this thing it's all gear driven there may be a belt but uh this one has not needed a belt so that one that particular issue has not Arisen for me but uh it's very well built and I don't know why they made VCRs with rollers in them in the beginning anyway I guess cuz they knew you would have to bring them back for service cuz like tires they wear out so let's go ahead and put a tape in and we'll see how it loads up now like the uh the RCA VCR that I show you on my channel this one has one of those really cool extracting uh pin rollers let me show you that again it kind of comes up and Rises out I have to hit eject unfortunately to get it out of there but see how it lifts up comes out of the way we'll watch it again here now something else that I really like about this vcr and again they never made a perfect VCR that had every feature on it that I ever wanted but uh this particular feature I like a lot you see here on the front now we have full hours minutes and seconds on display there in the beginning oh sorry I the VCR tape started you also have this uh little Auto tracking light that tells you that you're uh automatically tracking and you have the what's telling you the the speed that the tape is recorded at so uh when you hit stop on the tape so right now we've got that up on the screen when we hit stop and then we hit rewind Watch what it does it doesn't even pull the tape off the head it stays attached to the head and a lot of older VCRs didn't do that they would retract the tape out of the unit and then do its fast forward and Rewind so very similar to the way Sony made their betamax machines where all the tape stayed attached and looped into the system loaded into the system and you can see it's rewinding there I've got this uh dony Kong Country exposed demo tape in there right now and we'll see what rewind looks like very short tape and then I'm going to go ahead and hit eject now I'm going to throw in a tape you might be familiar with Back to the Future 3 and Back to the Future that particular Trilogy is one of my favorite trilogies in fact I just recently edited my own Back to the Future music video called uh Timber and you can watch that on my channel that was kind of a fun project a little bit off from what I normally do on here but anyway let's push in Back to the Future and I want to show you these search features and how they work with a tape that's recorded at standard play so let's go ahead and fast forward here excuse that light it's hanging out there Universal Studios okay the movies okay so there's our pause check that out now I'm going to take the jog shuttle just turn it a little bit to the right and then you'll see it's starting to uh take off there now I'm going to hold it all the way to the far right okay now let's say I wanted to see that Universal um logo go in reverse so what I'm going to do is I'm going to turn it just slightly to the left and hold it down and we can watch that Universal logo slowly animate in reverse and I'm sure you can hear the noise that it's making now and here's what that looks like on the inside can see the tape moving ever so slowly yet rhythm ially and again there's our pause so really the uh the picture quality is really good for VHS although if you know anything about me you'll know that I've never really been that happy with VHS tape um I don't think VHS is I was never happy with VHS until digital VHS came along and then I was happy with VHS but nobody else liked digital VHS so therefore it didn't stick around very long but uh I did review a digital VHS machine on my channel and there's also kind of a company preview of the uh technology on my channel as well but anyway back to standard VHS so I'm going to go ahead and just hit play on it and I'm going to hit fast forward and just so you can see the picture quality coming off the machine so it looks really really good it's it's you know rock steady for uh for VHS it's a really good machine so if you happen to be in the market for a VCR you can certainly find uh the machines as well as tons and tons of movies at your local thrift store at least in the United States you can and uh there's our pause again so all kinds of movies all kinds of uh of excellent uh playback machines and you know what if you've got kids kids don't care about high definition just go and get you five tapes for a dollar if that happens to be how much they are in your area and uh stock up let the kids watch those VHS tapes and then when they're done with them take them back and donate them back all right let's go ahead and hit rewind here I'll show you how fast it is and again you can see the numbers on the front which allows you of course to find your favorite part of the tape just by the time many VCRs just had a tape counter on them which was only good for indexing purposes it's like okay yeah my favorite part of the movie is at uh 7622 on the dial there you know a real-time counter is definitely a whole lot more uh exciting so we wouldn't be uh complete if we didn't show you what's what's uh going on in the back of this thing I'm going to go ahead and hit a jack so as far as jacks on the back really not a whole lot of excitement there just your standard uh composite output and left and right stereo channels so nothing fancy on here as well oh well I guess you know we do talk talk about the RF in and RF out which would give you an ntsc signal which is no longer in use of course nowadays you need an atsc uh tuner to be able to pick up anything over the air as far as television goes so I hope you enjoyed this little uh preview of this little VCR here she's a good one and uh like I said if you find one of these online go for it it's a really good brand and it's a really good quality make of VCR please subscribe to my channel and share this with a friend who's crazy about VCRs and um leave a comment below if you like and thanks for watching

Channel: databits

Views: 111,173

Keywords: VCR, databits, minidisc, VHS, vinyl, turntables, reviews, electronics, history, laserdisc, compact disc, cassette, 8-Track

Id: Xe9EnnBfvBE

Length: 13min 45sec (825 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 20 2015