Quote:
Originally Posted by B 4204 T3
--snip-- While playing some prerecorded tapes of Hollywood movies, I discovered a bizarre quirk with the VCR, which I've never experienced with any VCR before. When I loaded the tapes & pushed the play button, the VCR started playing the tapes too slowly. The front display was showing the tapes playing at SLP speed, instead of SP speed. A few minutes later, it played the tapes normally, at the SP speed.
Another time, it started playing at SLP, but when I pushed the fast forward button to search, it played at SP again. --snip-- Does any one know what could be wrong
|
I would guess that, at the least, the audio/control track head got some gunk (that's a technical term) on the control track portion of the head that made it difficult for said head to read the control track of the tape. A thorough cleaning of the a/ctl trk head is in order (although it sounds like the tape you were playing did that by itself- possibly passed on like a virus to the next user).
But, it can also be that the a/ctl track head of your VCR is out of alignment (or, at least out of alignment with the tape recorded on another unit).
However, since you say the speed problem seems to have 'fixed itself' as you were playing it I'm going back to the dirty head scenario and I wouldn't touch a thing related to alignment based on one tape.
Brian