Sony Dynamicron L-750 U.H.G. video tapes
 

A while back, I bought a big collection of used Betamax video cassettes from the 1980s & 1990s from an elderly couple. They took really good care of them, and they are all in very good condition. I have spent the last few years playing them, and most of them still play very well, with excellent sound & picture quality; however, there are some tapes they had called Sony Dynamicron L-750 Ultra High Grade video cassettes that I am having problems with trying to play.



They come in a brown sleeve with yellow, orange, pink, purple, and blue horizontal stripes in the middle of it, along with this promotional statement on the back:



"Newly developed VIVAX magnetic particles give superior picture resolution and audio quality at every recording speed."



The problem that I am having with these tapes is that I can get them to load & start playing, but the picture quality is absolutely dreadful! They all have a lot of static in the picture, and sometimes, the picture is so grainy and snowy that it's difficult for me to even tell what is going on in the scene that I am trying to watch, and other times, the picture just cuts out entirely. Despite the bad picture, the sound quality is still satisfactory the entire time they are playing.



I've never had this problem with any other video tapes that I've ever played before, either Betamax or VHS. Many different brands of tapes came in the lot, and the confusing part is that only these tapes have the bad video quality, and all the rest of the tapes are good. Even the off-brand tapes still have excellent quality, unlike these tapes. Some of the recordings were taped at the Beta II speed, and others were tapes at the Beta III speed, which I know can make a difference, but they're all the same quality with these tapes.



Does anyone know what the problem is? Physically, they are all in the same good condition as the rest of the tapes. I was also able to rewind, fast-forward, and pause them without any problems. Could they have sticky-shed syndrome, or any design flaw which caused them to not hold up well over the years? I've tried to research them online, but I can't find very much information about them.



If any one is familiar with these particular tapes or knows anything about them, then I would really appreciate it. Thanks!

Help needed with Sony Betamax tapes
 

I am disappointed that one month has passed, and people have been reading my message, but no one has responded.



This weekend, I played a different Sony Betamax Dynamicron L-750 U.H.G. video tape from this collection, and the video quality is just as bad as the others that I have played, which is frustrating.



Once again, I need help trying to play these old Sony Betamax video tapes. Can anyone help me understand why they are so poor? I only own one Betamax VCR, so I can't test it on another VCR. The reason why I'm asking is because these tapes have unique recordings on them of original broadcasts off the air, with the original advertisements, newscasts, show promos, and station identifications on them, so it would be a real shame to lose them. One tape even has some home movies of their kids on it, and another one has a video of their holiday at a lake taped on it.



I've tried my best to research the problem online, but I can't find any information about these particular Sony tapes online, other than identical new old stock tapes for sale. I would really appreciate any help at all that you can give me.



Thanks!

I haven't had that problem with Betamax tapes, but I don't know if any of my Betatapes is that exact type.

One thing I wonder if it could be is sticky shed syndrome. EIAJ format video tapes (Especially Sony EIAJ) were prone to the glue that binds the magnetic dust to the plastic tape absorbing humidity and making the playing surface of the tape somewhat sticky which on VCRs tends to cause excessive drag which slows down the tape and makes good tracking impossible.

Tapes with that problem can be made playable (at least until they soak up more humidity) by baking them at around 140f in a food dehydrator.

Sorry but I have zero experience with Betamax. Are the heads clean?

I've had similar issues with VHS tapes, but never anything like that with Beta tapes. Presumably if its from the same person, the tapes were stored in a similar manner and in a similar place (and recorded on the same Beta recorder), so its not storage over time or equipment that caused issues with the tapes, its the tape stock itself. I've heard bad things about Ampex and PD Magnetics Beta tape stock being bad but never Sony so maybe you got a bad batch?

Personally, for VHS I've had issues with mid to late 80s Polaroid tape stock, and any Ampex tape stock. Both brands seem to have sticky shed issues whenever I play the tapes back.

I'm perplexed on this whole sticky shed thing. Was there some formulation change in the binders at some point? Reason I ask is I have hundreds of open reels that I made during my days as a broadcast student from 1984 to 1987 and they're all scotch 290 from bulk pancakes. I don't know the actual production of these as they were stacked floor to ceiling in storage but I suspect late 70's given the station history. McCurrdy consoles, Revox PR99MkII's Technics SP-10 tables. So far I've not had one shed anything in my 4010S or issues with any of my Betacam tapes some of which date back to the late 80's under the Sony brand. I do have one 3600ft EIAJ Karex Silverchrome tape but no machine to run it on, just unspooling a few feet and it *looks alright*... a tape I made in middle school I'm not too eager to look at. I also have numerous audio tapes be it Maxell, Memorex and FUJI from that era and so far they play fine, question is what is doomed in the near future?
I recently acquired a one-inch Sony BVH2000 type-c VTR and 50-some tapes that come out of the old CONUS news center, the newest tape is of the 9/11 WTC attack and there are numerous "fresh" rolls in the batch from Sony, 3M and AMPEX-296's still in the bags. If you're not familiar with the type-c format it runs a 5.25" dia head drum at 3600 RPM with a 346 degree wrap to make a 1008 IPS writing speed, a sticking tape is going to make a real mess fast. (see my post below this topic)
Is there some point where the tapes are going to go to s**t regardless of care & environment?

Defective Sony Betamax tapes help
 

Thanks for all of your help, and I'm sorry for the late reply. I've had a busy week.



From what I've been able to figure out, I don't know if they have sticky shef syndrome, since my Sony Betamax VCR is still working fine. As far as I know, the heads are still clean. All of the other Betamax tapes are playing without any problems. Sony must have had a design flaw which only affected this particular line of video tapes, which are called the Ultra High Grade tapes. I'm also perplexed about this problem, since I've owned Sony products for years, which have always been very good & reliable, and they have always received good reviews.



All I can figure out is that they must have come from a bad production run that the factory technicians either overlooked or weren't aware of.



I've always heard the term "high grade" tapes, but I've never quite understood what it meant. Were high grade tapes any better than other kinds of tapes, or what it just a fancy marketing term intended to stimulate sales? Did the have a different price than the other kinds of tapes? I'm just curious.



I also took two pictures of the kind of Sony Betamax video tapes that have the problem, in case any one recognises them. One of them is the box, and the other is the actual tape. The tape has some handwriting on the label that I can't read.



Thanks for your insight!

I've always been leery of the term "high grade" from what I've read over the years Beta and VHS were made in 3, maybe 4 different factories and were just "rebranded" for the various brands (just slapping on packaging and logo), be they some crappy store brand (Blockbuster or CVS or whatever) or Maxell/JVC/Sony. To make matters worse, some brands even would have 3 color grades (low, medium, high) and be priced accordingly. I've opened these up over the years and the guts look exactly the same, with the same internal pieces.

I agree, making tape is not cheap and I don't see everyone making their own stuff. Far cheaper and profitable to spec a run from the mass OEMs and call it their own. A work order for say a thousand miles of raw to be slit and packaged might have been a million with a ten fold return, another injection jobber shooting the plastic tape cases on a fire 50-ton Toyo presses at only a few pennies in qty. $4.00/finished to the retailers who marks it by two and people think they're getting a good deal. Same tape in a different box and nobody knows the difference.

Hi-
If you are still trying to test these tapes, I recommend that you try making your own recording on one or more of them, using the BI or BII speed on your VCR. If your own recordings look OK, then you know that the original recordings were just somehow highly incompatible with your machine; this can happen.

One example of mis-matched recording could be a SuperBeta recording (especially in the BIII speed) played on an earlier Beta VCR. They are supposed to be compatible, but maybe they are not.

Let us know what you find out.

Recording suggestion
 

That you for the suggestion, and I will try it. I only own one Betamax VCR, which is a Sony model SL-100. It is a no-frills Super Betamax model which I know operates at the Beta II & Beta III tape speeds. Do you know if it has the ability to record at the Beta I speed? Should I turn the Super Betamax switch on or off for the test recordings?



I really appreciate the help, and I will let you know what happens.

No. What Sony did was made all the machines capable of BI/II/III playback but after the SL-8200 series record was BI/II only. Looking at the date on that tape you posted I'd bet it was recorded on a SuperBeta HiFi deck and those run a higher FM deviation thus making the streaks & grain on a lower end deck.
Your SL-100 is a first gen SuperBeta machine and should have no problem with the playback so what I'm suspecting is either a physical issue with the tape itself be it shedding or a close encounter with a strong magnet at some point or the original deck had some issue with the record current.
I've been poking around on this whole sticky shed thing and yes there was a change in the adhesive binder during the 1980's due to some perceived environmental issue, the details are somewhat sketchy (read BS) but it was urethane based and susceptible to moisture intrusion over time. ME tapes are a direct deposition and not suseptable to this however the mylar itself will break down over time causing the tape itself to flake.
As for the "SuperBeta" switch itself the deck should auto select based on the deviation it sees, my Sanyo VCR-7250 auto selects on its own based on carrier detection (when it decides to work at all).
FYI the Sony SL-7200 was a B-I only deck with the capstan driven off a common synchronous AC motor while the SL-8200 was the B-I & B-II using a DC servo motor to drive the capstan. I had both in my youth and despite being big & clunky they were great for a then 15 year-old. The 7200 survives... somewhere around here.

I think you mean that after BIII came out that all later decks could only record in BII/BIII..... Nobody really wanted to record in BII anyway once the faster speeds were out since the recording time it allowed was so short.

Yeah once BIII hit the scene BI was gone from all but the pro decks, forgot to add the III. VHS always had the record time advantage and when it came down to the wallet of Joe Consumer only the dollar mattered.

A basic machine will not have BI recording ability, as ARC Tech mentioned.

Regarding your test recordings, I recommend that you try each mode for a minute or two in each recording: BII with SuperBeta off, then BIII with SuperBeta off, then both speeds with SuperBeta on. When you play each of your recordings, remember to try turning the tracking control, and make notes of what it does to the picture quality. Typically, that control has more effect (and is more picky/critical) on BIII tapes versus BII recordings. (The same is true of VHS EP/SLP recordings compared to LP or especially SP ones.)

Let us know what you get.

BIII (and VHS EP/SLP) is actually -slower- than BI or BII. The easy way to remember this is, "How long will the tape run before it hits its end?".

I rarely ever used the BIII speed (and I made very few recordings on any VHS machines I ever had, but certainly only at SP on those). SP and BI or BII were just reasonably acceptable for video viewing but the slow speeds were almost always lousy. Super VHS on a good machine may be an exception; when I got my HR-S9900U VCR, I did try Super-VHS EP speed and it did look pretty decent if I remember right.

It always amused (or annoyed) me that people would use the EP/SLP VHS speed and cram three movies on to one video cassette. When I got my first VCR, a Sony SL-7200 in 1979, recording one movie from a TV channel (such as "Jaws" when it was first broadcast) required two L-500 tapes at US$16 each, a full day's pay for me at that time for one movie. :eek: So, ten years later, I could not understand anyone who was so cheap as to think "I do not want to spend two whole dollars (the cost of a VHS tape then) to record a movie, so I will pick this lousy quality and have to fast-forward through two movies, so I can save $1.33". Yecch! :D

I meant slower. It's what I get for rushing through posting half the time.

A few shows I did make SP recordings of, but back when I was archiving TV shows to tape my parents were buying the tapes and never wanted to supply me with enough so I always had to get everything I could out of what I got or miss programs (most of what I was interested in was played during sleeping hours). As soon as I got an S-VHS-ET deck I switched to that and didn't look back. EP recordings were better than SP on a regular deck.
Memory be it analog or digital is never cheap or plentiful enough until after it's thoroughly obsolete.

Results of test recordings
 

The results are in!



Yesterday, I had some time to make a few brief test recordings on one of these bad Sony Betamax video tapes, which was blank at the end. I used both tape speeds & both video modes, standard & Super Beta. Unfortunately, the new recordings were just as bad as the rest of the tapes just like it. I tried adjusting the tracking knob, but it didn't do any good. The video quality was so poor that it barely showed up on my TV, but the audio was still decent, just like the rest of the Sony Dynamicron Ultra High Grade tapes I have. Now, I don't know what to do with these tapes or if there's any hope for them. I've heard about the "sticky shed syndrome" issue, but I'm not really knowledgeable about it, and I've never tried to repair a tape with this problem.



Since we're discussing the tape speeds, I'm curious about why Sony discontinued the Beta I speed & made all of their customers settle for the two slower speeds on their VCRs. It seems to me like it wouldn't have done any harm to keep the Beta I speed, and it would have given everyone better picture quality, which is what people wanted. Perhaps if it was still available on all of the Betamax VCRs, then things could have been different in the competition between Sony & JVC for which tape format would win; who knows.

Because it was Sony and they do what they want. Betamax was their own and not subject to outsiders or their input. They didn't think anyone would top AFM stereo audio or Betascan & Betaskip, that their video quality didn't warrant the faster BI speed or that VHS would become the defacto home video standard. The Sony arrogance goes way back to before the U-Matic format even hit the drawing board when they thought they would lock in their own take on the EIAJ open reel format.
Sony did however rule the broadcast video world with the Betacam format and that outlived VHS by a decade. The Panasonic MII format video quality was superior to BetacamSP but it never gained the popularity despite being embraced by the ITV, NBC, some PBS and NHK for a time.
Honestly I don't know the *real* reason for the BII/III speeds and I'm sure there's plenty of speculation, I've had many Betamax decks over the years and wondered why myself.

Sony kept BI on SuperBeta, didn't it? Also, Super Hi-Band Beta had BIs speed - what is that, even faster speed?

EDIT: Found in "THE RISE AND FALL OF BETA": "To court the videophile, Sony brought back the BI speed to the consumer format, adding SuperBeta and christening it BI-S." So, the same thing.

I've made a video on the topic: The format war that Beta has won.

No SuperBeta and BetaED all retained the same BII/III speeds for record, only the luma deviation was pushed up and the color remained the same. I have a SuperBeta and there's no BI recording speed, there may have been an oddball deck with a BI that I'm not aware of, the SLO series of "pro" decks had some BI like the SLO-380-something which was like a psudo editor but these were in the Betamax family. SuperBeta and BetaED used thinner head profiles with narrower gaps on metal formula tapes to achieve the higher bandwidth in the consumer market, the tape was already available from the BetacamSP arena and I believe there was a model with a thumbwheel jog/shuttle but nothing frame accurate. Betacam had already established itself in the pro markets so there was no reason to augment with the color under format.
Pro decks run at the higher speeds primarly for the stability and lower S/N, tape use is of secondary concern. A high rating station with a big budget isn't going to care about tape use, they're not going to compromise their ratings on a poor picture. Joe Consumer doesn't buy his Beta L830 tapes by the pallet load and could care less about the sparkly details of the actresses hair, the niche-nerd like myself is going to look for that obscure oddball machine with the belief that it must be "better"... only to find out it's little more than a glorified consumer model with BNC connectors.

You definitely get two thumbs up for the historical production on the Pro format wars of the 1980's. I do remember some of the propaganda on the MII format from around 1985/86 and while some of the technical aspects of the format were superior to the BetacamSP format it wasn't enough to win and despite the NBC commitment to the MII format they eventually went BetacamSP.

I got my first VTR when I was 13, a Panasonic NV-3120 EIAJ open-reel and it came with a metal cabinet RCA Nuvister Color with the A/V jackfield on the rear. I worked well enough to get me hooked on the obscure and about a year later I scored a pile of Sony SL series top loaders from the local TV repair shop, it was then I learned Sony made their sub-models similar to the then popular Plymouth K-Car by mixing & matching this and that before adding the fancy decorations to the cabinet. When I was done doing my own I had a Franken-Beta with all the cool buttons and manual audio control with a real meter. That next spring I bought a new-in-the-box Sanyo VCR-7250 SuperBeta HiFi on a blow-out sale for $99.00 (this was 1985) and have owned it ever since. Picture to me was so-so but the audio was something else and for this reason alone I kept it around. I'm still hooked on the open-reel 40 years later and have a Sony BVH-2000 in my living room feeding my Samsung plasma.

Mr. Betamax's review of the SL-HF3000 reads, "To the right of this is the ON/OFF switch for the s SHB (Super Hi-Band 6.0 MHz) switch. This selection is only functional during recording in BIs."

https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/RW8AA...D8/s-l1600.png

I wonder why instead of pushing luma to 500 lines Sony did not stop at the reasonable 400 lines but rather expanded chroma bandwidth - this would have produced a more well rounded format. Was Sony afraid of making a competitor to Betacam?

Thanks! I bought a NOS MII tape just for the video, and boy is it ugly. Almost VHS-C ugly. The hubs are different size and are not symmetrical, because Panasonic wanted to keep it compatible with a large VHS-sized cassette, and the small one is inserted sort of to the side, not in the middle. So, there is a ton of unused space on the left side of the cassette. I think they missed it again, making a cassette not much smaller than Beta, and Panasonic switched to U-type loading mechanism, which was larger than M-type. So the whole thing would be almost as large as the previous M-format recorder. Ugh.

Pictures courtesy of Museum of Obsolete Media.

https://obsoletemedia.org/wp-content...-1-768x494.jpg

https://obsoletemedia.org/wp-content...-1-768x641.jpg

The next test would be to play those recordings, and also make new recordings, on a different SuperBeta VCR, if you had access to one. That would tell you if the tape itself was bad, or the first VCR.

If you saw my other comment about how so many people (that I knew, at least) would not even use the two-hours-per-tape VHS SP speed, I imagine that far fewer would have used a 1.5-hour-per-tape BI speed (with the most-common L-750 tapes).

I can arrange for a SuperBeta recording right off a Type-C, how about an original of "Streets Of Fire" straight from the TBC output? I have plenty of small SP tapes that are doing nothing in the cabinet. This would get you a something from another SuperBeta deck to work with. PM me and maybe we can work something out. I also have Duran Duran Decade and INXS direct from a VIACOM distro.

Pushing the luma was easier than expanding the chroma subcarrier which was at the bottom of the bandspread, expansion would have probably moved it into the sync portion or AFM carriers, all of the hetrodyne downconversions have a limited color resolution be it SVHS, Beta U-Matic or Hi8... just the nature of the beast. There was a lengthy explanation to the downconversion floating about some 20 years ago but I've not been able to find it since google took over the internet.

Sure, but since ED Beta was not compable with regular Beta anyway (just like SVHS was not compatible with VHS) why did not they shake it up further? If they doubled the chroma subcarrier, they could have created a decent consumer format comparable to the early Betacam, at least for the first generation of a recording. Maybe this is what they were afraid of, they were protecting their golden Betacam goose.

I'm not sure that doubling the color subcarrier would have a marked impact on the color resolution, there is still the overall phase response time that is going to be far slower and slew induced distortions. The actual colorburst of 3.579545 MHZ is the center frequency and it has an overall bandwidth of about 1MHz so knocking this down in the hetrodyne process is going to shrink this as well. Betacam is its own animal and doesn't use any color carriers in the conventional sense, when everything comes together the color bandwidth is about 120 lines in the real world with far less phase error or jitter, I don't see how even an improved down conversion is going to compete but stranger things have happened. The pro broadcast side of Sony was a huge money maker for them and they always met the demands of the buying professionals knowing they had no problem with the pricetag, when a station or the network ratings are on the line money is no object. It must be rugged & reliable on the outside and as accurate as possible on the inside so I would think a "compromise" like a hetrodyne wouldn't be a consideration in the big picture. Just a few degrees of phase error could cause issues with a chroma key so while a TBC can help it won't filter or fix everything.

Thanks, I probably don't fully understand the intricacies of the system. I thought that doubling color subcarrier will afford twice more bandwidth for color resolution, which would not reach Betacam but would be markedly better than pitiful color resolution across all the color-under formats.

8mm has the highest color subcarrier frequency of them all, and it seems to have made a subtle but noticeable difference:

VHS: 629 kHz
Umatic and Beta: 688 kHz
8mm: 743 kHz

Yeah, I know that Betacam is different, but it is a fact that some smaller broadcasters used SVHS and Hi8 for daily reporting, and bigger networks used Hi8 footage from places like China and Iraq, ABC used VHS-C camcorders basically as crash cams for POV shots of bobsleigh runs in 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo, so a consumer-grade format better than Hi8 would have been appreciated, don't you think?

Hi8 had some success in the mainstream production, some stations used it for ENG and it was good enough for the TV drama series "Life In The ER" (I think it was) and many of the FOX affiliates used the Sony EVW-300 package or the docked EVV-9000 for the COPS series, it's my understanding they sent the rookies out in the field to shoot the events as most of the time was spent just riding around waiting for the "right" call. I did some of my early interviews using the Canon L2 Hi8 camcorder as it was far easier to set up and not so "intimidating" to some of the talent compared to a full-size ENG package. To them it was a home camcorder and not so formal. Overall the video was about as good as SVHS but it didn't survive a generational chain or editing very well and a good TBC was almost mandatory. Hi8 also had a 400KHz color bandwidth which yielded about 30 horiz lines of resolution. I think the perception of the "better" color was due to many of the recording improvements that were made during the development of the format. My work at the time was very non-technical for a well known drug & alcohol rehab organization and most of it was on the city streets. Lightweight and easy on the batteries were its strong points. The Hi8 tapes were also compatible with my Tascam DA-88 8-ch DAT, this was very handy with boardroom (bored room) meetings where I could mic the major players with bodypacks and keep everything separate should someone go off script. Bland at best but it paid well.

I didn't adopt the early desktop NLE until the Pinnicle Systems Targa-2000Pro came out, most of what was out there at the time was either the consumer grade Matrox capture cards or the Amega Video Toaster. There was an uber-expensive Macintosh based IMIX Video Cube in the mid-90s, it used a proprietary control surface and had a rather "sparkly" quality to the finished video that did a great job of smearing on tape. it had to be calibrated every 8 months and only a few of the staff were allowed to use it... I wasn't one of them so I stuck with tape and got good at it.

In 1992 Fox chose SVHS for all its affiliate stations, maybe they later switched to Hi8? IDK.

Don't know about all affiliate stations, ours was betacam all the way