JVC HRA5 SQPB VHS VCR Remote Control Does Not Work

This VCR does not respond to the remote, and it is not the transmitter. Let's find out the problem.

[@MrJDNJ]

I watched your video in hopes of getting more insight to my GE VCR issue - the remote works for everything except turning the player on. Seconds before writing this I looked at my remote control, and right next to the "Power" button are 3 buttons for "VCR" "Sat Cable" and "TV." I said to myself "cripes" maybe I'm supposed to be pressing the "VCR" button instead of "Power." And to my Amazement the friggin thing turned on. The added layer of difficulty is the dang front panel display on the VCR is so dim I have to have the TV and receiver on to make sure, and I hope I don't forget how to use those remotes.....

[@ConsumerDV]

I would not call SQPB a unique feature. Many JVC and Panasonic had SQPB label, but I found out that there were quite a few VCRs that could play SVHS recordings without having the SQPB label, like the 1991 PANASONIC AG-Wl, "Tape format: VHS video cassette (with easy playback function for S-VHS cassettes)" or a 2007 Sony SLV-D380, "The VCR can also play S-VHS tapes recorded by S-VHS mode. The VCR will automatically identify the type of tape inserted in the VCR (either VHS or S-VHS). When S-VHS tapes are played in the VCR, the enhanced resolution will not be visible on screen; there may also be picture distortion while playing the S-VHS tape in slow motion or while utilizing other special playback modes. The VCR will not record in S-VHS mode on an S-VHS tape." Frankly, I don't know why SQPB hasn't become standard across the board. Moreover, why VHS has not been replaced completely with SVHS in 1987. AFAIK, SVHS-ET plays like a regular SHVS tape. Standard VHS machines don't know anything about the detection hole, they just play a tape, and the frequency on ET recordings is almost as high as on true SVHS tape. I guess, ET is like Super Beta. I need to make an SVHS tape and an SVHS-ET tape and play in a standard VHS machine to compare. JVC warned that ET worked only on better tapes, I believe the machine does a short test recording first to engage the ET mode, I need to double-check. I have a VCR and a couple of camcorders that can do ET, but I always use SVHS tape for SVHS recordings.

[@tookeydookey]

"CVC - China Video Corp" LOL! First thing that came to my mind when I heard CVC was the CVC engraving on Canadian VHS tapes indicating that you got a Canadian copy.

[@crashbandicoot4everr]

There was a video cassette format that was called that. Compact Video Cassette by Funai/Technicolor.

[@12voltvids]

I never bought into buying pre recorded tapes. Same with rentals. I am probably the only person on the planet that never rented VHS when they were around. I rented laserdisks and copied to beta or svhs and i have had the movie channel on tv since the day it launched. Pop quiz what was the very first movie aired on the Canadian pay tv providers when they signed on. Drum roll, it was star wars and I have it on VHS along with the sign on for first choice tv which was the first movie channel in Canada for the west. Superchannel was the east. Then they merged to become first choice / superchannel. Then rebranded TMC and now it's Crave. I should dig out that tape and capture the sign on. Btw the second movie was for your eyes only. My little illegal sb3 pan sitting under my cable converter served me for many years. I got a subscription to much music for 5.00 a month. Opened the box, removed the room chip and stuck a diode in and it opened all the channels. Later i came across a guy selling them for 30.00 so I bought one, pulled the diode and reinstalled the chip into the socket and sent it back and had all the pay cable channels for free untill they started going digital. Then i cancelled and put up a satellite dish and bought a chipped vcII decider. Every week we would get codes that were input from the remote to get sound. That's what they killed. The vcII used digital encrypted audio. It was easy to fix the picture but the cypher keys were need for sound. Ah the fun and games. I knew the guy that was pirating it all so he kept me going for free for years. All I had to do was help him install dishes. That was lots of fun back in the early direct TV days. Pirate was scared of heights so I would go put up a dish and point it at the right satellite and leave. People would constantly say "aren't you going to hook it up" and my reply was I'm being paid to mount and point the dish and leave 100 feet of cable. The guy that you bought the system from will be the one that "hooks up your illegal satellite system" just to make it perfectly clear that i knew what they were doing and I wasn't having any part in it. That was incase it was a sting. Nowhere in the law did it say you couldn't point a dish at a foreign satellite just decode the signal. I had a birdog meter so it powered the dish and identified the signal from the identifier signal on the bird. So i pointed the dish and left. The guy I knew eventually did get popped and did spend awhile as a resident of the crowbar hotel. Then we all moved onto the fta receivers and iks. Man that brings back memories.

[@Watcher3223]

Yeah, kind of an annoying thing with some JVC VCRs with "auto picture." If there's anything that may trigger auto tracking, it will trigger "auto picture" if the feature is enabled in the VCR's menu.

[@12voltvids]

And "AUTO TRACKING"

[@mrnmrn1]

I bought a Mitsubishi Hi-Fi VHS last year. It is a weirdo. It uses solutions that were outdated in 1995, when it was made. Like most of the features are set by sliding switches on the front, while most VCRs of the time used menu contol (or separate buttons on the front and the remote) to achieve it. It is also a dinosaur inside, filled with muliple layers of circuit boards and a lot of trimmers, while other VCRs form that time used single board construction like this one, and the signal processing was highly intergated with minimal number or no trimmers at all. It also has a linear power supply! The other thing about it that really surpised me: it is an SQPB machine, but it doesn't advertise it on the front or anywhere. There's a tiny hidden slide switch on the front that enables SQPB. I hit the jackpot with this one, because it was sold as non-working, with the original jog shuttle remote, for the equivalent of $14. Turned out it was just the mode switch, it ate the first tape but after exercising it it started working perfectly. It is practically a brand new machine, no tape mark on the pinch roller and the head cleaning roller is also perfectly clean. And it uses the alumina type head cleaning roller which can be left in place because they are not disintegrating like the foam based ones. It has a very beefy looking mechanism. Feels like an ideal workhorse machine for large volume archiving. Not very service friendly though, as none of the trimmers and test points are marked with their functions, only by a designator! Service manual and schematic is not available either.

[@12voltvids]

Just tell me what is wrong with having physical switches? lose the freaking remote control and then tell me how much you like menus that require the remote control. I love machines and have physical switches to do things like change the input change the audio source change the tape length that's for calculating out the remaining time and so forth. I hate machines that you have to use the remote control you have to turn on a TV to see what you're doing what garbage that is real machines have trimmer pots and mechanical switches that allow you to do pretty much everything without having to pick up a remote now that's the type of machine I like. Call me a weirdo but most of the stuff I'm doing is archiving work and I don't have a remote control handy I like to just be able to put the tape in and push a button.

[@mrnmrn1]

@@12voltvids There's nothing* wrong with the switches, I just said the way they constructed that 1995 VCR was very outdated, feels like 1985. *: One negative side of the physical switches is that they can not be remotely controlled. That's not a problem these days as we use VCRs only for archiving, but it was an inconvinience when they were used as a daily driver VCR. IIRC even the recording tape speed is controlled with a physical switch on that VCR, and as I said, it doesn't recognise S-VHS tapes automatically, you have to switch it manually on the front panel.

[@12voltvids]

It actually does detect svhs tapes automatically well that switch is for and so that you can force it to record in standard VHS on an svhs tape. Normally you leave that switch turned on and then it will detect automatically whether it's a regular tape or an svhs tape but in the event that you need to record something that is playable on a regular machine and all you have is an svhs tape you turn that switch off.

[@mrnmrn1]

@@12voltvids The Mitsubishi machine in question is not an SVHS one, as I said it is regular VHS with a 'hidden' SQPB feature. Not sure what happens if I switch on SQPB with a regular VHS tape, but IIRC it's not right, the picture goes dark. I just searched my emails about the purchase to find the model muber, it is a Mitsubishi HS-M70V, made for the German market. Not much info available about it, because Mitsubishi also made a CNC machine with the same model number, and Google confuses them...

[@12voltvids]

Ok well the real svhs have a switch to override the svhs on a svhs tape. Many regular machines that support quasi playback require a manual switch to change the bandwidth for the demodulator. My Samsung sv5000 is that way but requires the remote. Don't have the remote. Programmed my harmony but is missing that button. Can learn it but need the original remote for that. So now you can appreciate the advantage of a physical switch.

[@ArchivoHumano]

I have one machine that's similar to this one, but it's able to play both NTSC and PAL norms. Unfortunately, it's not able to play PAL SVHS tapes.

[@crashbandicoot4everr]

I recently tried recording S-VHS content on a regular VHS (cheap TDK) tape by drilling a hole on it. In SP it looked acceptable and better than standard VHS, but in LP it was a mess with streaks all over the picture. I used an NV-FS200 (PAL AG-1970) for this test. I then tried a real S-VHS (actually an ADAT) tape and it looked great on both speeds.

[@12voltvids]

Yes recording ep speed on svhs on a standard tape isn't good. The grain on the tape is too corse for the higher frequencies. They pulverize the coating fiber on svhs tape. Sont took it even more to the extreme for their high grade beta by using metal tape. (EDBeta and Betacam SP.)

[@jkmac625]

I don't think S-VHS ET recordings can playback on regular VHS machines, I'm sure I made a few recordings in that ET mode but they didn't play properly on a regular machine. Also some older (early 90's Panasonic) S-VHS VCRs refused to play ET recordings. Without the detection hole on the cassette shell they would stay in VHS mode and not switch over to S-VHS, so playback was wrong on those too. I remember they marketed SQPB as S-VHS in VHS quality. Unless there's something downstream of the RF demodulator softening the image they should at the very least have same definition as S-VHS (400ish lines) but without the S-Video advantage. Most of my S-VHS recordings are off TV so were sourced as composite video anyway. AKAI also marketed their Super Intelligent HQ (I-HQ) VCRs as capable of producing pictures close to S-VHS quality on high quality S-VHS tapes even though they didn't actually record in S-VHS only regular VHS! I remember you had to perform an auto adjustment before recording on those AKAIs by pressing the I-HQ and REC buttons together. Once the machine had assessed the tape quality it would store that until the cassette was ejected. Not sure what they were doing, I assume some sort of RF record current adjustment, the same as you get on broadcast 1 inch C format VTRs, or maybe it was seeing how far it could push the limits of the RF modulator frequencies to get the widest bandwidth.

[@12voltvids]

Sqpb was marketed as svhs playback in improved quality but not full svhs as the additional processing circuits were not included nor the svideo connector. So they do about 330 lines of resolution. The calibration done is a frequency sweep. It makes a short recording when a new tape in installed as soon as record is pressed or the timer is set. Records about 1 second rolls back the tape and measures the top end where the frequency drops off and then sets the top end of the modulator below that frequency.

[@thewheelman282]

do these IR detectors have part numbers on them like other ICs and transistors? i guess the datasheet would have the wavelength it expects

[@12voltvids]

They do

[@sebastian19745]

I found - and maybe I am wrong - that those IR receivers were two types: one with a simple OC transistor (or two in darlington) at the output, it needs an pull-up resistor to properly work and another type, that have a TTL gate at output and it works without any exernal component, it feed the correct signal in the microcontroller. Maybe the one that had low sensitivity had OC output and it just needed an pull-up resistor. I found that, when I was trying to send audio over IR using such a receiver; I used two identical components that had some color stripes, different colors on each one. Turned out that they were different as theirs outputs were one pure TTL 5V.

[@12voltvids]

Me thinks it was more to do with the placement in the support. It wasn't looking straight out.

[@kingforaday8725]

You can also point the remotes emitter at your cell phone camera to see if its working.

[@12voltvids]

My camera has full infrared capability.

[@kyoudaiken]

When you say reduced lines in resolution, how do they recover it? Through line doubling? Or do you actually mean columns?

[@12voltvids]

You don't recover it. This is why petrodyne video recording was never really acceptable as a broadcast format. Yes umatic was used for electronic news gathering because it was the only format that they could use for video other than sending out a 16 mm film camera the other formats of the day were just too big to use with a portable camera. On all the heterdine formats, also called color under because what they do is a convert the color from its normal location in the composite video signal to lower frequency that can be recorded onto tape and that's because there's not enough bandwidth on the smaller tape formats to record color directly as the larger 1 inch and 2 inch quad formats did. The lower you convert the color the less available bandwidth you have. VHS is good for about 30 lines of resolution in the horizontal domain which translates to 30 equally spaced lines that go from left to right across the picture. So in other words they're not lines they're big bars across the screen. The luminance which is the black and white information there's enough bandwidth for approximately 240 lines of horizontal resolution. This is not to be confused with scanning lines which there are 525 on an ntsc signal and 625 on a power signal. You do not see all of these lines you see about 480 on ntsc and about 576 on Powell the rest are hidden in the blanking area. But the chroma is very low on all the analog formats because there's not enough bandwidth on the tape to record it and there's no way to recover it if it's not recorded it's not there. People will say I line double and I line quadruple with what the information is not there. You can double the number of lines instead of digitizing 480 you can digitize 960 but it's still only 480 lines because that's all that was there you can try to guess what might have been there which is what a lot of these processors do the interpolate and try to guess what information would be there had there being a line but again it's just an estimation. All flat panel TVs do this you put a video signal in it doesn't matter what the video signal is it is scaled to fit the screen if it wasn't you'd have a small picture in the middle of the screen with black all the way around it. They can do a pretty good job of scaling but you still can't get something that wasn't originally there it's not possible. Try to argue that point and I know some people will try to argue this but the reality is if the information is not there you can't just make up information you can try your best to guess what you think might have been there but if it wasn't recorded you're never getting it back. That's the problem with MP3 compression well for that matter any compression. will you throw away portions of the image or the sound there's no getting them back. What these video compressors try to do is they try to eliminate information that it interprets as not being visible or not being audible. It works on the lack of ability of our hearing and eyes to see these subtle changes or hear these subtle changes and the brain is pretty good at figuring out things too so what you see might not be exactly what is presented. this is one of the reasons why a lot of millennials think that vinyl sounds so much better than digital recording and that's because what they're comparing it to is an overcompressed MP3 or Spotify stream or even KZbin stream. They're not comparing it to a I'm compressed digital file such as from a compact disc player. now I know there's going to be people now that will argue that CDs didn't sound good and they are right early CDs made in the early 80s when studios were still using analog tape to record did not sound any better than the final release and that was the studios fault because they mixed the multitrack tape into a stereo analog tape that was designed to go to The cutting lab and be cut onto a disc and they applied filters and compression to make the music fit into the limitations of a vinyl disc and the CD was made from that same tape so naturally it is not going to sound any better. Better recording studios made separate Master tapes one in all digital for the CD release and an analog version that was then used for cassette and vinyl replication and those CDs sound Superior to any vinyl.

[@thevideovoyeur33]

Hey, I have a PAL VCR I really would like to get working. I bought new belts for it but they were all either too small or too big. Where are you located?

[@silviogiampaolo3043]

Bom dia, vc tem um vídeo consertando um auto rádio toca fitas Mitsubishi RX 77?

[@12voltvids]

No i don't work on car audio

[@gdacin]

Why don't you change the capacitors on the psu? if i were you, they would've been the first thing to be changed. it's a 30'ish year old hardware... the cap's are most likely dead. change all the electrolytic caps and try again. it surely work as a charm :)

[@12voltvids]

Because this is a 30 repair.

[@Synthematix]

Because changing caps in this would make no sense

[@12voltvids]

And the fact that the guy said fix the remote. I'm not making any money on this as it is. Perhaps I will make a bit from the video, but not from the repair. VHS machines sell for about 30.00 so asking someone to pay more than they can pick up a working machine off Facebook is basically asking for another free machine I have no use for and i wouldn't expect more than 30 or 40 on Facebook. Might get 40 because it has a remote. I really laugh at what some claim this old stuff sells for. Must be a huge uneducated population of idiots out there because people around here know this stuff isn't worth much. It sells cheap. A betamax might be worth 100 to 200 depending on the model but a VHS nope. Too many around that people are giving away.

[@CozyCathodes]

Yeah but SQPB sounds mysterious therefore it's rare and different😂

[@davidtillwach5542]

Like you said in the past videos JVC = Junk Video Corporation .

[@cubinn149]

What was jvc again junk video crap lol