DCC = Digital Compact Consternation

[@JacGoudsmit]

Thanks for posting! Here's some more interesting information about DCC: 7:27 The tape is so dark because it's like video tape, with really high density. Each head records a binary signal at about 96kHz and there are 8 heads for audio, plus one head for auxiliary information which works at a much lower rate (12kHz). If you would play a DCC tape on an analog recorder it kinda sounds like white noise. If you would have gotten your DCC recorder to work, you could have put a piece of tape on one of the holes to pretend that it's an analog cassette, to make that audible. 10:29 The DCT-2000 was the first "OEM" DCC recorder and it was produced at the same time as the first DCC recorders by Philips and many other manufacturers as far as I know. Most of the other manufacturers just used the entire schematic of the first Philips DCC recorder, the DCC-900, and put their own enclosure around it, but Tandy made their own recorder in cooperation with Philips. Philips provided the plugin boards which have the same DCC chips as the DCC-900. Unfortunately there is no service manual or schematic for the DCT-2000 (only a parts list and an exploded view), and there are no datasheets for the chips of the first-generation recorders, but there are plenty of datasheets for other recorders and there's enough information about the chips that makes it obvious how they work. 16:28 David Rogers (the guy who wrote the letter to the magazine) is the guy who ran the DCC-L email discussion list in the 1990s. Alas, it no longer exists and I don't know what happened to him. I myself was an active member of the DCC-L and I wrote the DCC-FAQ in 1996 just before the demise of DCC. It's still online (xs4all.goudsm.it/dcc-faq.html) but I don't maintain it anymore so it's full of dead links and outdated information. I also wrote most of the Wikipedia page about Digital Compact Cassette (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Compact_Cassette), and I update it a few times per year with new information. I also recently set up a Github repo at digitalcompactcassette.github.io with service manuals, datasheets and other information that I've found elsewhere online. Dr. DCC is a friend of mine, we're both Dutch guys living in Southern California who like DCC. He runs the DCC museum and he's been in contact with some people from the industry lately. We've uncovered a lot of information about DCC that wasn't known before; for example Philips apparently made it mandatory to store data on prerecorded DCC's that can be shown on a TV screen with an "ITTS" decoder. Those decoders never went into production but he has a pre-production version that actually works. They show a couple of pages of 40 lines of 21 characters of text and ("teletext") graphics. We have plans to reverse-engineer the ITTS box to see if we can build our own. I also have some other plans to expand the capabilities of other DCC recorders but they're still a secret because I don't want to create false expectations. I hope you'll eventually try to actually get the DCT-2000 repaired. Again, thanks for posting!

[@StevenSmyth]

Fellow KZbinr databits made a video a few years ago entitled Optimus DCC DCT-2000 Digital Compact Cassette Deck Restored - Philips Made. In it, he shows which boards need to be pulled and what value capacitors you need to get. He also had to replace the pinch roller. There are no service manuals for this online, but any of the DCC decks from this era will need to have this servicing done eventually.

[@Madness832]

Exactly what crossed my mind right after the video started!

[@EmergencyChannel]

Which goes to show how shitty these decks were made. They really were in cost cutting mode with these. I have tape decks from the late 70’s that work perfectly well after changing belts and cleaning play/rec switches. Dell PC’s from the early 2000’s had similar shitty caps.

[@maxpowers2168]

Steven Smyth Yeah, his video is from 2013 and is the same model as yours (Optimus DCC DCT-2000) just search it as "databits DCC"

[@StevenSmyth]

Shrek most everything from that era had bad caps. It was the capacitor plague. It affected a lot of companies, not just Philips and Dell, but Apple, HP and Acer were also tainted. Not their fault, it was a very real thing you can Google up in a few seconds.

[@StevenSmyth]

Max Powers If I can scare up the Philips version for a reasonable price, I’ll get one and service it.

[@CoolDudeClem]

I found a DCC cassette in the trash once (there was no deck with it unfortunately) but I actually tried spoiling the tape in to a regular cassette and played it to hear what that would sound like, and it just sounded like FM radio static.

[@chrysanth.5700]

Mhm. Those DCC tapes had limited compatibility. At least I think I remember hearing that somewhere. Sadly I don't get to think too much about DCC.

[@BilisNegra]

*spooling?

[@amirpourghoureiyan1637]

CoolDudeClem it's digital information, you'd hear the same if you listened to a game cassette through an ordinary tape deck, I hope you are able to reverse what you did as the DCC tapes are extremely scarce

[@ELECTROHAXZ]

What color was the case?

[@legionofdoom2009]

Well, I guess you could say "This Optimus is definitely past its Prime!"

[@DRDCC]

Are you going to recap the boards?

[@megabojan1993]

After having a rough day I need my dosage of VWestlife videos to calm me down a little bit.

[@DimensionDude]

My Optimus DCC deck's serial number is (no joke) 010101. It also suffers from bad caps, but it did briefly play a digital tape in my video. Maybe one of these days I'll get around to replacing the bad capacitors. When it was new, it was a great deck. Like you said, the transport controls are responsive, the auto-reverse is quick, and the audio from a digital tape was near CD quality.

[@RoboNuggie]

You didn't smell the cassette.... Is it me or does anyone else like to smell a newly opened piece of media or tech..... Just me? Ah. I'll get my coat....

[@BilisNegra]

Used to do that with cassettes as a child and as a teen (when they weren't absolete yet). Blank TDKs did not have that much of an special smell, but liked how SONY ones smelled when new.

[@davek12]

I did, too. Some prerecorded tapes had a very weird and sweet smell.

[@amanguver]

I love the smell of a brand new laptop.

[@chrisjamesr77]

Just watch LGR some time, he's always doing that.

[@jamieross2743]

New tape deck is more good. The smell like 35mm camera film

[@wa27]

How can you tell if a tape is Dolby encoded without looking at the packaging? Just listen and judge whether the highs are too loud?

[@vwestlife]

Yes.

[@Fluteboy]

What put me off buying DCC was the size of the decks. Even with the CD tray loading method, they stood so tall. I went for minidisc in 1998 which was a prettier sight!

[@vwestlife]

The later generation DCC decks were smaller, but by then the format was already pretty much dead.

[@jeffmassey4860]

Cassette is back. I have brick-boxes of unopened TDK tape to burn thru now...

[@miguelque9102]

I found a portable DCC player at the flea market last year. The belt didn't survive, though.

[@miguelque9102]

That's why I gave up buying the unit. At least I've touched it.

[@wilkes85]

Hopefully you can get it working again, it might be a fun project. Even though you only have 1 DCC tape, it would still be a fantastic deck to play and record regular tapes in. I'm not sure about the tray-loading mechanism though; how easy is it to clean the heads without opening it up every time?

[@yag-yet_another_gamer]

DCC decks can't record on regular tape, only play it back.

[@jamesdrake6200]

databits has one of these Optimus decks that he reveiwed on his channel and you are correct. the capacitors go bad on these. he had to replace all the electrolytics before it would work again.

[@Ivo--]

At first glance on the plug in card with the SMD capacitors I could already tell they were leaky from the corrosion on the components around the capacitors.

[@cyberwolfe]

Have you tried swabbing the read heads with IPA?

[@vwestlife]

Even with dirty heads you would hear _some_ audio from an analog tape, not just hiss.

[@cyberwolfe]

VWestlife That's true. I just thought that perhaps it may be a bit different in terms of reading the tape? A dirty head may be a possibility? Just a thought. Great video BTW! :)

[@jackmosley2218]

Would love to see a video on new release cassettes! From my own findings some sounds amazing, for example the version of the Awesome Mix Vol. 2 that was released earlier this year sounded very good, even better than some Dolby HX Pro tapes that I have!

[@EmergencyChannel]

Most new tapes are digitally duplicated. I’m sure most new cassettes sound better than analog duplicated tapes.

[@AnagramFoilBalloonFan]

I have heard of DCC but never had a player or any tapes myself. but I collect and use Minidiscs.

[@1walkgirl]

Still very common available second hand here in NL also blank tapes!, I always wanted a dcc walkman but there are about no batteries available for them :-(

[@ddesclos]

I think the DCC Museum in Redondo Beach, CA has batteries for the DCC portables. dccmuseum.com

[@JacGoudsmit]

Also, you could put together a 6V battery pack and plug it into the power supply input on the back of the portable. But of course that also makes them even less portable (they are very heavy to begin with).

[@1walkgirl]

daar heb ik geen kaas van gegeten :-)

[@Solitaire001]

I had a portable DCC player and it came with a rechargeable battery pack, one that looked like 4 AA batteries packed together. Unfortunately, I was not able to locate a replacement battery pack. Unfortunately, the battery life was only about 2 hours (if I remember correctly). I wish Philips had just chosen to use standard AA batteries, with the option to use rechargable AA batteries if you choose.

[@equador1986]

Have you see the video from databits

[@anonymous-user-]

Hello vwestlife, I would like to use one of your videos to demonstrate the generation loss from KZbin's video compressor. Is that alright with you?

[@vwestlife]

Only if you use a short clip and give credit in the description.

[@rich1051414]

did you try hooking up to the headphone output in the front? It sounds like a cold solder joint on the output jack.

[@vwestlife]

Yes.

[@rich1051414]

That's unfortunate. It is probably an issue with the DAC then. If the tape deck has a digital output you could use an external dac.

[@vwestlife]

The issue is bad capacitors.

[@robfriedrich2822]

I think, the DCC tape would sound like a dial modem

[@R0n8urgundy]

The guy on that DDC looks like Kevin Bacon

[@GeoNeilUK]

I wonder why they had pluggable cards? I'm guessing Tandy were assembling the players but rather than licence the chips from Philips and install them directly on the board, they just assembled the cassette player and had Philips provide the DCC circuitry on those two cards. I'm assuming they were intending to resell the same board and case as "high end" analogue casette players just without the DCC cards (and with the expansion slots unpopulated) Still, had the DCC carried on long enough for a codec upgrade (say from MP1 to MP3 or even AAC) they could have used the same board and case and just plug in the newer DCC cards with the upgraded codecs. And then years down the line, Techmoan would be ordering a spares DCC 2.0 version of this model that doesn't work and he can't fix, before ordering a spares DCC 1.0 version of the same model, finding it plays analogue tapes perfectly fine and then swapping the cards around and getting a fully working DCC 2.0 player!

[@JacGoudsmit]

Yes. Philips produced the plugin boards and Tandy made the recorders. This was probably the fastest way to get this to market. As for the possibility of upgrades: if you dig into the service manual for the Technics RS-DC8 (which is that last DCC recorder that Matsushita produced, with their own chipset) there are some subtle hints that they might have been working on a different format, perhaps running the recorder at half speed for 2x90 minutes of 192kbps MP3 music or something. But of course this was much later than the DCT-2000.

[@GeoNeilUK]

+Jac Gouldsmit - yeah, it was after I typed and posted this that I realised that the tape would have to be run at different speeds to accommodate the different codecs. AAC might have been introduced to the DCC market as "better them MP3" in the same way that Microsoft tried to introduce WMA as being better than MP3, by claiming that 64kbps WMA sounded as good as 128kbps MP3 (it didn't, it sounded better than 64kbps MP3 but worse than 128kbps MP3) instead of being introduced by Apple as being better than MP3 at the same bitrate (once you get past 192kbps lossy codecs are all much of a muchness) Now which codec, between WMA and AAC do you still hear -about- nowadays? Anyway I digress, I suppose if the DCC cards controlled the speed of the deck then they could pull this off, I'm assuming the tape speed would have to pretty accurate to maintain the ability to decode the tapes, the much higher bitrate of the data on a DCC would mean it might matter more on a DCC than saving a program for an 8bit micro on a regular cassette.

[@JacGoudsmit]

Yes, during playback, the speed of the capstan is controlled by the data that comes in from the heads. The way this works is not really documented but this is a basic servo principle that has been used for a long time: the data from the tape is streamed into a buffer and when the buffer is almost full, the capstan gets a signal to go slower; when the buffer is almost empty, the capstan gets a signal to go faster. The data is played at crystal-accurate speed, and the speed of the capstan only varies slightly because it comes in so fast. When the deck is recording, the speed is controlled from a tachyometer on the capstan: The recording speed is factory-calibrated at 4.76 cm/s so that other decks can play the tapes back successfully. It would be almost trivial to run the deck at a different speed during recording (and therefore at playback because the servo circuit automatically tries to match the playback speed to the recording speed -- within limits of course). But when the tape runs slower, recording might not work so well because the tape still only has space for so-many-bits per inch. And the servo works from the bits coming in from the tape. It certainly is possible to do a minimal amount of hacking to get two interleaved streams of data on the tape at regular speed (after all it has 384kbps bandwidth so if you intercept the encoding/decoding you can write two streams of 192kbps at the same time. However this hack would be unpractical because if you would want to replace one 192kbps stream you'd be erasing the other stream too. Also you'd still have the direction change in the middle of the tape. I suspect that Matsushita was working on a chipset that made it possible to run the tape at half the bitrate and thus half the speed, so you would be able to get 90 minutes on each side, encoded at 192kbps, with no requirement for special tape, and probably no audible loss of quality if they used MP3. But I can't be sure and we'll probably never know. All we know is that it's possible in theory: after all with the DCC-175 and the PC-link cable it was possible to record any kind of data onto the tape using the backup software.

[@davek12]

I had a similar DCC deck in 2001 or so that also would go through all the motions but wouldn't play. I never bothered to figure out what was wrong and got rid of it. It's kind of funny because I think that mine was Philips, and I'm pretty sure that the Optimus equipment of the time was made by Panasonic/Technics.

[@JacGoudsmit]

I don't know about that time, but when I worked at RadioShack in 2002/2003 most of their crap was made by Thomson and had RCA labels. Matsuhita (Technics/Panasonic) was involved in the development of DCC, they made the early portables (Marantz made the later generation) and they also made their own DCC chipsets (all non-Technics DCC recorders use Philips chips).

[@davek12]

I had misremembered who built their stuff. It wasn’t Panasonic, it was Pioneer, and it continued even when RS was licensing RCA from Thomson. Nicer stereo stuff than had the RCA label for years. Pioneer was an MD licensee, so maybe the DCC was actually Philips. It does have blue VF display when RS/Pioneer’s stuff was orange.

[@timemerson4162]

Some formats just weren't intended to be digital i suppose.

[@JacGoudsmit]

With hindsight, it's hard to imagine that Philips could possible think that DCC was the right direction to go. But at the time that they started developing the format in 1988, there was only DAT (very expensive and not very robust at the time), and prerecorded CD (which was taking off massively). Philips was also working on recordable CD at the time, but CD-ROM hadn't even come out yet. The first CD-recorders in 1991 or 1992 or so were gigantic and cost as much as a car. But by the end of the 1990s, CD-R and CD-RW really took off and DCC just didn't make sense anymore. Even if the format would have sold like wildfire, it would have been discontinued in a few years because there were much better options by 1998.

[@Solitaire001]

I think that DCC was a victim of bad timing. I think that had it been introduced instead of CD it might have succeeded. I purchased a DCC deck and DCC portable because I thought the format would be the victor over Minidisc because: (1) backwards compatibility with regular compact cassettes which gave it a massive library of available music even without DCC tapes, and (2) the blank tapes were less expensive that blank minidiscs with longer recording time. Unfortunately, affordable recordable CDs were soon available which doomed this format.

[@smileypete4625]

How much do non working DCC decks get on Ebay? Might be a way to get some money back if you don't fancy recapping...

[@THEBATMAN28AHH]

Did you try the headphone plug?

[@EastAngliaUK]

that was in the video he did.

[@Veso266]

how can you record a DCC Tape (add title)

[@vwestlife]

Using a working DCC recorder.

[@JacGoudsmit]

You couldn't add titles to DCC tapes with this recorder, only with a third generation recorder (DCC-730/DCC-951). And those titles would only be visible on other third generation recorders, not on earlier ones.

[@Veso266]

can you add them by encoding audio on a computer and record it on a DCC Tape?

[@JacGoudsmit]

Not unless you had a DCC-175 with a PC-link cable. Those cables are extremely rare (a reliable source tells us only 1400 cables were made). They had a custom chip that made it impossible to make your own cable. The schematic of the DCC-175 is available, though. And it tells us how the cable is connected to the electronics. In theory it's possible to do something with this information, and I have some plans...

[@michaelturner4457]

Minidisc was quite successful in Europe and Japan I believe. And I did see Minidisc in stores and people using players a few times in the UK, but I never ever saw DCC.

[@EastAngliaUK]

did you take it back for refund? at least you can do that from a shop?

[@vwestlife]

No refunds.

[@EastAngliaUK]

pretty sure when buying stuff here in UK they have to give you one but maybe its different for you?

[@vwestlife]

The store has huge signs saying "No returns, no exchanges".

[@EastAngliaUK]

oh well maybe someone would use or buy to fix from ebay or craigslist. )-:

[@duskonanyavarld1786]

Vwestlife is from the more liberal USA so there is no such law.

[@loganschmidt2008]

are you planing on reviewing cheap cassette decks like a pyle or a marantz

[@vwestlife]

Eventually.

[@JacGoudsmit]

Marantz actually also made a couple of DCC decks, and they're generally viewed as the best DCC decks you can get, because they used different D/A converters. They were also wildly expensive even though they were identical to the DCC-900 inside apart from the D/A converters.

[@rubendeaz]

Actually, he's referring to Marantz last Cassette Decks which where geared for Pro use and were just strait Crap, They actually were the same model as Pyle's Cassette Deck and a lot of Customer's were pissed after they realized they could of bought the same unit for much less under another name, needless to say, it didn't last long on the market...

[@mephitusincognito7918]

this feels like a case of cold solder joints...

[@volkerking5932]

Why you don't repair it? There are only defect Capacitors inside around the Head Amplifier, first change this and then we will see. First clean up the Head. Only use the SMD Capacitors from Digi-Key or Mouser etc.

[@vwestlife]

I did get it repaired: kzbin.info/www/bejne/pKi8f4yBhZlkb8U

[@憲夫松本]

I wanted the DCC rather than the MiniDisc, because the DCC disappeared from the shops so quickly.

[@dennissalamante6785]

Do a demo of the DAT format.

[@vwestlife]

I would if I had a DAT deck and some DAT tapes!

[@connorm955]

Like an audio sample? Here's one kzbin.info/www/bejne/iKrFZZagjtt9rZo

[@devdammit40]

They also made portable DCC players as well...

[@paulyh4531]

Have you repaired it yet mate ?

[@vwestlife]

No.

[@ranjeetsinghranjeetsingh7902]

Aw567Power house Philips ke bare Mai batayeye

[@manulius]

That date stamp is my 4th bday :o

[@xdqd]

And I was born 4 years later on nov 11, 1996 :D

[@LightTheUnicorn]

A shame as that seems to otherwise be a rather interesting deck, would be great to see it running if you do decide to try fixing it further. Modern releases on tape are both bizarre and wonderful, cool to see and the more obscure ones make a nice thing to "collect", heh!

[@cyberwolfe]

7:30 - I don't believe that would work as the tape is digital... not analogue.

[@vwestlife]

I meant in terms of what kind of noises the digital data would sound like when played as audio, like when I played a video CD on an audio CD player: kzbin.info/www/bejne/f3zXeHeoqa2bhrs

[@rhubarb99999]

John Hiatt - Great Album!

[@Halterung01]

I'm 7 minutes in while writing this. If you were to spool the DCC tape into a regular audio cassette and play it you would hear anything between nothing and a really high pitched whistling. The carrier frequency of the digital recording is somewhere starting at around 21kHz. If you were to record on DCC tape in an analogue machine without BIAS adjustment, you would get a really loud recording because the special metal-particle tape for DCC is EXTREMELY sensitive. If you would record on it using a high end deck with BIAS adjustments you could achieve among the best recordings with it, as 20kHz+ is the range the tape needs to be good at, everything below that will obviously be no challenge. The other way around: There is a way to record a standard analogue tape with DCC coded digital music, you just need a really high quality tape. The japanese metal tapes are known to work well (TDK MA(-X(G)), Maxell MX, etc). Interestingly, the Maxell XLII (which is a ferricobalt chrome substitute tape) is also known to work well enough which states it as a tremendous chrome-type-tape.

[@JacGoudsmit]

The signals are recorded at ~96kHz per head. The tape is basically the same as video tape (chrome dioxide, not metal) so yes, recording with a normal cassette deck would probably not be successful though I don't know what the effect would be. I heard from an engineer in Hasselt, Belgium who worked on the recorders, that when there was no tape available yet, they used TDK SA-X (high quality chrome tape) but that still doesn't have a high enough grade to record the digital signals successfully (I tried; you end up with lots of dropouts). Maybe they ran the lab decks at higher speeds or something until they had tape, I don't know.

[@The90sGamingGuy]

This is a very interesting DCC tape deck. In the 90's i recorded music off radio onto cheap cassette tapes as i was a kid and didn't have money to buy retail CD's. I might get that Twenty One Pilots cassette cause its a new release on cassette and its a good album.

[@gentuxable]

Why does your PC show the update notification in red? Did you change the color or is it infected with malware trying to pull one off?

[@vwestlife]

I customized the color scheme.

[@euphoria_7477]

Time to break out the trusty old Hakko!

[@dennissalamante6785]

Have you heard of the Channel called databits? His channel is like Techmoan.

[@vwestlife]

Yes.

[@killmore75]

12volts vids has a few good repair videos on this issue

[@geotechmore8855]

I hope you can get the player to work eventually. I think you will 😀.

[@Jpk516]

Very interesting concept that never took off.

[@paulyh4531]

Get a hair dryer or heat gun on the boards always works on the old ps3 soldier joints

[@HamtaroEL]

Their portable decks mechanisms are far better than their component decks as they used stationary heads for autoreverse rather than the rotating head, which were less stable in azimuth like the cassette decks were.

[@rezganger]

This is not a capacitor issue.If it is it would show with a bulge on top of it!I think its the head or somewhere very close to it! Love ur channel,though.

[@vwestlife]

Surface-mount capacitors don't bulge, they just leak.

[@VintageElectronicsGeek]

Nor do all electrolytic capacitors bulge or leak, they just dry up and turn into a resistor.... ~Jack, VEG

[@rezganger]

Would u be able to see if it leaked? Thanks.

[@rezganger]

Thanks,now I know a bit more than yesterday! Cheers.

[@northhankspin]

When i was a kid in the 90's i used to collect the radio shack catalogues.. I remember Optimus but don't remember this unit.. strange. I wonder what the chain of command was.. i think it was realistic, then Genexxa then Optmius.

[@vwestlife]

Genexxa was a Canadian brand. It was never sold in the USA.

[@5roundsrapid263]

I remember seeing this in the RS Christmas catalog one year. I’m pretty sure it was made by Pioneer.

[@JacGoudsmit]

According to Wikipedia, Realistic changed to Optimus and Tandy used that brand until they got into an agreement with RCA.

[@5roundsrapid263]

Jac Goudsmit Realistic was mostly made by Pioneer, too.

[@douglasallen9428]

It seems like you may need to check into the tape head itself, dude......... though I certainly wouldn't rule out capacitor issues, either.

[@vwestlife]

I spent half the video talking about how it might have a bad tape head, dude......

[@JacGoudsmit]

Unless some moron tried to demagnetize the tape head, the head is probably still good. But he won't know until he recaps the boards.

[@twocvbloke]

Can't wait to see them releasing new betamax tapes, given the way things are going with bringing back expired formats... :D

[@neilforbes416]

At about 10:30 you said the magic word! The reason this deck isn't working, it's made by Philips(except for the power supply board)! Problem solved! Case closed! Philips is a brand that anyone even half-way serious about good audio gear should AVOID LIKE THE PLAGUE!

[@JacGoudsmit]

Philips made excellent gear until the 1990s when they started cutting costs everywhere, just like everyone else.

[@neilforbes416]

In 1963 our family bought their first TV set, the store we bought from gave us three sets to evaluate, a Healing(EMI's other brand), PYE and a Philips. My parents thought the Healing's sound was a bit tinny, the PYE seemed to exhibit vertical hold problems so they settled on the Philips and our TV problems started from that point as the set was ALWAYS playing up, so I grew to having a complete distrust and dislike for ANYTHING carrying the Philips brand except records because Philips did not directly make records, they leased the name and trademark to a company to press and distribute records for them. Just as well because if they had made records themselves they'd be useless - unplayable. From the time of that old black & white TV my parents foolishly chose(they should've gone with the Healing) I've held Philips in utter contempt, and still do.

[@JacGoudsmit]

I'm biased because I come from Philips' home town and grew up surrounded with Philips. I have good experience with Philips engineering and I'm proud to say I was one once. But I also think Philips made some spectacularly bad decisions with things like Video-2000, CD-i and DCC. My experience is that at least until the 1970s, they had a reputation of making quality gear that could last "forever". We had one of the first Philips color tv's of the street, purchased in 1973 or 1974; it lasted until 1988 and probably could have been repaired. Picture and sound had been fine until the power supply failed but with only 6 preference channels it was getting increasingly useless and we got rid of it when we moved. I also had a top of the line Philips stereo system from 1987 that had lots of trouble like an amplifier that would sometimes boot up with its electronic volume regulator on maximum. Right now, Philips is not even the shadow of the company that it once was, and whenever I buy new gear now, it's near the bottom of the list of likely brands to consider. Let's just conclude that your mileage may vary. Not all Philips gear is good, but bad capacitors don't just happen to Philips. And continuing down this rabbit hole won't benefit anyone, so this will be my last comment on this thread.

[@neilforbes416]

We'll agree to disagree.

[@neilforbes416]

I used to avoid ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING with a Philips brand on it except records because several great artists and groups, like Dusty Springfield, The Four Seasons, Demis Roussos, Roger Miller, The New Seekers and others appeared on the label here in Australia. But cassettes, cassette recorders, TVs radios, even light bulbs, I wouldn't touch them with a barge pole.

[@setSCEtoAUX]

This brings back memories of working at Radio Shack at the end of 1992. They were definitely trying to sell them around Christmas of '92. I'm certain because I was laid off in January '93 and fortunately never had to work for Radio Shack again. These are not good memories. Maybe I'll try to find one of these to bash to pieces with a baseball bat.

[@tmbaz66]

If you encounter the same problem, first you clean the head. If there is no result, you go to the head and press it down or up. There is no result. Change the pulleys. There is no result of changing the capacitors. There is no result. You press your finger on the variable resistors in the small board of the head. Or the fuse. You did not get the result of the nearest trash bin near your house, throw it inside, and comfort yourself😂

[@vwestlife]

Bad capacitors *are* the known problem with these decks.

[@rogerturner1881]

NEVER A TRASH BIN....RECYCLE BIN ALWAYS

[@duskonanyavarld1786]

I love your HiFi videos.

[@sismofytter]

Also a format dead on arrival :-)

[@WildDieWoodard]

"Plop. Plop. Fizz."

[@CaptainEmptyhead]

recap all the smd components and it works again. Don't power it up until you done a recap !

[@urbanodagrippino8433]

Strange

[@billyboi57]

DCC is dead and so is Radio Shack.

[@robfriedrich2822]

Some people tried to record digital on conventional compact cassette, beside the bad reliability, it worked well.

[@dmode79]

Fail...

[@urbanodagrippino8433]

Total flop for Philips

[@Odessia-ij5ys]

DCC in the End with problems through out it's history shame It had a short life

[@VeritasKonig]

I was scandalised with your thumping on the machine and suggesting to take out dcc tape yo put in a regular Cassette! Made me physically nauseous

[@zedgie8857]

Prowadzący troszkę żałosny

[@Musaad-AlHassan]

First comment

[@Musaad-AlHassan]

First time in my life

[@maxpowers2168]

Mosaad Al-Hassan First comment in YOUR life....

[@Musaad-AlHassan]

Max Powers I ment the first who writes in the comments section.