Sears Portable Beta VCR (from 1981)

[@nelsnielson7337]

I had this exact model in the early/middle 90's when it was still in good shape. It was my first VCR, donated to me as a young teen by my grandfather as it was a piece of junk. so the whatchacallit, 'hairboning'? with the small dropouts? That was common on them. It was just the way they were. The eject never worked right on them either. I used to leave the top lid for the cassette unscrewed and when I pulled down the eject lever I would take a jewel screwdriver and pull back on one mechanism to make it eject. Sorry for my lack of techie knowledge on this stuff. In fact the constant tape jamming was why grandpa donated it to me in the first place. Audio on my unit had a horrible buzzing noise when playing tapes. I don't know if it was isolated to just playback or recording as it was the only beta machine I had ever seen. Video quality, other than the dropouts you mentioned, was really good. It was better than my VHS machine but to be fair it was my own direct observation so it may not have been true. But that buzzing made it really useless. The camera was utter, utter, garbage. Remember those 70's videos when you would see a bright light source and it would leave trails across the screen? This camera was so poor that any light source would cause this in an indoor environment. Speaking of indoors, this camera would need an enormous amount of light to even work indoors so mostly useless unless you were outside. There was a switch for white balance -- one for outdoors, one for indoors, and one I think was meant for extremely low lighting as it would make everything orange. Dunno. I got a VHS about 2 years later, paid for out of my own money I earned. I kept this in the closet for a few more years later and then I traded it to someone who wanted it for a NES (old junk for old junk). He didn't take the camera so it went to the junkyard. I had to actually look very closely as I'm in Saskatchewan and the thought it might have been my old machine actually had me glued to the whole video. But mine had a large scratch on the tuner unit that looks like someone scratched it with a soldering iron so it's clearly not my old machine.

[@crashbandicoot4everr]

This is 99.9% identical to my Fisher VBR-330. Yours is a rebadged Sanyo VPR-4800, mine is a rebadged VPR-5800. The only difference is NTSC vs PAL and the βII/βIII switch on the front which is replaced by an "editing" switch which I still don't know what it actually does (no manual). I don't have the tuner/timer unit nor the remote, but I do have the original power supply/battery charger (with a label that says "Sanyo Sample" although still branded Fisher), and the original Vidicon tube camera that came with it, however the tube is shot so the picture is very green and unwatchable. Congrats on finding about that spring on the bottom so quickly. It took me hours to figure that part out on mine years ago. I also have a Sanyo VTC 5350 (VCR 4200 in North America) which is a full-size VCR model and it also uses this mechanism but with a solenoid (soft touch) eject function instead of the manual lever. Really enjoyed this video and happy to see another one of these being restored! :)

[@tambarskelfir]

Very nice how you set up the "source" vs "recording" comparison. idk just seemed more intuitive than most that I've come across.

[@JohnDoe-zh4li]

love using portables, hate servicing them. hats off to you, man.

[@WolfmanDude]

I love the portables! I hate when a device is a huge box mostly filled by emptiness, like its the case for full size machines. Feels like some sort of cheap scam product. HiFi stuff is the worst in that aspect!

[@crashbandicoot4everr]

Yeah they are a pain to work on. So much hardware crammed inside a little box with double-sided boards and fragile interconnectors. But I like them because of their complexity and I can appreciate how hard or smart the engineers that designed them worked.

[@robertcartier5088]

Used one of these in the late '80s as a second, "kitchen" VCR... It sat on a table made from an ancient sewing machine, and was feeding a 14 inch Hitachi portable. Nothing fancy, but it was great for my daughter's cartoons while we made breakfast. ;-]

[@waterup380]

Cool Beta VCR machine I got an Emerson VHS VCR a couple of weeks ago and mine did the same thing after I rewind mine a couple of times. But I think I need to change the belt on mine just because it stops when rewinding after a few minutes. One thing mine is mostly a VCR which I never knew a VHS player was just a recorder from reading the owners manual online VCR875. in the owners manual of mine it says you can use a camcorder to record to a tape in the machine with OTR One Touch Recording buttons

[@waterup380]

@tookeydookey type in your search engine VCR875 they is a service manual for it plus a manual also. Mine did the same after I did a quick clean of mine and rewind it a couple of times it just works when watching a tape

[@waterup380]

@tookeydookey also could be the mechanical part don't know what the white lever is called with you eject the tape. But mine was stuck and lift thst up then it was fixed

[@tambarskelfir]

Random thought; looking at the "typical" beta cassette design, the one with a single window for the reel on the left - could it be that Sony chose that look because the reel with tape kind of looks like a lower-case "b". Or just coincidence. Who knows.

[@ConsumerDV]

I suppose the source signal for your test is 16:9, why are the test videos cropped? AFAIK, any analog machine can record any aspect ratio, it does not know what the proportions of the image should be, it just records the lines. If you feed widescreen into your VCR, and then play it as widescreen, it should look perfectly fine. Also, why 30p, not 60p? Also, I can see jitter during playback, I guess you don't employ a TBC?

[@probnotstech]

This was recorded from an analog channel in my house that's tied to a DTV box, and yeah it's cropped. I just prefer it that way. In Analog video, you lose a lot of vertical resolution with black bars and I like to fill the screen, just my preference I guess. Also the samples were captured/deinterlaced at 59.94, but I believe the DTV box is spitting out 30fps since the channel is transmitted in 720p instead of 1080i. Then my video was rendered at 30fps, so it's all a jumble - best to just ignore the frame rate part of the test. Unless you're referring to the jitter on the scrolling text - that is my amateur code running on the raspberry pi causing it to jump like that :)

[@ConsumerDV]

@@probnotstech I am not sure I am getting the reason for cropping. You've rendered a widescreen video for YT, so you could as well have recorded off a widescreen channel to the VCR and then play it back as widescreen. Or you could have used content from a 4:3 channel and crop only the black side bars that would be there already. Anyway, just nitpicking :) I don't want to ignore the frame rate part of the test, because it IS an important part of the test and it affects image quality. I expect analog video deinterlaced into 60p :) I was talking about minor line jitter, the left margin is not completely straight and vertical, the picture sort of shimmers. I suppose you do not employ any TBC or TBC-like device.

[@probnotstech]

I didn't want to go and mess with the DTV box. Stretching the video to widescreen when played back from Beta (or VHS) would feel inaccurate to me since we didn't typically record anamorphically like that on those formats back when they were used. My first experience recording in anamorphic widescreen was MiniDV. With the frame rate, i record my videos in 30fps. I try to render 60fps when there's recording examples in the video, but sometimes I forget. Oh well. And yeah, no TBC on this example. It looks just as wobbly as it does on my CRT!

[@ConsumerDV]

@@probnotstech I have a PAL Video8 camcorder that can do 16:9. Widescreen became commonplace in Europe since the late 1980s, first with satellite TV and then with PALPlus. I also have a professional handheld NTSC VHS camcorder from 1993 that can do 16:9. Just saying, but respecting your choice.

[@VSigma725]

You know what's super weird? Sears also sold a DIFFERENT portable Beta VCR made by Toshiba, which I have.

[@probnotstech]

Not weird at all. I kinda talk about that at the VERY end lol. Sears sold both Toshiba and Sanyo stuff at the same time. I think yours is much more common though, for whatever reason.

[@VSigma725]

@@probnotstech I genuinely didn't know this Sanyo one existed before your video.

[@VSigma725]

@@probnotstech My Toshiba has a single weirdly sized belt that I don't have and will probably have to order online, and as a result of said belt getting old it struggles to load and unload the tape.

[@superbetahifi]

CBS Fox tapes have Macrovision, maybe why your Wargames tape looked dark and oversaturated. Maybe you addressed that later; commenting at the :15 mark. Thanks! Oh, what Amazon belts/tires did you buy?

[@probnotstech]

I ended up buying a belt kit from Australia on ebay (based on recommendation in the comments here). Regarding Macrovision I've used that tape on other VCRs with better results. I'm not sure I've ever seen this capture setup react to Macrovision.

[@betamaxuser1282]

Interesting -- I always thought most Sanyo Betamaxes did not thread the tape around the head until you pushed play, and then unthreaded the tape when you pushed stop (like an older VHS machine). This must be one of the exceptions (like the Sanyo VCR-3 you examined several years ago). This machine probably does _not_ support βI playback. If you attempt to play a βI tape, it will try to play it at βII.

[@probnotstech]

Some do, some don't, and I have no idea why. The VCR-3 was actually a Sony mechanism inside. At the time I recorded that video I was pretty unfamiliar with Beta VCRs and the different designs, but looking back it's 100% Sony. This one is definitely Sanyo (or at least, definitely not Sony). And yeah, I didn't even think to try, but you're right - I doubt it would play βI.

[@crashbandicoot4everr]

All Sanyo Betamaxes kept the tape threaded until their early 1982 models. When Sanyo started selling VHS machines alongside Beta under the Fisher brand, VHS at the time always unthreaded the tape. So Sanyo cheated and used the same microcontroller code across their Beta and VHS machines. At least that's what 12voltvids told me but it makes sense.

[@probnotstech]

Whether it's true or lot, it seems to line up with what I've seen and makes sense.

[@crashbandicoot4everr]

​​@@probnotstechA bit off topic. If you want to properly restore this machine, search for a Sanyo VTC 5300/Fisher VBS-7500 belt kit. I think I paid $30AUD for mine but it took nearly a month to arrive. The kit is great because it includes the idler tire for the loading ring which is oddly-shaped on the inside. Also consider adding an additional grounding wire from the upper drum to the head pre-amp board on the right side of the deck. I did this on mine and it definitely helped reduce those dropout-looking streaks.

[@probnotstech]

@@crashbandicoot4everr Not sure where your comment went (KZbin glitched hard on me and I worry it got deleted). But in response about your belt kit recommendation - that Australian seller is the same one I got my JVC HR-7650U belts from, and I've been quite happy with the quality. Also, will check the grounding on the video head drum as you suggested. I forgot that can cause dropouts like I'm seeing.

[@seangriffon6502]

Sanyo betacord is a real piece of junk. Thats why Sears could afford to sell their rebadged Sanyo at a cheap price. I wish Sony beta max manufactored the sears brand. The earlier sears betavisions were made by toshiba which was a way better brand then sanyo. Also sanyo made many of the fisher units as well. Really all these vcrs were made by one or 2 companies. Panasonic made many clones of their units. Actually the sanyo was not that bad. I am just more of a fan of the direct drive units.

[@probnotstech]

Yeah, Sanyo bought Fisher in 1975. So all the mediocre Fisher gear of the 1980s was made by Sanyo.

[@superbetahifi]

Can't speak to portables, but I have a Sanyo 4400 which is rock-solid at 40 YO.