Skantic VCR-LP (Philips N1700) video recorder repair. Frantic Skantic.

[@video99couk]

Anyone noticed the Easter Egg in the thumbnail for this video?

[@rodrigobelinchon2982]

17:00?

[@video99couk]

@@rodrigobelinchon2982 Well done, most people missed it.

[@Slurkz]

That’s great 😄

[@normanmackenzie8130]

I love these old recorders, they have a "quality" to them.... thanks for showing us guys, ways and means to do bits on all these old video recorders. You are an able fellow right enough.

[@Slurkz]

Awesome repair, thanks for the video! These machines were amazing, and fun to repair and “hack”. If I rememeber correctly, by halving or doubling the value of one capacitor you could turn these VCRs into “Super Long Play” machines, doubling the LP recording time (4 times the N1500 standard), albeit with a (fair) reduction of video and audio quality -of course. Great stuff!

[@mspysu79]

That machine turned out quite well after some work. Philips really made that a nice machine, and it's fairly easy to work on.

[@video99couk]

And nowhere near as complicated as that Toshiba Beta machine I fixed a few weeks ago!

[@mspysu79]

@@video99couk That is for sure, that Toshiba was quite the complex maze of parts. What year is the N-1700 from, I know the N-1500 is from 1972?

[@video99couk]

@@mspysu79 The duff ua723 chip is dated 1978.

[@martynquiney9121]

Another great video Colin I've got the philips n1700 doing the same thing as your machine I'm still working on it it's a great video recorder

[@markpirateuk]

That was a pretty easy repair, you were very lucky to have a decent replacement head, these things are hens teeth! I am hoping that one of my machines has a decent head, but in my experience most of these machines were retired due to worn heads :(

[@zx8401ztv]

Well done, Another machine saved and not a bad picture now :-D When you had a dibble in the psu i thought of the ua723/L123, i remembered when i was given a very dead philips machine years ago, there was more than one ua723 on the boards. A good i.c but they die for no apparent reason, i have a psu that failed and the ua723 had died, tapping a 741 op amp on to the 7v ref pin and the feedback pin allowed me to use the output of the 741 to drive the rest of the psu. (A temp bodge untill i got another ua723). My dad had the Hillman hunter, not a bad car, and the hillman with the engine in the boot, odd car lol.

[@video99couk]

I'll buy in some more ua723 chips as spares. I've been working on my Hillman today as it happens, just a snapped boot hinge.

[@zx8401ztv]

How on earth did you snap a boot hinge, lack of oil or just rust?

[@160rpm]

Impressive how stable a picture you can actually get on a fairly early machine like this

[@rodrigobelinchon2982]

I had never seen a VCR this primitive, very interesting !!

[@video99couk]

Well yes, very primitive today, but in their day they were very good. But Beta and VHS came along and then the Philips VCR format was clearly behind the times.

[@rodrigobelinchon2982]

Easier to understand than latest gen machines, it is nice to see the same principles used by professional equipment in this simpler device

[@video99couk]

@@rodrigobelinchon2982 The only thing that really lets down the design is a lack of proper back tension control.

[@rodrigobelinchon2982]

Yes , of course ( Rodrigo nods seriuosly pretending he knows what a back tension control is )

[@ianbakke]

Skantic was actually originally a Swedish company named “Skandinaviska Radio AB” and after the Second World War the company struggled and was bought by another electronics manufacturer named “Luxor”. Luxor used to make all of their products themselves, but in the 60s they started to import a lot of products with their badge on it. Luxor worked together with Philips quite a lot at the time and Luxor sold Philips made record players, tape recorders and such. They even sold a reel to reel video recorder under their own brand. I think it was in 1974 that Luxor first started selling Philips VCR machines, the first one being the equivalent of the N1500. In 1978 Luxor launched their own computer named the ABC 80, this was however not in collaboration with Philips. With this computer Luxor sold a game pack and one of the games were called “Masken” which means worm or snake. Then in 1979 they were bought by the Swedish government because they were very close to going bankrupt, and they were eventually sold to Nokia in 1985. Nokia then incorporated the game “Snake” into their mobile phones.

[@video99couk]

Interesting bit of history, I like how Snake found its way onto Nokia 'phones. I remember repairing some Skantic TVs back in the 1990s, they had a nice modular construction which made them easy to work on, but they were a bit unreliable.

[@mdftrasher]

10:32 Someone asked me to change a belt for a machine like this, the gentleman drove 130 Km for this!

[@video99couk]

It can be a maddeningly fiddly task if you don't know how to do it.

[@MrBetamax]

Brilliant video and extremely informative, thank you!

[@jamesbennettmusic]

Can't get my head around the fact that it uses a belt for the head drum. How does it maintain accurate sync at those frequencies without direct drive? I thought drum belts were for washing machines...

[@video99couk]

It's a big head drum, so I suppose the inertia keeps the speed reasonably stable. You are right though, the format does tend to suffer from less than perfectly solid vertical lines, probably as a result of small head drum speed variations.

[@ShadowArchive]

great video, I've got two of these units and hundreds of tapes, can't find one single technician in Australia who would be willing to work on it.

[@video99couk]

They tape a certain amount of experience. But someone should be able to tackle them.

[@MyPOLYSTAR]

Falta na minha colecção este formato,e o U-Matic.Este que mostra no video nunca foi comercializado aqui em Portugal.

[@rsuryase]

At the end of a repair video, can you give a summary of the problem and the solution attempted to fix them? Thanks.

[@video99couk]

That's a thought. I kind of did that on the Grundig 2x4 Super repair a while ago. I'll bear that in mind.

[@yagosan00]

Hi. Great video!. Where can I find the 2 belts you replaced?. I just found some kits on eBay but they are really expensive. Many Thanks

[@video99couk]

The capstan belt will be easy enough to source just based on size. The difficult one is the drum belt, I found this supplier: www.gbaudio.co.uk Their part number for the belt tested here is BELT9.1 Dia 82mm Circumference 257mm Width 6mm www.gbaudio.co.uk/data/belts.htm See my later video on this subject here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/iYjCiZipbLiIZsk

[@yagosan00]

@@video99couk Thanks a lot for your quick reply. Did you found your capstan square belt at gbaudio too?. Im trying to find it but im not quite sure about lenght or where to find it. Thanks

[@rafaelgruber6133]

For ease of service you could also unscrew the tape door cover, then you can also troubleshoot the vcr.

[@video99couk]

I've never noticed that, I'll certainly look at it next time I'm working on deck problems.

[@SwedishRetroTechNerd]

Is this player imported from Sweden or was Skantic sold outside of Sweden in small numbers? Looked on ebay there is litteraly nothing branded skantic on there, Skantic is a Swedish brand owned by Luxor and Skantic and Luxor are brands that where VERY common here in Sweden but basiclly unheard of in other countries

[@video99couk]

Skantic branded products were sold in the UK so I suspect it was a UK market product.

[@darylwhelan7966]

Hi I bought a new one of these in 1978 at over £700 have had several head replacements quiet early in its life, very impressed with your videos and it has inspired me to get it going again i did strip it down over ten years ago and as usual the 2 belts were scrap, can you point in in the right direction to getting some new belts and from where regards Daryl

[@video99couk]

GB Audio is a good place to start.

[@darylwhelan7966]

@@video99couk Hi I got the belts from GB Audio, thanks for that, then found out that the unit would not shut off, N1700 saw your video on the 2 micro switches, that sorted that out thanks, when I put a tape in, the capstan drags it out but the take-up spool does not gather the slack up, so I have to stop it immediately, otherwise it will unwind it self, without a tape in and in the play position neither of the take-up and feed spools move am I missing a further belt under the flywheel, I have 3 belts fitted including the trip meter, any help would be appreciated.

[@darylwhelan7966]

@@video99couk hi since my last message I have found a 4th belt which is missing, I think that is the reason why my tape is bunching up any idea of the size of this belt please many thanks again

[@the_dark_prince_of_whitby]

hi ive just found your channel ,very interesting and am hooked ,i remember buying these machines at boot sales years ago and then taking them to the tip when they never worked! i never ever found one that worked ,i was curious if you sell working machines or have a repair service on them??

[@video99couk]

Agh! Took them to the tip! I don't take on repairs, I have a backlog of my own machines to service. Though I don't generally sell machines, there's just a possibility that I may have an N1700 to sell at some point in the next few months.

[@WinrichNaujoks]

So where do those replacement ICs come from? Are they new? Do they still get produced, after nearly 50 years?

[@video99couk]

None of the ICs used in these machines were specially made for Philips so they are nearly all generally available. That regulator IC is still easy to source on eBay and elsewhere and not expensive. On later machines of course, there were a lot more Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) which are harder to obtain.

[@Capturing-Memories]

You need an air compressor to blow all that dust off.

[@video99couk]

I have my aerosol cans of air which are pretty good. I will tend to that when I build the video amplifier circuit.

[@Capturing-Memories]

video99.co.uk I used air cans before they are nowhere near a shop small air compressor pressure.

[@telocho]

You know the N1702 gives a test picture when you want to do a channel search, if you press play (or was it record - play) without a cassette.

[@video99couk]

I had read that somewhere. But this is the earlier N1700. I think the N1702 also has an extra digit on the tape counter.

[@MP3930]

fantastic work !

[@davidfarrell7318]

i wish you could reposition your camera so we can see what your doing sometimes your arm or head is right in front of camera apart from that very interesting video thanks.

[@video99couk]

Often I do set up the camera on a rig above, but this video recorder was too big for that.

[@jasonhawkins4528]

Thank you great video looked forward to this one. Were they the first VCR ever made well before Beta and V2000?

[@Rainer67059]

They were not the first video recorders ever made. They were preceded by reel-to-reel recorders thst could only record black and white. But it may have been the first to use a cassette. That VCR format in the video is from the same enterprise that would create the V2000 format. Those VCR recorders were mainly bought by schools and teachers to record Telekolleg. (Source 2:30 - 4:13 out of kzbin.info/www/bejne/gZKXZ6Fqjq6Kh7c )

[@video99couk]

The earlier version called VCR (N1500) was the first video cassette format for home use, in 1972. Umatic was released around the same time but was used for for professional applications.

[@CreeBreej]

Video99, i have the full schematics for the Betamax Sony SL HF100. Would these be of any help you as ill scan to a pdf. This may take a while, as there are ALOT of pages.

[@video99couk]

That would be a lot of work! I'll not ask you to do that, but if I do one day need a particular part, that could be very helpful. I did have a power supply fail on one a few months back but I had a spare from a scrap machine. One day I might like to try to repair that PSU.

[@CreeBreej]

@@video99couk Thankfully, my HP printer has an auto feeder which makes it a lot easier. I was interested to see how well it worked out, so as a test I have scanned the 4 pages of remote control to a pdf. I scanned it in at 200mpx res & the file size is 1.5mb. Im not sure how to share it with you privately though to get your opinion.

[@video99couk]

@@CreeBreej You could use wetransfer.com and send to my email address which you can readily get from my web site. A scan of the PSU might come in handy!

[@jasonhawkins4528]

I also see it's a one reel cassette like an 8 track just wondered how it works

[@video99couk]

See my other video on the VCR format for a full explanation. kzbin.info/www/bejne/rXTCdH97htOAbtk Basically the spools sit one above the other, the tape runs from the bottom to the top.

[@Rainer67059]

That one-reel system was also used by cinemas back in the day.

[@telocho]

@@Rainer67059 It's not one reel, two reels stacked on top, like super8 filmcassettes.

[@mehmethakangokbulut6515]

Bu cihazin model yılı kaç acaba bilen varmi

[@video99couk]

Around 1977 - 1979.

[@ByTurkoglu]

thank you