Very good video Dave. I have the top of the line DMR-EX95 (HDD/DVD/VHS) and it accepts DVD-RAM, -R, -RW, -R DL, +R, +R DL, +RW. Mostly, I use it to digitize old VHS recordings that I transfer to DVD-RAM and from there to the PC to copy the video file. These units have a very good Time Base Corrector, that corrects all the jitter and flagging from old recordings.
They do make IDE drives still, but more importantly you can get little adapter PCBs that allow you to use SATA drives in place of IDE. They also make adapters for you to use CF cards.
The HDD has a firmware section at the top, which is put there by a Firmware update disc. Its easier to clone the drive from a working E85H than to get the firmware download, burn to a disc and perform the 'Blessing' of the drive. Older EH models did not require the firmware, but newer models did. Do not Wipe the drive, without the firmware it will fail to finish loading on start up. If you need to recover recordings from the hard drive and the recorder doesn't work, there is consumer software for extracting the recordings available. This is one of the recorders that has been figured out. Isobuster can read all sectors and recover de-indexed or deleted recordings, but also understands how to read the indexed recordings and presents them in a folder structure. Marvell IDE2SAT adapters will work to connect a SATA to this model, and Icydock makes an m.2 to SATA so you can use an m.2 SSD with an adapter and connect to the IDE interface. Pioneers were the worst at booby traps. EH recorders will not play recordings from a drive if the drive is swapped and a config change or new recording is made.. it updates a checksum in the NVRAM on the motherboard that if it does not match will require unformat (re-formatting) to begin making new recordings.. even if there are existing recordings. You (can) extract the checksum from the current drive and restore it to the swapped drive to get back the ability to play old recordings on a different drive.
I wish I knew this before wiping the HDD of mine to erase clips because I didn't have the remote. Now it's completely worthless and there's no images for the hard drive online to fix it. It's such a niche problem that nobody can help.
I read about DVD recorders from Panasonic (maybe other brands too) that the hard drive parameters are hardcoded into ROM. So when you swap a larger IDE drive in, it'll accept it, but it'll only format it to the size of the original drive. This is to prevent you from doing cheap DIY upgrades, they want to force you to buy their more expensive models instead.
I always remember the early ones having the 'Time Slip' wheel like this one, with only an analogue TV tuner. Certainly I recall the first model being released here in the UK looking very similar, though I think it had some weird idiosyncrasy like no NICAM stereo or something like that, so you had to hook up a separate source to make stereo recordings (much like the early Hi-Fi VHS machines). The later ones were much slimmer with a slanted front, and we had one of those flavours with a 250GB hard drive, Freeview digital tuner and HDMI output. I quite liked the DVD-RAM format and was especially useful for offloading recordings when the hard drive would inevitably start to fill up. Served us well for many years, and then replaced it in 2015 with a Panasonic HD/ Blu-Ray recorder. A friend of mine even had a DVD-RAM camcorder (VDR-M70) that he got whilst in Hong Kong which used 8cm disks!
I have this same model which I bought for 25 dollars used it for a month then got this message please stand by, nothing worked it was dead. I put it away for about a year and brought it back out and found 3 capacitor's were no good on the power supply board which is under the HDD. I always thought that was a bad location putting critical power board under the HDD which gets hot. So I ordered replacement capacitor's replaced the bad ones on the power circuit board spent around an hour putting everything back together plugged in the machine pressed power it did a self diagnosis which was good and then after a few mins. it worked. While it was sitting there in storage I went out and bought one of those ClonerAlliance boxes that let me record shows and movies in HD and store them on an external HDD or SSD but still for some reason love recording on this machine and watching on my smart tv.
Snap Dave. I had exactly the same Panasonic Dvd HDR machine this weekend. I found the harddrive not recording issue also and customer does not want it and purchased another recorder. The harddrive contents are there however.
Most Panasonic hd/dvd -recorders seem to be protected, so it is not easy to preserve drives. With my BCT950 I can connect up to 7 different ('registered') usb-drives. But recordings can only be moved between the internal hd and any such a drive. Also, in many cases the "copy-once" scheme is used if one would like to use a DVD for archiving. For Sony hd/dvd -recorders it was rather simple to change a drive, but you needed a service remote control to do this; the built-in firmware allowed to format the new drive. Any (formatted) drive can be (re-) used after that. If the recordings were from programs without copy-protection an external program can even be used to to assemble the blocks of recordings on a drive to working mp* files. Very handy. Some defects could even be remedied.
Man ,you can fix anything! I would never have the nerve to take apart a remote control....I have a Panasonic DMR-EZ485vk VCR/DVD Recorder combo that I use regularly...Have a 5-pack of DVD RAM discs that I have never used....Going to try them now after watching this video..Thanks!
At the shop we had one guy that was basically all he did besides sales. He would fix about 10 remotes a day at 20 bucks a pop. (This is when a new remote was 80 or 90 bucks)
That was very odd, i think when you made a short recording on that drive, the menu structure was finished correctly and it became readable again. I had one of those hard sectored disks years ago, and i only had one writer that understood the format. After that writer died, i gave the disk to a frend to use. It was such an unusual looking disk, i imagine the cost of the disk and new writer just killed the format. Shame really :-( I loved the idea of a disk in a protective cartridge, but everyone else didnt :-(
also sometimes , a fresh recording is „cached“ in the hdd it will be deleted if not „saved“ , sometimes some units want you togo to the galery and pick the fresh recording and choose the option „save“ to actually make it stay in the libruary
No need to save on these. They should automatically go into the menu which it didn't nor could I see the menu. Then after removing and reinstalling it like magic came back.
I remember Pioneer used to go out of their way to make replacing the HDD in these things unavailable to the average consumer. You needed a special "service disc" and the Pioneer Service Remote Control in order to access a secret menu and reprogram the unit to accept a replacement drive.
Yeah.. I happen to have those. The CSRM procedure was for both the HDD and the DVD burner. Its kind of a pain, you can't even use a Logitech programmable remote to replace the service remote. Logitech removes the cloud saved profiles because they tend to brick the remote. Pioneers had a brief dalliance with TVGuide in the States which caused them to have a HDD firmware section.. but they quickly abandoned that practice. so most Pioneers don't have the Top of drive Firmware problem many of the Panasonic did. Pioneers have fantastic picture capture, but this CSRM make them less desirable now. Panasonics are great.. but second tier. Toshibas have neither problems.. no Top of drive Firmware, no service remote.. and their drives were swappable between recorders and models of recorders.
@@MrSpengler1234 Sadly the PioneerFAQ.info site that used to help people out by making the disc image available, shutdown in early 2020. I was in contact with them until the end. But their hosting fees shot through the roof and there weren't enough volunteer donations to keep it going. I offered to help.. but the owner seemed tired of running the site, and they had a language barrier communicating with many people. The discs were not in an easy to burn format, some were in nrg or Nero Raw disc format and could be hard to burn on modern equipment. Its really hard to judge interests in supporting DVD recorders anymore, let alone the fantastic Pioneer models. That Dave did a video and as "in depth" and informative as this one is a rare sight indeed these days. I hope he keeps his curiosity and wit sharp and keeps repairing them.
Yes Pioneer were bastards. Lost a guys entire family movies he had spent countless hours recording onto his pioneer DVD / HDD machine, all on the hard drive. When he went to transfer the contents to the DVD drive the DVD drive would not finalize the disks. So he bought an identical unit and brought it to me to swap the DVD drive, so he could transfer the contents. While changing the DVD drive I had to unplug the cable as the HDD and DVD were on the same IDE cable. All I did was unplug the cable, swap the DVD drive and plug it back in, and a message came up saying that tampering had been detected and that the HDD needed formatting. At that point I stopped and put the original drive back in thinking that somehow it had detected the swapped DVD drive. Nope same message came up. Everything lost on HDD. For the hell of it I put the disks he had recorded (but not finialized) into my Sony DVD/HDD recorder, and believe it or not I was able to play the disks but not finialize them. So I was able to copy his unfinialized DVDs to the HDD in my Sony deck, and then copy them back to a new DVD and finalize them.
@@12voltvids I often suspected that this practice of non replaceable HDDs was a result of interference by the RIAA. Forcing manufacturers to implement this artificial restriction in a manner similar to what they did with DAT/Minidisc machines and the stupid SCMS protection. However, if not all manufacturers employed this tactic then maybe I was mistaken.
I have the DMR-EZ28 model and i have gotten a lot of use out of it..it does sound like something is going out on it..mabye the fan ?? but otherwise never had any prolbems with it
Could it have been a bit of a scratch contact problem with the ribbon cable , the machine does have a bit of age , as for the remote my DMRE100H model had the exact same issue , had to push quite hard on the remote, solved the problem with a contact pen , interesting video though my friend 👍
I have a Panasonic DMR EH75V. It won't bring up the navigator thumbnails to view what is on the hard drive. Had it in the shop, but the guy couldn't fix it. Said it had a faulty processor. How do I locate the processor component inside the unit to replace it myself?
I HAVE A PANASONIC DMR BWT 800 RECORDER IT STARTED LOOSING PICTURE AND MAKING LOUD SCRATCHY TYPE NOISES WITH THE SCREEN ON THE TV LOOKING LIKE IT IS OUT OF TUNE LOTS OF DOTS AND NOISY . I TUNED IT OFF LEFT IT FOR A WHILE IT THEN STARTED WORKING CORRECTLY FOR A DAY THEN STARTED THE SAME STUFF ALL OVER AGAIN ..NOW ALL I GET IS A BLANK SCREEN WITH THE WORDS NO SIGNAL !!1 I TRIED IT ON ANOTHER TV WITH DIFFERENT HDMI CABLES ETC TO MAKE SURE IT WAS THE PLAYER WITH SAME RESULTS ... NO SIGNAL .. THERE IS NO OBVIOUS BURNT CAPS ON THE BOARD THAT I CAN SEE ... THERE IS ONLY ONE HDMI PORT COMING OUT OF THE RECORDER SO CAN'T TRY A DIFFERENT PORT WHAT DO YOU SUGGEST ! PLEASE
I have a DMR-EH75V (recordable DVD) that burns up (?) lasers very quickly. I barely use it, and the next thing I know it is dead. What is wrecking these ?
u could always use one of those IDE to compact flash/SD card adapters people who want to get old computers up and running and want to play on authentic old hardware but dont want to deal with old failing and slow hard drives use them alot so there is options for replacing old IDE drives.
In my experience, only the Marvell chip based ones actually work. The cheaper JMicro chips do not work... but are like 80-90 percent of the market. The flash/SD cards and Compact IDE are hit or miss.. many of those still left are too slow speed or the chips used to connect them to the IDE bus are too slow. I have got one or two high-end expensive ones to work.. but the marketplace for flash/SD has all but collapsed and the SD to IDE market is mostly gone. Upgrading to plain SATA, or Sata SSD works fine.. m.2 is the most reliable and should last 5 or more years under heavy use.
@@joey_after_midnight to slow for a modern computer yes but were talking 386 486 P1 pcs those are like 33 mb/s or way slower so compact flash and sd cards are more then fast enough for them and way faster then an old HDD from the 80s or 90s
@@mraaron1584 too slow also for some DVD recorders, especially when recording at the top video recording speeds which people didn't use to do.. now we tend to.. Its also a mix between the adapter being slow because its running code on the tiny micro processor handling the IDE bus and the slow speeds of the cheap SD media. SD media was typically made for cameras and they buffered the image before writing to the SD media, so slow speeds didn't matter unless you had a high speed DSLR and could afford high speed SD media. Now most SD media is faster by default, but its too big for older SD adapters which topped out at 32 GB. Many DVD recorders had a minimum size HDD, which if what was put in to replace the HDD wasn't at least as big as that.. would not format and would not boot.. so its a messy gaunlet of prerequisites and conflicting ages of technology. Much simpler.. far cheaper methods exist today. I tried forcing SD and Compact Flash media as a solution for nearly a year before throwing in the towel.. it just wasn't worth my time.
I have a magnavox hdd recorder with 160gb Hitachi 2009 hdd model, I recently found a dish dvr at the thrift store which I took out the 500gb 2010 model same Hitachi hdd as in the Magnavox is it possible to swap out
Desr Sir, I am having the Panasonic DVD recorder DMR ES 10, it plays the DVD with video but no sound. CD also is without sound. Please share your idea to rectify this problem. Thank you for reading.
I have a strange powermac g4 from around 2000 or 2001 i cant remember and it actually has a dvd ram drive tray it can take dvd ram discs nativly and then for regular cds youd just put them in the gap in the tray its so weird.
Some do yes, the Panasonic for example uses a standard computer type drive as does the Sony and Pioneer. My Toshiba recorders use a custom DVD burner. Oh the light on also used a standard IDE type drive most have custom firmware noted so computer drives won't work but they are as standard IDE drive and if you take them out of the DVD burner most computers will recognize them but the standalone box will not recognize a computer drive because it does not have a custom firmware but the drive's himself are generally the same.
when swapping a harddrive in a hdd recorder , sometimes they use a odd hdd format(software) , so when you swap a blank new hdd into it it may not work theres a solution tho , if u have the original hdd , take it put it into your pc and run via command line the „mirror hdd“ command and copy the original onto a new hdd , and it should make a new hdd working in the unit
i remember watching fbi episode they were trying to retrieve information from hardrive,they said data isn't erased just written over,so old data still there.
Unfortunately its not the Size that matters, but the Index table that limits recordings. This model only had space for 999 recordings and then stopped. The problem with the disappearing new recording kind of indicates the index is corrupt. Continual use leads to the index being written and re-written, and "fixed".. which causes people to not wait for it to finish and they interrupt the process mid-stream.. and then the index is truncated.. when its next fixed all sorts of non-linear things can happen to valid recordings. At that time its best to extract all the recordings to your PC, delete everything and unformat the drive.
@@joey_after_midnight oh wow, I would've never guessed! Fascinating stuff from a software development standpoint, 1,000 entries seems pretty limiting now days 😅
@@sydneybiscuit They are fantastic (all in one) Video to DVD compatible MPEG2 converters. You don't have to worry about time base converters, video capture dongles, pci cards or unstable PC operating systems.. all of that was pretty much built in.. especially the Toshibas.. but the DVD burners tend to not work with modern DVD media or their laser or Power supplies burn out. You can mostly fix the Power supplies.. but the lasers are harder to find.. if at all. Until three years ago when Isobuster gained the ability to understand many different brands index storage patterns, it wasn't possible to extract or offload recordings direct to PC or Mac machines.. now it is.. (queue.. where were you Ten Years ago..?)
yes Dave I have one DMRE 20 please do a service on 1, please when I load my ram is taking it in them makes a noise them spits it out I am sure I could fit it if you could do a service my is silver
A lot of these DVD recorders sourced Maxtor Hard drives, which had a habit of failing platter media. They would arrive with bad or failing sectors that only got worse over time. The seek time on these failing sectors would go up over time.. they simply wouldn't lock out the sectors like they were suppose to on a PC. So they would dutifully write critical data to bad sectors eventually. Although "most" of the drive was OK.. those failed areas would eventually lead to the recorder acting weird and flat out failing to load one time, but on a complete power plug pull and try again.. barely start up. Maxtor was trying to rely more on overlays to supplement BIOSes in PCs that didn't support large drives.. my wild guess is they tried offloading sector lock outs to factory or overlays that ran on a PC.. and ended up crippling their drives when used in Appliances. Best practice is if its a Maxtor, clone it very fast to a known good (modern) hard drive and if it completes count yourself lucky and replace it.
@@12voltvids You are indeed fortunate. I've seen literally 100 or more Maxtor drives fail with dying sectors on their platters and never locking them out. I have put them in PC's and deliberately relocated and locked out bad sectors and reused them.. but its like rolling a rock up hill, they always die. Not using them is probably what leads to longevity. they also run hot, with the heat of a thousand burning suns in those cases. For their day I believe they were 133 Mb/s capable and thought a real bargain.. but they have a dark side. Maxtor was used in Tivos and Dells it seemed they were everywhere back then.. and then the company got acquired. I have not experienced "Sticktion" but I think it was coined for shelved Maxtor drives that aren't used for a long time.. something in the bearings seizes up over long periods of time.. but I've never kept one around long enough to see for myself.
I would have put that drive in a pc and tried reading the drive with linux if there was still something on it it could read the filesystem even the types that windows can't. But this magic works too I guess :D
The SOC chip does not store the video in an easy to read PC format. There are no partitions and no recognizable file system under a partition table. Its mostly raw data bits and bytes indexed by a custom SOC table stored after the TV Guide system. There is PC/Mac software that can read the SOC table and extract recordings by copying to a PC or Mac file system that reformats the result in an easy to read format, but it does not mount the HDD like a normal Linux or Windows/Mac procedure. You have to be very careful not to allow Linux or Windows to "write" to the drive, this destroys the SOC table and makes the drive unreadable when returned to recorder.. leading to a perplexing (no recordings found, must uformat to create new recordings.. Don't do it! it will not save old recordings.. salvage by extracting the recordings using something like Isobuster) If you've already destroyed the drive.. then a Firmware Update.. or cloned drive from an identical machine is the only course of action.
@@joey_after_midnight that is what the sleuth kit is for ... also what I read many of these machines are in fact formated with ext filesystem so there is no wonder why your Windows PC would not recognize it. Also it makes sense to use ext to not have licensing cost and not have to reinvent the wheel.
@UCFcbrxJhQMZHejDDH6NAd0w ext was introduced April 1992, ext2 was introduced in January 1993, ext3 November 2001, ext4 is stable since 21 October 2008. Also there is a ton of other filesystems besides ext2/3/4, fat, ntfs... GPFS aka IBM Spectrum Scale 1998, FFS/UFS ... even if it's pHILE+ formated ...
When you repair this stuff for a living, which I did from 1984 through to 2003 you learn alot. I also took constant courses over the years. I didn't just come by this naturally. I took constant courses put on by the manufacturer through the years. Taught by engineers and trainers form Sony, Panasonic, RCA. I should dig up all my certification diplomas from the courses i took and plaster the shop walls with them. I didn't actually take electronics at college, that was television production. When that career choice didn't pan out due to me finding myself on a blacklist as I stepped on an engineer's toes picking his brain on the engineering side of things. I always wanted to take engineering but i took the wrong math course in high school and didn't feel like spending more time with advanced calculus and algebra to get in. I'm good at math but didn't enjoy it. Anyway my fall back was electronics. I had already worked at a repair shop when in high school and had built some really advanced projects. Amplifiers and a tv camera from scratch from a set of plans. My tv production training came in handy as I started a production business and that did well over the years. Now it is just these videos i use my production skills for. But to do this type of work you need to have a good memory and understand how things work.
@@12voltvids More here than you needed to share. I'm only a hobbyist and have done some darned good work in my time, but when I see people with so much talent in so many areas I just don't have words except "mind blown"! I mean you tackle things with such a good rate of success that most others would just throw in the garbage-mostly due to the entire world being "disposable". Sad to see electronics go that direction because we all know stuff could very well be made to last MUCH longer than they do. Glad your doing this as I learn a lot from watching your videos. I'm just in awe-thank you! Oh and if you haven't shared (or did and I missed it) I'd love to hear about that "blacklisted for stepping on toes" story sometime! :)
@@jeffadams5510 Anyone that is or has worked in TV, Radio or Film knows what the blacklist is. It's a tight knit community and if you piss someone off, they will tell everyone and nobody will hire you. In my case. when I was doing my internship (interns are generally not paid, it is basically volunteer work where you work at a tv or radio station to gain experience while going to school) I was offered a job by a local community station. Remember this was 1982 and wages were pretty low back then. Monimum wage was 3.10 an hour and I was offered a job paying me 5.00 an hour to run master control at the local station. Master control is the "DJ" of the TV station. I was running the show. I was in charge of on air operations. My job was to cue up all the tapes for the evening broadcast, line up all the public service announcements, and direct a live local community events news type show every night. I was on the air every day from 5PM till 11PM. Every day I would start my shift at 3 and spend the first 2 hours every day getting the tapes ready to air, getting the station log ready, loading up the 16mm film projector for public service announcements to run that evening between shows. Getting all the carts ready for voice over spots that would run over the closing credits for the programs ect. Production work was still being done in the studio typically right up to almost go live on the air time for me, so I was basically getting ready so as soon as the shoots or editing was done for the day and the day staff left (they shut down at 4) I could get on the equipment and start getting ready to go on the air. Before going on air I would clean the heads of all VTRs and the art machine. Clean the audio logger. this was an old Sony reel to reel machine that recorded the sound track of everything that went on the air. We had to keep the tape for 30 days. I would grab the oldest tape, erase it and thread it up and make a test recording to make sure the logging machine was functional. I would then start cueing up all my tapes for the evening and making sure all the tapes played properly on the 1" or 3/4" VTRs. Some tapes were on 1" Ampex machines which was located in the production truck out back, and other tapes on 3/4" Umatic which was in the control room. Typically multi camera productions, amateur sports or multi camera studio programs were on 1" tape and single camera location productions were on 3/4". Basically about 90% of the evenings programming was on 3/4". The 1" was typically hockey games or football games that they took the truck out and did multi camera. I had a live show every night, where the guy that ran the funeral home up the street would anchor. A local community interest news magazine type show. We did it live, I would frame and lock off the camera of the host, and then roll the tapes from the control room, and cue the host when the segment was ending and he was live again. Some nights we got a floor director to come in, but since it was in the dinner hour, usually it was just the 2 of us. It was a blast as we would ham it up, I would walk out on set and hand him notes like we screwed up, but we had it all scripted. Was a blast. I knew the boss would be watching, as would the station owner. They always watched every night, but we kept it funny. The pretending to be on the phone with the wife actually had people believing he was on the phone with his wife. (He was on the phone with me, giving him a count down to go back on the air but a few times I would throw him on air several seconds soon, and catch him off guard. He would usually say something like. Fun and games, and we had pretty good ratings as we would do live phone in shows where viewers would call in and ask for re-runs of stories ect. Anyway that isn't what got be shit canned. The control room had 2 Panasonic 3/4" VTRs (NV9800 and NV9850), an Athena 16mm film projector into an RCA TK27 telecine camrera, vincount switcher, audio board, rusco cue master turntable and a cart machine for voice over. In the production truck 2 Ampex 1" over reel VTRs 3 CEI production cameras, switcher audio booth ect. The day that changed my career path I arrived at work. Walked into the control room, and there was only 1 3/4" VTR. The other one the engineer had in his shop. I strolled down the call to see "Leo" the engineer. Leo and I never really got along. I think he saw me as a threat. I would annoy him by watching him work on cameras ect and take everything in. The other engineer Doug, was younger and friendly, and would share his knowledge with me. Teach me what he knew, but Leo, was kind of an ass. If I asked him what was wrong with something he would say "it's broken" where if I asked Doug or Wayne (The other jr engineer) I would get a straight answer. Drum servo not locking, or capstan belt worn. Anyway I went to Leo's office to find out the status of this VTR as I needed it to go to air. His response was what I expected. Its broken, no not fixing it today, deal with it. In other words I am going to air with only 1 VTR, which means cueing all the tapes up to 5 seconds, and t hen having a big stack of tapes ready to go so I can cut to a film PSA and while the film is playing, change tapes, cue the new tape and then cut over to the next program. Then at the end of the evening rewind all the tapes and put them away. No backup machine ready to go in case something happens, and you know that something is going to break on air. Made it through the live show, at 6, so far so good. I had a 1 hour 1" tape to roll from the truck. This was always fun because I had to roll the tape and then run to the control room to cut in. So I would cue it 30 seconds back and then watch the PSA that was rolling. They were 30 seconds, so when a PSA started I would roll tape, and run back to control room, and cut over when the PSA ended. Football game ended, and I was back to a local politics show on 3/4". Cut over no problem, went to truck to rewind tape and put away. While rewinding I am monitoring the on air signal on a TV in the truck, and it didn't sound right. Mayor was talking and he sounded like a chipmonk! Looked at the screen tracking lines and tape running fast. SHIT! stopped the rewind, ran to control room, dam near fell on the stairs. Turned on slide projector with technical difficulties slide already loaded. (That was always left ready to go) Cut to technical difficulty slide and dropped a needle on a focus record. powered off the 3/4' machine that now had about 20 feet of tape all wound around the capstan. The phone was already ringing. It was the boss wondering why I was off air. I told him the VTR ate the tape. He said just use the other one. My response was what other one, it is in Leo's shop under locked up.(I tried to call Leo, but he wasn't home, and this was long before cell phones) Boss said, "can you try and carefully remove the tape and try another one and see if it works" so I did what I was asked to do. Unwound the tape from a machine that had no top on it (because it was cleaned multiple times a day, they were run with no cover fastened on, just set on top). I took the tape out, cleaned the machine, and back on the air. It was a bad tape. Someone had spilled something sticky (coffee with tons of sugar) on it. That was the boss, he was the only one that dared go into a studio or control room with food or drink. I felt pretty good, I saved t he day, back on the air finished my shift. Next day I showed up, and the old mad (owner) called me into his office and asked me to have a seat. This is never good when the big boss askes you to have a seat. "It has come to my attention that you removed a jammed tape last night from the VTR. What do you have to say about that?" I explained that "Ron" had called and told me to try and remove it and clean the machine and see if it would fix it so I did. I then got the lecture that they have engineers for that and I as an operator an not an engineer, and that he couldn't over look it, and also that he had asked "Ron" if he knew anything about it and he said no. Bastard covered his own ass and threw me under the bus. Old "Stan" said that "Leo" threatened to quit if I wasn't removed. So I was let go 2 weeks later, as soon as they found another grad, and had me train him how to run the ship. Of course they didn't tell me they were firing me, they said I was going to be just moving to another roll. (I guess so I wouldn't walk and leave them with nobody to run things) I applied at all the local TV stations, and only heard back from one. They said you are black listed, don't bother applying again, and then sent me a copy of the letter the station I had worked for sent them. I had used them as a reference and the engineer stuck a knife in my back. Now here is the kicker to this entire drama. "Leo" the engineer, a brilliant tech was not too happy, and he retired within a month. He just took me, and my boss down with him. My boss was fired shortly after me, and he also found his name on a do not hire list. Good old Leo inherited his family's farm, back east, and went to help with the farm, and open his own TV repair shop. He died about a dozen years ago. So there you have it, I short career in broadcasting. 2 years as a volunteer and 6 months on staff.One of my friends that worked there the same time as me stayed there for about 20 years or so but ultimately they all lost their jobs when the business was sold to a big company back east (eastllink) and they cleaned house and turfed everyone. There is a saying in broadcast, you are hired to be fired. I did independent production work for over 20 years running my own production business with a business partner, but he passed away in 2006 so I basically pulled the plug on production work and just do archiving work now, and produce youtube videos. Remember, you asked!
@@12voltvids Yes, YES i did-lol!! Man what a cool story. Happy to see it didn't hold you back and went on to do something in the field that paved your way! Hat's off to you-thanks again for sharing!!! :)
Also I have a TiVo premiere that died and won't load and replacing the hard drive would wipe out the OS so a hard drive failure on a DVR is catastrophic so unless that old drive still works then it's only good as a DVD recorder or else it's good for parts
@@jcurnutte2007 winmfs is still your friend, the imgs are still available from several semi-official sites for just about everything. The thing is occasionally Tivo/Rovi (whatever company they are now) occasionally updates their on HDD database and a major firmware update goes out over the internet.. so you have to keep making regular backups to catch the changes. I hold on to the Tivo2 models and have one TivoHD.. but there are true fanatics out there tracking all the models. -- I feel suddenly very sad admitting that.. old guy that won't let go his old toys.
@@walle637 Get used to it. Gone are the days that ad blockers work to stop the popup ads. Now they break the video and throw in an ad. Google makes more money and the content producer (me) makes more money. You don't think youtube runs itself right. Lots of money for servers, electricity to run servers, and cool them, and the staff have to be paid for. The vast majority comes from advertising. I hear that advertising is coming to streaming platforms like netflix and amazon too.
@@12voltvids This is the only channel where I don’t mind having ads since I know it goes to good use. besides if i buy youtube premium that means i’m paying $17/month (!!!!) to google instead of supporting content creators so hell no to that
Very good video Dave. I have the top of the line DMR-EX95 (HDD/DVD/VHS) and it accepts DVD-RAM, -R, -RW, -R DL, +R, +R DL, +RW. Mostly, I use it to digitize old VHS recordings that I transfer to DVD-RAM and from there to the PC to copy the video file. These units have a very good Time Base Corrector, that corrects all the jitter and flagging from old recordings.
They do make IDE drives still, but more importantly you can get little adapter PCBs that allow you to use SATA drives in place of IDE. They also make adapters for you to use CF cards.
The HDD has a firmware section at the top, which is put there by a Firmware update disc. Its easier to clone the drive from a working E85H than to get the firmware download, burn to a disc and perform the 'Blessing' of the drive. Older EH models did not require the firmware, but newer models did. Do not Wipe the drive, without the firmware it will fail to finish loading on start up. If you need to recover recordings from the hard drive and the recorder doesn't work, there is consumer software for extracting the recordings available. This is one of the recorders that has been figured out. Isobuster can read all sectors and recover de-indexed or deleted recordings, but also understands how to read the indexed recordings and presents them in a folder structure. Marvell IDE2SAT adapters will work to connect a SATA to this model, and Icydock makes an m.2 to SATA so you can use an m.2 SSD with an adapter and connect to the IDE interface. Pioneers were the worst at booby traps. EH recorders will not play recordings from a drive if the drive is swapped and a config change or new recording is made.. it updates a checksum in the NVRAM on the motherboard that if it does not match will require unformat (re-formatting) to begin making new recordings.. even if there are existing recordings. You (can) extract the checksum from the current drive and restore it to the swapped drive to get back the ability to play old recordings on a different drive.
Right on, this is really good information to have
@SomeOther Guy What file format will the recovered files have? I assume DVD-compatible MPEG2?
I wish I knew this before wiping the HDD of mine to erase clips because I didn't have the remote. Now it's completely worthless and there's no images for the hard drive online to fix it. It's such a niche problem that nobody can help.
I read about DVD recorders from Panasonic (maybe other brands too) that the hard drive parameters are hardcoded into ROM. So when you swap a larger IDE drive in, it'll accept it, but it'll only format it to the size of the original drive. This is to prevent you from doing cheap DIY upgrades, they want to force you to buy their more expensive models instead.
I always remember the early ones having the 'Time Slip' wheel like this one, with only an analogue TV tuner. Certainly I recall the first model being released here in the UK looking very similar, though I think it had some weird idiosyncrasy like no NICAM stereo or something like that, so you had to hook up a separate source to make stereo recordings (much like the early Hi-Fi VHS machines).
The later ones were much slimmer with a slanted front, and we had one of those flavours with a 250GB hard drive, Freeview digital tuner and HDMI output. I quite liked the DVD-RAM format and was especially useful for offloading recordings when the hard drive would inevitably start to fill up. Served us well for many years, and then replaced it in 2015 with a Panasonic HD/ Blu-Ray recorder. A friend of mine even had a DVD-RAM camcorder (VDR-M70) that he got whilst in Hong Kong which used 8cm disks!
I have this same model which I bought for 25 dollars used it for a month then got this message please stand by, nothing worked it was dead. I put it away for about a year and brought it back out and found 3 capacitor's were no good on the power supply board which is under the HDD. I always thought that was a bad location putting critical power board under the HDD which gets hot. So I ordered replacement capacitor's replaced the bad ones on the power circuit board spent around an hour putting everything back together plugged in the machine pressed power it did a self diagnosis which was good and then after a few mins. it worked. While it was sitting there in storage I went out and bought one of those ClonerAlliance boxes that let me record shows and movies in HD and store them on an external HDD or SSD but still for some reason love recording on this machine and watching on my smart tv.
Logic problems are by far the most interesting videos
It was a weird one.
Snap Dave. I had exactly the same Panasonic Dvd HDR machine this weekend. I found the harddrive not recording issue also and customer does not want it and purchased another recorder. The harddrive contents are there however.
Most Panasonic hd/dvd -recorders seem to be protected, so it is not easy to preserve drives.
With my BCT950 I can connect up to 7 different ('registered') usb-drives. But recordings
can only be moved between the internal hd and any such a drive. Also, in many cases the
"copy-once" scheme is used if one would like to use a DVD for archiving.
For Sony hd/dvd -recorders it was rather simple to change a drive, but you needed a service remote
control to do this; the built-in firmware allowed to format the new drive. Any (formatted) drive can
be (re-) used after that. If the recordings were from programs without copy-protection an external program
can even be used to to assemble the blocks of recordings on a drive to working mp* files. Very handy.
Some defects could even be remedied.
For some later DVRs at least, while the HDD is still protected/'registered', you can play & copy videos over the network using the DLNA feature.
Hi Dave, oh what fun your having ! 😆. Is it possible that the hard drive is partitioning the videos that you recorded on it ? Good job !
Man ,you can fix anything! I would never have the nerve to take apart a remote control....I have a Panasonic DMR-EZ485vk VCR/DVD Recorder combo that I use regularly...Have a 5-pack of DVD RAM discs that I have never used....Going to try them now after watching this video..Thanks!
At the shop we had one guy that was basically all he did besides sales. He would fix about 10 remotes a day at 20 bucks a pop. (This is when a new remote was 80 or 90 bucks)
That was very odd, i think when you made a short recording on that drive, the menu structure was finished correctly and it became readable again.
I had one of those hard sectored disks years ago, and i only had one writer that understood the format.
After that writer died, i gave the disk to a frend to use.
It was such an unusual looking disk, i imagine the cost of the disk and new writer just killed the format.
Shame really :-(
I loved the idea of a disk in a protective cartridge, but everyone else didnt :-(
My Dad had the Panasonic DMR-E85H DVD Video Recorder HDD & DVD Machine Player Dron the shop 🏪 and the eBay UK Online in 2005 and 2021.
There is adapters allowing a newer SATA type hard drive to work on an older parallel IDE interface.
Sounds like the system went into recovery mode, and managed to restore normal operation. Either that, or you just ventured into *The Twilight Zone*
OK, Thank you very much.
Thank you for your response slso.
I have loads of IDE drives.. I kept them "just in case" :) all tested and noted size and speed of each one.
Very interesting. Thanks for this. Question: What are the limitations of DVD RAM?
The channel Tech Connections did a video about it. DVD RAM emulated the way a hard drive works, but using an optical disc instead of a hard disk.
also sometimes , a fresh recording is „cached“ in the hdd it will be deleted if not „saved“ , sometimes some units want you togo to the galery and pick the fresh recording and choose the option „save“ to actually make it stay in the libruary
No need to save on these. They should automatically go into the menu which it didn't nor could I see the menu. Then after removing and reinstalling it like magic came back.
Nice machine. Thanks for showing all the features!
I remember Pioneer used to go out of their way to make replacing the HDD in these things unavailable to the average consumer. You needed a special "service disc" and the Pioneer Service Remote Control in order to access a secret menu and reprogram the unit to accept a replacement drive.
Yeah.. I happen to have those. The CSRM procedure was for both the HDD and the DVD burner. Its kind of a pain, you can't even use a Logitech programmable remote to replace the service remote. Logitech removes the cloud saved profiles because they tend to brick the remote. Pioneers had a brief dalliance with TVGuide in the States which caused them to have a HDD firmware section.. but they quickly abandoned that practice. so most Pioneers don't have the Top of drive Firmware problem many of the Panasonic did. Pioneers have fantastic picture capture, but this CSRM make them less desirable now. Panasonics are great.. but second tier. Toshibas have neither problems.. no Top of drive Firmware, no service remote.. and their drives were swappable between recorders and models of recorders.
@@joey_after_midnight Lucky sod! :D The service disc was always something that eluded me and ultimately resigned my recorder to the box in the attic.
@@MrSpengler1234 Sadly the PioneerFAQ.info site that used to help people out by making the disc image available, shutdown in early 2020. I was in contact with them until the end. But their hosting fees shot through the roof and there weren't enough volunteer donations to keep it going. I offered to help.. but the owner seemed tired of running the site, and they had a language barrier communicating with many people. The discs were not in an easy to burn format, some were in nrg or Nero Raw disc format and could be hard to burn on modern equipment. Its really hard to judge interests in supporting DVD recorders anymore, let alone the fantastic Pioneer models. That Dave did a video and as "in depth" and informative as this one is a rare sight indeed these days. I hope he keeps his curiosity and wit sharp and keeps repairing them.
Yes Pioneer were bastards. Lost a guys entire family movies he had spent countless hours recording onto his pioneer DVD / HDD machine, all on the hard drive.
When he went to transfer the contents to the DVD drive the DVD drive would not finalize the disks. So he bought an identical unit and brought it to me to swap the DVD drive, so he could transfer the contents. While changing the DVD drive I had to unplug the cable as the HDD and DVD were on the same IDE cable.
All I did was unplug the cable, swap the DVD drive and plug it back in, and a message came up saying that tampering had been detected and that the HDD needed formatting. At that point I stopped and put the original drive back in thinking that somehow it had detected the swapped DVD drive. Nope same message came up. Everything lost on HDD. For the hell of it I put the disks he had recorded (but not finialized) into my Sony DVD/HDD recorder, and believe it or not I was able to play the disks but not finialize them. So I was able to copy his unfinialized DVDs to the HDD in my Sony deck, and then copy them back to a new DVD and finalize them.
@@12voltvids I often suspected that this practice of non replaceable HDDs was a result of interference by the RIAA. Forcing manufacturers to implement this artificial restriction in a manner similar to what they did with DAT/Minidisc machines and the stupid SCMS protection. However, if not all manufacturers employed this tactic then maybe I was mistaken.
I have the DMR-EZ28 model and i have gotten a lot of use out of it..it does sound like something is going out on it..mabye the fan ?? but otherwise never had any prolbems with it
Could it have been a bit of a scratch contact problem with the ribbon cable , the machine does have a bit of age , as for the remote my DMRE100H model had the exact same issue , had to push quite hard on the remote, solved the problem with a contact pen , interesting video though my friend 👍
I have a Panasonic DMR EH75V. It won't bring up the navigator thumbnails to view what is on the hard drive. Had it in the shop, but the guy couldn't fix it. Said it had a faulty processor. How do I locate the processor component inside the unit to replace it myself?
You don't. It's the digital board and the part is no longer available. You can't even get the content off the HDD as it is encrypted.
I HAVE A PANASONIC DMR BWT 800 RECORDER IT STARTED LOOSING PICTURE AND MAKING LOUD SCRATCHY TYPE NOISES WITH THE SCREEN ON THE TV LOOKING LIKE IT IS OUT OF TUNE LOTS OF DOTS AND NOISY . I TUNED IT OFF LEFT IT FOR A WHILE IT THEN STARTED WORKING CORRECTLY FOR A DAY THEN STARTED THE SAME STUFF ALL OVER AGAIN ..NOW ALL I GET IS A BLANK SCREEN WITH THE WORDS NO SIGNAL !!1 I TRIED IT ON ANOTHER TV WITH DIFFERENT HDMI CABLES ETC TO MAKE SURE IT WAS THE PLAYER WITH SAME RESULTS ... NO SIGNAL .. THERE IS NO OBVIOUS BURNT CAPS ON THE BOARD THAT I CAN SEE ... THERE IS ONLY ONE HDMI PORT COMING OUT OF THE RECORDER SO CAN'T TRY A DIFFERENT PORT WHAT DO YOU SUGGEST ! PLEASE
I have a DMR-EH75V (recordable DVD) that burns up (?) lasers very quickly. I barely use it, and the next thing I know it is dead. What is wrecking these ?
Couldn't tell you. My dmr-e20 is 20 years old and works perfectly.
u could always use one of those IDE to compact flash/SD card adapters people who want to get old computers up and running and want to play on authentic old hardware but dont want to deal with old failing and slow hard drives use them alot so there is options for replacing old IDE drives.
In my experience, only the Marvell chip based ones actually work. The cheaper JMicro chips do not work... but are like 80-90 percent of the market. The flash/SD cards and Compact IDE are hit or miss.. many of those still left are too slow speed or the chips used to connect them to the IDE bus are too slow. I have got one or two high-end expensive ones to work.. but the marketplace for flash/SD has all but collapsed and the SD to IDE market is mostly gone. Upgrading to plain SATA, or Sata SSD works fine.. m.2 is the most reliable and should last 5 or more years under heavy use.
@@joey_after_midnight to slow for a modern computer yes but were talking 386 486 P1 pcs those are like 33 mb/s or way slower so compact flash and sd cards are more then fast enough for them and way faster then an old HDD from the 80s or 90s
@@mraaron1584 too slow also for some DVD recorders, especially when recording at the top video recording speeds which people didn't use to do.. now we tend to.. Its also a mix between the adapter being slow because its running code on the tiny micro processor handling the IDE bus and the slow speeds of the cheap SD media. SD media was typically made for cameras and they buffered the image before writing to the SD media, so slow speeds didn't matter unless you had a high speed DSLR and could afford high speed SD media. Now most SD media is faster by default, but its too big for older SD adapters which topped out at 32 GB. Many DVD recorders had a minimum size HDD, which if what was put in to replace the HDD wasn't at least as big as that.. would not format and would not boot.. so its a messy gaunlet of prerequisites and conflicting ages of technology. Much simpler.. far cheaper methods exist today. I tried forcing SD and Compact Flash media as a solution for nearly a year before throwing in the towel.. it just wasn't worth my time.
I have a magnavox hdd recorder with 160gb Hitachi 2009 hdd model, I recently found a dish dvr at the thrift store which I took out the 500gb 2010 model same Hitachi hdd as in the Magnavox is it possible to swap out
Most likely not because the DVR will have special firmware on it.
I have a problem with the Sony CCD-TRV238E camera. Could you help me fix it
Not that it matters, but those drives (exact same model) can be had for under $20us on FleaBay.
A brand new SSD from Kingston on Amazon costs about the same.
Good luck sir 🎉
Desr Sir, I am having the Panasonic DVD recorder DMR ES 10, it plays the DVD with video but no sound. CD also is without sound.
Please share your idea to rectify this problem.
Thank you for reading.
clean audio heads
I have a strange powermac g4 from around 2000 or 2001 i cant remember and it actually has a dvd ram drive tray it can take dvd ram discs nativly and then for regular cds youd just put them in the gap in the tray its so weird.
Do DVD Recorders use similar DVD drive technology as computer DVD drivers.
Some do yes, the Panasonic for example uses a standard computer type drive as does the Sony and Pioneer. My Toshiba recorders use a custom DVD burner. Oh the light on also used a standard IDE type drive most have custom firmware noted so computer drives won't work but they are as standard IDE drive and if you take them out of the DVD burner most computers will recognize them but the standalone box will not recognize a computer drive because it does not have a custom firmware but the drive's himself are generally the same.
Excellent! Thank you.
when swapping a harddrive in a hdd recorder , sometimes they use a odd hdd format(software) , so when you swap a blank new hdd into it it may not work
theres a solution tho , if u have the original hdd , take it put it into your pc and run via command line the „mirror hdd“ command and copy the original onto a new hdd , and it should make a new hdd working in the unit
I'm starting to think that Clonezilla Live and its "device to device" mode could handle that.
I have a couple of ide hard drives. I have a old ibm hard drive from 98 that still worked
i remember watching fbi episode they were trying to retrieve information from hardrive,they said data isn't erased just written over,so old data still there.
That's how all hard drives and flash memory works. You delete data and just the header is nuked. The data remains until it is overwritten.
There are some SATA to IDE adapters that could work in a device like this - a 1tb ssd would be a substantial upgrade
Unfortunately its not the Size that matters, but the Index table that limits recordings. This model only had space for 999 recordings and then stopped. The problem with the disappearing new recording kind of indicates the index is corrupt. Continual use leads to the index being written and re-written, and "fixed".. which causes people to not wait for it to finish and they interrupt the process mid-stream.. and then the index is truncated.. when its next fixed all sorts of non-linear things can happen to valid recordings. At that time its best to extract all the recordings to your PC, delete everything and unformat the drive.
@@joey_after_midnight oh wow, I would've never guessed! Fascinating stuff from a software development standpoint, 1,000 entries seems pretty limiting now days 😅
@@sydneybiscuit They are fantastic (all in one) Video to DVD compatible MPEG2 converters. You don't have to worry about time base converters, video capture dongles, pci cards or unstable PC operating systems.. all of that was pretty much built in.. especially the Toshibas.. but the DVD burners tend to not work with modern DVD media or their laser or Power supplies burn out. You can mostly fix the Power supplies.. but the lasers are harder to find.. if at all. Until three years ago when Isobuster gained the ability to understand many different brands index storage patterns, it wasn't possible to extract or offload recordings direct to PC or Mac machines.. now it is.. (queue.. where were you Ten Years ago..?)
Very strange!
Panasonic DVD Recorder on a Panasonic Viera TV viewed by me on a 4K Panasonic Viera TV = Panaception
yes Dave I have one DMRE 20 please do a service on 1, please when I load my ram is taking it in them makes a noise them spits it out I am sure I could fit it if you could do a service my is silver
I will dig it out and tear it down. One of them is still connected to my system, I use it as a DVD and CD player.
@@12voltvids that would be smashing Dave they are well built DMRE 20
I may as well be early. Lemme grab a beer first.
Hi forget my last post what I was saying was for the DVD player/recorder
RUclips does have an option to delete comments.
Time to take apart the remote
Hi your recording may not be stored as you did not finalise the disc this happened to me
Dvd-ram is not finalized.
I do know that you are a Experienced Eng. You could power up the hard drive Externally and listen for unusual sound.
Sounds normal
A lot of these DVD recorders sourced Maxtor Hard drives, which had a habit of failing platter media. They would arrive with bad or failing sectors that only got worse over time. The seek time on these failing sectors would go up over time.. they simply wouldn't lock out the sectors like they were suppose to on a PC. So they would dutifully write critical data to bad sectors eventually. Although "most" of the drive was OK.. those failed areas would eventually lead to the recorder acting weird and flat out failing to load one time, but on a complete power plug pull and try again.. barely start up. Maxtor was trying to rely more on overlays to supplement BIOSes in PCs that didn't support large drives.. my wild guess is they tried offloading sector lock outs to factory or overlays that ran on a PC.. and ended up crippling their drives when used in Appliances. Best practice is if its a Maxtor, clone it very fast to a known good (modern) hard drive and if it completes count yourself lucky and replace it.
@@joey_after_midnight I believe my Panasonic has a Maxtor drive but it is still good. I rarely use it these days.
@@12voltvids You are indeed fortunate. I've seen literally 100 or more Maxtor drives fail with dying sectors on their platters and never locking them out. I have put them in PC's and deliberately relocated and locked out bad sectors and reused them.. but its like rolling a rock up hill, they always die. Not using them is probably what leads to longevity. they also run hot, with the heat of a thousand burning suns in those cases. For their day I believe they were 133 Mb/s capable and thought a real bargain.. but they have a dark side. Maxtor was used in Tivos and Dells it seemed they were everywhere back then.. and then the company got acquired. I have not experienced "Sticktion" but I think it was coined for shelved Maxtor drives that aren't used for a long time.. something in the bearings seizes up over long periods of time.. but I've never kept one around long enough to see for myself.
I would have put that drive in a pc and tried reading the drive with linux if there was still something on it it could read the filesystem even the types that windows can't.
But this magic works too I guess :D
The SOC chip does not store the video in an easy to read PC format. There are no partitions and no recognizable file system under a partition table. Its mostly raw data bits and bytes indexed by a custom SOC table stored after the TV Guide system. There is PC/Mac software that can read the SOC table and extract recordings by copying to a PC or Mac file system that reformats the result in an easy to read format, but it does not mount the HDD like a normal Linux or Windows/Mac procedure. You have to be very careful not to allow Linux or Windows to "write" to the drive, this destroys the SOC table and makes the drive unreadable when returned to recorder.. leading to a perplexing (no recordings found, must uformat to create new recordings.. Don't do it! it will not save old recordings.. salvage by extracting the recordings using something like Isobuster) If you've already destroyed the drive.. then a Firmware Update.. or cloned drive from an identical machine is the only course of action.
@@joey_after_midnight that is what the sleuth kit is for ... also what I read many of these machines are in fact formated with ext filesystem so there is no wonder why your Windows PC would not recognize it. Also it makes sense to use ext to not have licensing cost and not have to reinvent the wheel.
@UCFcbrxJhQMZHejDDH6NAd0w ext was introduced April 1992, ext2 was introduced in January 1993, ext3 November 2001, ext4 is stable since 21 October 2008. Also there is a ton of other filesystems besides ext2/3/4, fat, ntfs...
GPFS aka IBM Spectrum Scale 1998, FFS/UFS ... even if it's pHILE+ formated ...
Cool...
touched by the hands of god :o)
great machine I have the same machine
I have the eh50. Better in every way.
Blows my mind how you know all this stuff. Does your brain hurt????-lol
When you repair this stuff for a living, which I did from 1984 through to 2003 you learn alot. I also took constant courses over the years. I didn't just come by this naturally. I took constant courses put on by the manufacturer through the years. Taught by engineers and trainers form Sony, Panasonic, RCA. I should dig up all my certification diplomas from the courses i took and plaster the shop walls with them. I didn't actually take electronics at college, that was television production. When that career choice didn't pan out due to me finding myself on a blacklist as I stepped on an engineer's toes picking his brain on the engineering side of things. I always wanted to take engineering but i took the wrong math course in high school and didn't feel like spending more time with advanced calculus and algebra to get in. I'm good at math but didn't enjoy it. Anyway my fall back was electronics. I had already worked at a repair shop when in high school and had built some really advanced projects. Amplifiers and a tv camera from scratch from a set of plans. My tv production training came in handy as I started a production business and that did well over the years. Now it is just these videos i use my production skills for. But to do this type of work you need to have a good memory and understand how things work.
@@12voltvids More here than you needed to share. I'm only a hobbyist and have done some darned good work in my time, but when I see people with so much talent in so many areas I just don't have words except "mind blown"! I mean you tackle things with such a good rate of success that most others would just throw in the garbage-mostly due to the entire world being "disposable". Sad to see electronics go that direction because we all know stuff could very well be made to last MUCH longer than they do. Glad your doing this as I learn a lot from watching your videos. I'm just in awe-thank you! Oh and if you haven't shared (or did and I missed it) I'd love to hear about that "blacklisted for stepping on toes" story sometime! :)
@@jeffadams5510 Anyone that is or has worked in TV, Radio or Film knows what the blacklist is.
It's a tight knit community and if you piss someone off, they will tell everyone and nobody will hire you. In my case. when I was doing my internship (interns are generally not paid, it is basically volunteer work where you work at a tv or radio station to gain experience while going to school) I was offered a job by a local community station. Remember this was 1982 and wages were pretty low back then. Monimum wage was 3.10 an hour and I was offered a job paying me 5.00 an hour to run master control at the local station. Master control is the "DJ" of the TV station. I was running the show. I was in charge of on air operations. My job was to cue up all the tapes for the evening broadcast, line up all the public service announcements, and direct a live local community events news type show every night. I was on the air every day from 5PM till 11PM.
Every day I would start my shift at 3 and spend the first 2 hours every day getting the tapes ready to air, getting the station log ready, loading up the 16mm film projector for public service announcements to run that evening between shows. Getting all the carts ready for voice over spots that would run over the closing credits for the programs ect.
Production work was still being done in the studio typically right up to almost go live on the air time for me, so I was basically getting ready so as soon as the shoots or editing was done for the day and the day staff left (they shut down at 4) I could get on the equipment and start getting ready to go on the air. Before going on air I would clean the heads of all VTRs and the art machine.
Clean the audio logger. this was an old Sony reel to reel machine that recorded the sound track of everything that went on the air. We had to keep the tape for 30 days.
I would grab the oldest tape, erase it and thread it up and make a test recording to make sure the logging machine was functional. I would then start cueing up all my tapes for the evening and making sure all the tapes played properly on the 1" or 3/4" VTRs.
Some tapes were on 1" Ampex machines which was located in the production truck out back, and other tapes on 3/4" Umatic which was in the control room. Typically multi camera productions, amateur sports or multi camera studio programs were on 1" tape and single camera location productions were on 3/4". Basically about 90% of the evenings programming was on 3/4".
The 1" was typically hockey games or football games that they took the truck out and did multi camera. I had a live show every night, where the guy that ran the funeral home up the street would anchor. A local community interest news magazine type show. We did it live, I would frame and lock off the camera of the host, and then roll the tapes from the control room, and cue the host when the segment was ending and he was live again. Some nights we got a floor director to come in, but since it was in the dinner hour, usually it was just the 2 of us. It was a blast as we would ham it up, I would walk out on set and hand him notes like we screwed up, but we had it all scripted. Was a blast. I knew the boss would be watching, as would the station owner. They always watched every night, but we kept it funny. The pretending to be on the phone with the wife actually had people believing he was on the phone with his wife. (He was on the phone with me, giving him a count down to go back on the air but a few times I would throw him on air several seconds soon, and catch him off guard. He would usually say something like. Fun and games, and we had pretty good ratings as we would do live phone in shows where viewers would call in and ask for re-runs of stories ect. Anyway that isn't what got be shit canned. The control room had 2 Panasonic 3/4" VTRs (NV9800 and NV9850), an Athena 16mm film projector into an RCA TK27 telecine camrera, vincount switcher, audio board, rusco cue master turntable and a cart machine for voice over. In the production truck 2 Ampex 1" over reel VTRs 3 CEI production cameras, switcher audio booth ect.
The day that changed my career path I arrived at work. Walked into the control room, and there was only 1 3/4" VTR. The other one the engineer had in his shop. I strolled down the call to see "Leo" the engineer. Leo and I never really got along. I think he saw me as a threat. I would annoy him by watching him work on cameras ect and take everything in. The other engineer Doug, was younger and friendly, and would share his knowledge with me. Teach me what he knew, but Leo, was kind of an ass. If I asked him what was wrong with something he would say "it's broken" where if I asked Doug or Wayne (The other jr engineer) I would get a straight answer. Drum servo not locking, or capstan belt worn.
Anyway I went to Leo's office to find out the status of this VTR as I needed it to go to air.
His response was what I expected. Its broken, no not fixing it today, deal with it. In other words I am going to air with only 1 VTR, which means cueing all the tapes up to 5 seconds, and t hen having a big stack of tapes ready to go so I can cut to a film PSA and while the film is playing, change tapes, cue the new tape and then cut over to the next program. Then at the end of the evening rewind all the tapes and put them away. No backup machine ready to go in case something happens, and you know that something is going to break on air. Made it through the live show, at 6, so far so good. I had a 1 hour 1" tape to roll from the truck. This was always fun because I had to roll the tape and then run to the control room to cut in. So I would cue it 30 seconds back and then watch the PSA that was rolling. They were 30 seconds, so when a PSA started I would roll tape, and run back to control room, and cut over when the PSA ended.
Football game ended, and I was back to a local politics show on 3/4". Cut over no problem, went to truck to rewind tape and put away. While rewinding I am monitoring the on air signal on a TV in the truck, and it didn't sound right. Mayor was talking and he sounded like a chipmonk! Looked at the screen tracking lines and tape running fast. SHIT! stopped the rewind, ran to control room, dam near fell on the stairs. Turned on slide projector with technical difficulties slide already loaded. (That was always left ready to go) Cut to technical difficulty slide and dropped a needle on a focus record. powered off the 3/4' machine that now had about 20 feet of tape all wound around the capstan. The phone was already ringing. It was the boss wondering why I was off air.
I told him the VTR ate the tape. He said just use the other one. My response was what other one, it is in Leo's shop under locked up.(I tried to call Leo, but he wasn't home, and this was long before cell phones) Boss said, "can you try and carefully remove the tape and try another one and see if it works" so I did what I was asked to do. Unwound the tape from a machine that had no top on it (because it was cleaned multiple times a day, they were run with no cover fastened on, just set on top). I took the tape out, cleaned the machine, and back on the air. It was a bad tape. Someone had spilled something sticky (coffee with tons of sugar) on it. That was the boss, he was the only one that dared go into a studio or control room with food or drink. I felt pretty good, I saved t he day, back on the air finished my shift. Next day I showed up, and the old mad (owner) called me into his office and asked me to have a seat. This is never good when the big boss askes you to have a seat. "It has come to my attention that you removed a jammed tape last night from the VTR. What do you have to say about that?" I explained that "Ron" had called and told me to try and remove it and clean the machine and see if it would fix it so I did. I then got the lecture that they have engineers for that and I as an operator an not an engineer, and that he couldn't over look it, and also that he had asked "Ron" if he knew anything about it and he said no. Bastard covered his own ass and threw me under the bus. Old "Stan" said that "Leo" threatened to quit if I wasn't removed. So I was let go 2 weeks later, as soon as they found another grad, and had me train him how to run the ship. Of course they didn't tell me they were firing me, they said I was going to be just moving to another roll. (I guess so I wouldn't walk and leave them with nobody to run things)
I applied at all the local TV stations, and only heard back from one. They said you are black listed, don't bother applying again, and then sent me a copy of the letter the station I had worked for sent them. I had used them as a reference and the engineer stuck a knife in my back.
Now here is the kicker to this entire drama. "Leo" the engineer, a brilliant tech was not too happy, and he retired within a month. He just took me, and my boss down with him. My boss was fired shortly after me, and he also found his name on a do not hire list. Good old Leo inherited his family's farm, back east, and went to help with the farm, and open his own TV repair shop. He died about a dozen years ago. So there you have it, I short career in broadcasting. 2 years as a volunteer and 6 months on staff.One of my friends that worked there the same time as me stayed there for about 20 years or so but ultimately they all lost their jobs when the business was sold to a big company back east (eastllink) and they cleaned house and turfed everyone. There is a saying in broadcast, you are hired to be fired. I did independent production work for over 20 years running my own production business with a business partner, but he passed away in 2006 so I basically pulled the plug on production work and just do archiving work now, and produce youtube videos.
Remember, you asked!
@@12voltvids Yes, YES i did-lol!! Man what a cool story. Happy to see it didn't hold you back and went on to do something in the field that paved your way! Hat's off to you-thanks again for sharing!!! :)
nice samsung desktop ide or desktop pata drive
That's why it's not working it's because the hard drive is fresh
Because it's OS is on the old drive
Also I have a TiVo premiere that died and won't load and replacing the hard drive would wipe out the OS so a hard drive failure on a DVR is catastrophic so unless that old drive still works then it's only good as a DVD recorder or else it's good for parts
@@jcurnutte2007 winmfs is still your friend, the imgs are still available from several semi-official sites for just about everything. The thing is occasionally Tivo/Rovi (whatever company they are now) occasionally updates their on HDD database and a major firmware update goes out over the internet.. so you have to keep making regular backups to catch the changes. I hold on to the Tivo2 models and have one TivoHD.. but there are true fanatics out there tracking all the models. -- I feel suddenly very sad admitting that.. old guy that won't let go his old toys.
15= adds so far in 20 -minutes
i got 22 💀
@@walle637
Get used to it. Gone are the days that ad blockers work to stop the popup ads. Now they break the video and throw in an ad. Google makes more money and the content producer (me) makes more money. You don't think youtube runs itself right. Lots of money for servers, electricity to run servers, and cool them, and the staff have to be paid for. The vast majority comes from advertising. I hear that advertising is coming to streaming platforms like netflix and amazon too.
@@12voltvids This is the only channel where I don’t mind having ads since I know it goes to good use. besides if i buy youtube premium that means i’m paying $17/month (!!!!) to google instead of supporting content creators so hell no to that
@@12voltvids but anyways i hope you don’t take what i said as slander against your channel
@@walle637
Actually the money through RUclips premium goes to the content creators and we get a bigger slice than through the adverts.
Ok bad chips