I'm amazed to see this!! In 1994 I worked at a television station who had an mii marc robotic library. One day the news department wanted to do a story on how broadcast automation worked. They filmed the robot in action it was built like a 57 chevy very heavy metal but it moved super fast. Anyway they switched on their camera lights and BOOOOM it crashed!! The tape handler crashed into the case at a speed which was over 100mph it broke apart and HUGE beams flew everywhere. The fact nobody died was a true miracle. This thing held 250 tapes and 4 decks it was huge. Reliability of the decks and not to mention the robot was horrible even on its best day.
MII only worked when it wanted to when it was new! The running joke in the 80s was you could leave an MII portable recorder in the middle of the Atlanta International Airport, come back in an hour and it would still be there - because even the thieves knew how bad they were! Hope you get it working soon.
Hi Colin great videoI I was so excited to receive it I had to watch it before I good eat my breakfast. I hope you will carry on with sorting out the problems as it is so helpful for those of us who repairing our own. Fantastic. Colin Perth W A
I repaired both M-II and Betacam for NBC. They M-II were not more difficult to work on, but they did need more maintenance. Each model of both types had its weak spots. On average, the Panasonic models needed more frequent parts replacement, but those parts were much cheaper than their Sony equivalents. As an example, the longitudinal audio heads on an early M-II AU-650 needed replacement every couple thousand hours. The Sony BVW-75 almost never needed audio head replacement. We kept M-II going for around a decade in studio, field, and cart machine service so it was successful for us.
Very interesting, good to hear from you. My impression is that the tape loading path of the MII is more complex than Betacam and so less reliable. Having tried to work on reel drive of an MII, I found access to be dreadful. But I'm sure your training is such that you were better able to handle Panasonic machines.
I have the JVC BR-S525DXU & JVC BR-S822DXU decks, Did some great work over the years with them, need some Power supply work now but still work well after about 18min. of play time, love em. Will one day spend the $$$ to fix as good as new.. Gone fully nonlinear but I love the retro stuff. R&M Video Services Florida.
@@video99couk Wow, thanks for the response, look forward to the JVC BR-S DXU decks posts. I found the connectors, on line, for the damn 7 pin SVHS locking connectors. Croma adoration zig zag lines clears up after 20min. of play in the 822DXU recorder, after that both decks are fine. Great stuff, thanks..
Interesting to see some MII machines in detail! I don't think I have ever seen that much leaked electrolyte. Hopefully you can get all these problems sorted out!
Ah memories. As a Thames TV Tech Op I was very familiar with MII. We operated them extensively both within the VTR department but also down in the then cutting edge transmission area where we also ran the vast MARC robotic cart machines which transmitted the commercials and promos. Latterly, all the machines at Thames were the updated AU750 models which were supposed to be able to do digital PCM audio (that function never worked particularly well - lots of digital splats as I recall) and which were equipped with PPM audio meters instead of the standard VUs. From an operator's point of view they weren't actually too bad apart from having to have a tweaker handy to change preroll times (as opposed to the menu setting on BVW75s) and (on the 750 at least) the shuttle dial clutch was a grabby nightmare.. Lots of fun! :-)
I suspect my AU-750 originated in Thames TV, along with two portables and quite a collection of tapes I have here. The PCM required an add-on unit I believe?
And yes, there’s a very good chance it’s an ex-THS machine as I honestly don’t think anyone else within the network had the 750s. Apart from ITFC that is. They were a part of ITV who provided the broadcasters with outside-sourced material on various formats for TX. As they had to be able to deliver on all formats then in use by the regions, ITFC had a couple of plastic-wrapped AU750s, just in case. They were never used so far as I was aware as Thames would happily accept 1”C masters. 😉
This is indeed proof that Panasonic's VHS-based professional broadcast recorders & players like the ones made for the MII format were much, much, much, much, MUCH harder to work on, and are definitely unreliable. Sony's broadcast Betacam, Betacam SP, Digital Betacam, Betacam SX, HDCAM, MPEG IMX, and HDCAM SR VTRs are robust, hugely popular, easy to work on, and in use for broadcasting programs on TV until going completely solid-state.
Oh good, more flyers and catalogues to scan! ;-) Now that's what I call a necessary journey... none of this going to the beach nonsense!! Well rescued!
I just fixed a JVC 822 and 622, a 25v 1000uf cap fails on the right servo board that causes the flashing lights and a SMD 50v 3.3uf cap fails on the drum servo, both units had broken traces at the rear BNC and the 822 had a bad cap on the board that displays the time code on the front panel, that cap caused noise and dropouts of the Hi-Fi channel. The grease used in the JVC's dries up and will lock the mech solid and needs to be cleaned and re-lubed, the 622 also had the brake stuck on the TU real that caused random 73 and 72 errors.
I started collecting tape machines when my employer chucked out all their analogue equipment. I ended up with two of every thing, thinking this would be enough! However two machines have developed faults (I'm not skilled enough to fix anything ) I think now you have to have three or four of everything to ensure they will keep working!
Unfortunately it's the way things are with this old equipment, that you have to repair equipment. Some repairs though are not so hard, such as idler and belt changes.
You mention several times about not wanting to shine too much light into the machine, should I be concerned about shining too much light into my vcr when opening it up for cleaning? I thought it was just uv I needed to worry about.
Thank you so much for your great videos! What is the best spray or coating to protect those brittle internal plastic VCR parts. WD-40? Silicone spray? Thanks!!
I'm not sure I'm the expert on the best lubricant to use for plastic parts, there is some debate on this. If you do a search for "grease for plastic gears" you will get some suggestions, which are often silicone based.
Wow what a load of machines, i could hear the car screaming with the weight lol. I would monitor the psu voltages and see if they work when not conected to the machine, then connected to the machine. You need to know if the supply is behaving itself :-D is that machine actually needed for your business? if so then warp 9 scotty.. i mean colin :-D Dead caps in the video out stages?
Ah, the AU-65, I have an AU-65H that had no video output on all of the connectors as well, it was the TBC board. Mine is the NTSC version but the symptom was the same.
Just got my Panasonic AG 7350 out the loft after 2 years and it worked perfectly before, just getting back into the vhs thing and i can use it to record hifi audio and just wanted to test it out, so having no correct leads i bought a s-video lead from ebay to test the output and i also get a black screen. Using a LG 27" Flatron M2762D as it had loads of all the inputs anyone would want. eg 2 Scart inputs, RGB, HDMI, component and normal composite. Also has the built in freeview, comes in handy :) So im wondering now if its the lead i bought so waiting for another one to arrive so i can test it I know it has other video out 1 + 2 but its some weird connector looks like a satellite socket but does not screw in. What would your thoughts be on this ?
Are these capacitors dating from the period when a lot of bad ones were released on the market (90s), resulting in a lot of defunct devices (like the Philips DCC recorder)?
I have four AU-65H machines that most of which seem to have slipping belts. Unfortunately, I have no manuals. I'm trying to find the part numbers and/or the specs for the "front motor" loading belt and the threading motor belt. Have you been able to find a source for those belts?
Yes, the BBC certainly used Betacam, BetacamSP, Digital Betacam and HDCAM. They wouldn't use domestic Betamax though, except for a few specialist applications.
Whilst they had quite similar cases, I believe the 2500 was mono sound, whereas the C9 was stereo. Is the transport dual direct drive motors in the 2500, too?
die M II Geraete sind perfekt fur jemand wer gute kameragerat hat Besonders gute Ergebnise liefert der M II band zusammen mit Ikegami HC 400 W Es schaft auch echtes Breitbild, die Bande soll saber sein Insgesamt es geht ganz prima Mit Pinnalcle Targa 3000 die Bildern sind oft so gut wie moderne Hd Kameras bieten. die speziefische atmosfere ist nicht schlagbar
hi had to ask a mate first i went north with a mate i was to pick up a car full of 8 track tapes just got them in the bmw 1984 why ypu may ask resold the good one all the poor ones i pulled apart for spares the loop tape was the bag for 4 track carts the 8 track tape inside has levels all over the place low high out put on on done any tec video's on tape inside how each tape is not the same
@@video99couk I was responsible for selling the MII products here in Australia from release to phase out as DVCPro took over and never saw a player or recorder with S-VHS compatibly. That is you could not insert a a SVHS tape into the MII. From memory and we are going back 30 odd years whilst the tape width was half in the tape shells and mechanisms were different. Matsushita was in a war with BetaCam and SP BetaCam and to have the necessary supporting electronics for both formats would have made MII extremely uncompetitive. No broadcaster I knew was interested in S-VHS and wouldn’t have paid a cent extra for it. Of course we only got to see PAL format machines in Australia, maybe in NTSC but I was working essential for Panasonic Broadcast Division here way back then I would most likely have heard of any such machine if it existed. I can find no reference to any compatibility in any google search. If you can cite a AU-XXX model number I would be interested in researching that model? I can even go back to MI which never was released here in Australia. MI was their first attempt to enter the broadcast market in response to Sony’s successful BetaCam product. It was I totally licensed to RCA would were going through their death roll at the time and was branded “Hawkeye” we tried in vein to get Matsushita to release it under the Panasonic brand here as Sony were cleaning up the market and entrenched the BetaCam product. By the time MII was finally released Sony had the market as their BetaCam SP was backwards compatible to BetaCam which by the was in every TV station here making MII a very hard sell. We found MII markets in higher education, university, defence, post production. I dealt with these customers with some success, higher education for example would have used S-VHS in parts of their facilities and if MII was compatible with S-VHS it would have been a selling feature and may have made sales easier because of it however no MII that I saw any such compatibility. I was also responsible for selling the Panasonic industrial S-VHS products some of which you have done videos on your You Tube channel. AG Series ....AG-7650, AG-7500 edit vtrs , AG-7450 dockable, AG -7350 and list goes on. I stand to be corrected...
@@video99couk There never existed an MII player or recorder that could play back a S-VHS tape. I don't know where you have heard this. Just like "TheFleetz" I am also curious to know which model this was. The only professional machine that could play S-VHS tapes was a JVC BR-D51. This player came from the first line of JVC's Digital-S (D-9) equipment. Keep up the good work on those nostalgic machines! 👌
Oh I don't know, he gets pretty stuck in sometimes. He is very good at what he does. It's just that many consumer products aren't worth the time and cost that expensive and rare professional machines can justify.
I'm amazed to see this!! In 1994 I worked at a television station who had an mii marc robotic library. One day the news department wanted to do a story on how broadcast automation worked. They filmed the robot in action it was built like a 57 chevy very heavy metal but it moved super fast. Anyway they switched on their camera lights and BOOOOM it crashed!! The tape handler crashed into the case at a speed which was over 100mph it broke apart and HUGE beams flew everywhere. The fact nobody died was a true miracle. This thing held 250 tapes and 4 decks it was huge. Reliability of the decks and not to mention the robot was horrible even on its best day.
Did that footage ever make it to broadcast? It would have been quite a sight.
MII only worked when it wanted to when it was new!
The running joke in the 80s was you could leave an MII portable recorder in the middle of the Atlanta International Airport, come back in an hour and it would still be there - because even the thieves knew how bad they were!
Hope you get it working soon.
MII is one of those formats like DVCPRO. You never know what it's going to do next, but it's nearly always bad.
If correctly serviced DVC PRO decks were reliable, they didn’t like Sony tapes so if you could avoid using those tapes then they were excellent
@@martinhanson2382 A lot of DVCPRO decks suffered from mass capacitor failures. There were also problems with the cassette carriages on some models.
Hi Colin great videoI I was so excited to receive it I had to watch it before I good eat my breakfast. I hope you will carry on with sorting out the problems as it is so helpful for those of us who repairing our own. Fantastic. Colin Perth W A
I repaired both M-II and Betacam for NBC. They M-II were not more difficult to work on, but they did need more maintenance. Each model of both types had its weak spots. On average, the Panasonic models needed more frequent parts replacement, but those parts were much cheaper than their Sony equivalents. As an example, the longitudinal audio heads on an early M-II AU-650 needed replacement every couple thousand hours. The Sony BVW-75 almost never needed audio head replacement. We kept M-II going for around a decade in studio, field, and cart machine service so it was successful for us.
Very interesting, good to hear from you. My impression is that the tape loading path of the MII is more complex than Betacam and so less reliable. Having tried to work on reel drive of an MII, I found access to be dreadful. But I'm sure your training is such that you were better able to handle Panasonic machines.
I have the JVC BR-S525DXU & JVC BR-S822DXU decks, Did some great work over the years with them, need some Power supply work now but still work well after about 18min. of play time, love em. Will one day spend the $$$ to fix as good as new.. Gone fully nonlinear but I love the retro stuff. R&M Video Services Florida.
I plan on working on that bad power supply in due course, at the moment I'm having too much fun fixing one of the MII decks.
@@video99couk Wow, thanks for the response, look forward to the JVC BR-S DXU decks posts. I found the connectors, on line, for the damn 7 pin SVHS locking connectors. Croma adoration zig zag lines clears up after 20min. of play in the 822DXU recorder, after that both decks are fine. Great stuff, thanks..
Interesting to see some MII machines in detail! I don't think I have ever seen that much leaked electrolyte. Hopefully you can get all these problems sorted out!
Luckily the boards themselves don't seem to have suffered too badly. Hoping I can get at least one of those MII machines running soon.
Ah memories. As a Thames TV Tech Op I was very familiar with MII. We operated them extensively both within the VTR department but also down in the then cutting edge transmission area where we also ran the vast MARC robotic cart machines which transmitted the commercials and promos. Latterly, all the machines at Thames were the updated AU750 models which were supposed to be able to do digital PCM audio (that function never worked particularly well - lots of digital splats as I recall) and which were equipped with PPM audio meters instead of the standard VUs.
From an operator's point of view they weren't actually too bad apart from having to have a tweaker handy to change preroll times (as opposed to the menu setting on BVW75s) and (on the 750 at least) the shuttle dial clutch was a grabby nightmare..
Lots of fun! :-)
I suspect my AU-750 originated in Thames TV, along with two portables and quite a collection of tapes I have here. The PCM required an add-on unit I believe?
Sorry for delayed reply. Yes, the PCM box was another piece of hardware.
And yes, there’s a very good chance it’s an ex-THS machine as I honestly don’t think anyone else within the network had the 750s. Apart from ITFC that is. They were a part of ITV who provided the broadcasters with outside-sourced material on various formats for TX. As they had to be able to deliver on all formats then in use by the regions, ITFC had a couple of plastic-wrapped AU750s, just in case. They were never used so far as I was aware as Thames would happily accept 1”C masters. 😉
This is indeed proof that Panasonic's VHS-based professional broadcast recorders & players like the ones made for the MII format were much, much, much, much, MUCH harder to work on, and are definitely unreliable. Sony's broadcast Betacam, Betacam SP, Digital Betacam, Betacam SX, HDCAM, MPEG IMX, and HDCAM SR VTRs are robust, hugely popular, easy to work on, and in use for broadcasting programs on TV until going completely solid-state.
I once gave away one of those *with* the TBC 😢 They are bloody massive. Wouldn't mind it back though.
Oh good, more flyers and catalogues to scan! ;-)
Now that's what I call a necessary journey... none of this going to the beach nonsense!! Well rescued!
I just fixed a JVC 822 and 622, a 25v 1000uf cap fails on the right servo board that causes the flashing lights and a SMD 50v 3.3uf cap fails on the drum servo, both units had broken traces at the rear BNC and the 822 had a bad cap on the board that displays the time code on the front panel, that cap caused noise and dropouts of the Hi-Fi channel. The grease used in the JVC's dries up and will lock the mech solid and needs to be cleaned and re-lubed, the 622 also had the brake stuck on the TU real that caused random 73 and 72 errors.
I believe intermittent hi-fi audio is a common problem on those. Do you know which capacitor caused that?
JVC牌子的BR-S622/822相比BR-S611/811更容易出现加载故障，我也经常维修这两台机器。通常的做法是，首先用WD40喷在CAPSTAN下方的圆形位置开关内部，再用润滑脂涂抹在CYLINDER左右两侧的加载轨道上（首先要清洁轨道的灰尘）。另外，S622/822的视频解码电路上面有很多电解电容，最好也将它们更换（不要用我们中国生产的劣质电容器^_^），会得到更清晰的画面。在使用中，尽量减少切换到VHS-C，能极大提高机器的的使用寿命。
The mrs. Must have been very happy XD
She had a few words to say...
Nice material for repair/debug adventure!
Maybe there is bad caps on the video board too, check those on the signal path!
I started collecting tape machines when my employer chucked out all their analogue equipment. I ended up with two of every thing, thinking this would be enough! However two machines have developed faults (I'm not skilled enough to fix anything ) I think now you have to have three or four of everything to ensure they will keep working!
Unfortunately it's the way things are with this old equipment, that you have to repair equipment. Some repairs though are not so hard, such as idler and belt changes.
You mention several times about not wanting to shine too much light into the machine, should I be concerned about shining too much light into my vcr when opening it up for cleaning? I thought it was just uv I needed to worry about.
Thank you so much for your great videos! What is the best spray or coating to protect those brittle internal plastic VCR parts. WD-40? Silicone spray? Thanks!!
I'm not sure I'm the expert on the best lubricant to use for plastic parts, there is some debate on this. If you do a search for "grease for plastic gears" you will get some suggestions, which are often silicone based.
Wow what a load of machines, i could hear the car screaming with the weight lol.
I would monitor the psu voltages and see if they work when not conected to the machine, then connected to the machine.
You need to know if the supply is behaving itself :-D
is that machine actually needed for your business? if so then warp 9 scotty.. i mean colin :-D
Dead caps in the video out stages?
Ah, the AU-65, I have an AU-65H that had no video output on all of the connectors as well, it was the TBC board. Mine is the NTSC version but the symptom was the same.
what a machines!!!Great Stuff
Just got my Panasonic AG 7350 out the loft after 2 years and it worked perfectly before, just getting back into the vhs thing and i can use it to record hifi audio and just wanted to test it out, so having no correct leads i bought a s-video lead from ebay to test the output and i also get a black screen. Using a LG 27" Flatron M2762D as it had loads of all the inputs anyone would want. eg 2 Scart inputs, RGB, HDMI, component and normal composite. Also has the built in freeview, comes in handy :) So im wondering now if its the lead i bought so waiting for another one to arrive so i can test it I know it has other video out 1 + 2 but its some weird connector looks like a satellite socket but does not screw in. What would your thoughts be on this ?
Are these capacitors dating from the period when a lot of bad ones were released on the market (90s), resulting in a lot of defunct devices (like the Philips DCC recorder)?
Yes. The PSU was built by TDK so let's not blame Panasonic too much in this case.
@@video99couk Did they use Panasonic capacitors? :P
hi i get offered a lot of video's decks all the time it's kingswood main ones are betacam there's alot a round still lot of rubber parts go on them
Thanks good Machine
Are you going to peal those clear plastic protectors from the front of the machine? It's so satisfying when Techmoan does it.
I have four AU-65H machines that most of which seem to have slipping belts. Unfortunately, I have no manuals. I'm trying to find the part numbers and/or the specs for the "front motor" loading belt and the threading motor belt. Have you been able to find a source for those belts?
I would just replace belts based on their sizes, since original spares will no longer be available.
Hi, i have the manuals, I can send you it. do you still like to got it ?
I was wondering are these betacam machines the same ones that the BBC used to play out their TV programmes?
Yes, the BBC certainly used Betacam, BetacamSP, Digital Betacam and HDCAM. They wouldn't use domestic Betamax though, except for a few specialist applications.
hi this deck you like the betacam sp deck i have worked on in the past alot of jammed up parts the ring not working right bob
Uhh... the text at 12:01 should say "Remove bracket from the top, four screws and connectors underneath, then the PSU lifts out.".
Can't fix typos on RUclips.
The SL-C9 looks a lot like my SL-2500 US NTSC model.
Whilst they had quite similar cases, I believe the 2500 was mono sound, whereas the C9 was stereo. Is the transport dual direct drive motors in the 2500, too?
13:25
They are shiiieeeet ELNA caps!
-12voltvids
The Panasonic ones are no better from that era :)
The Elna's are pretty rubbish though, my buddy changed over 180 of them in a BVH-3000 just to get it to play.
die M II Geraete sind perfekt fur jemand wer gute kameragerat hat
Besonders gute Ergebnise liefert der M II band zusammen mit Ikegami HC 400 W
Es schaft auch echtes Breitbild,
die Bande soll saber sein
Insgesamt es geht ganz prima
Mit Pinnalcle Targa 3000
die Bildern sind oft so gut wie moderne Hd Kameras bieten. die speziefische atmosfere ist nicht schlagbar
At its best, MII could theoretically be better than BetacamSP. In practice though, reliability and support were not good enough.
This is electronic art
Como eu gosto! VHS/Betamax/Hi8/V-2000/U-Matic
hi had to ask a mate first
i went north with a mate i was to pick up a car full of 8 track tapes just got them in the bmw 1984 why ypu may ask resold the good one all the poor ones i pulled apart
for spares the loop tape was the bag for 4 track carts the 8 track tape inside has levels all over the place low high out put on on done any tec video's on tape inside
how each tape is not the same
Do you throw away instruction manuals if a pdf is available? I do.
Sometimes, yes. But certainly not with service manuals because paper ones are often easier to read than PDFs.
Super
Don’t believe Panasonic ever made an MII the had compatibility with s-vhs tapes
Yes, at least one MII machine could play S-VHS tapes. That fixed the head drum size and basic tape path layout for MII.
@@video99couk I was responsible for selling the MII products here in Australia from release to phase out as DVCPro took over and never saw a player or recorder with S-VHS compatibly. That is you could not insert a a SVHS tape into the MII. From memory and we are going back 30 odd years whilst the tape width was half in the tape shells and mechanisms were different.
Matsushita was in a war with BetaCam and SP BetaCam and to have the necessary supporting electronics for both formats would have made MII extremely uncompetitive. No broadcaster I knew was interested in S-VHS and wouldn’t have paid a cent extra for it. Of course we only got to see PAL format machines in Australia, maybe in NTSC but I was working essential for Panasonic Broadcast Division here way back then I would most likely have heard of any such machine if it existed.
I can find no reference to any compatibility in any google search. If you can cite a AU-XXX model number I would be interested in researching that model?
I can even go back to MI which never was released here in Australia. MI was their first attempt to enter the broadcast market in response to Sony’s successful BetaCam product. It was I totally licensed to RCA would were going through their death roll at the time and was branded “Hawkeye” we tried in vein to get Matsushita to release it under the Panasonic brand here as Sony were cleaning up the market and entrenched the BetaCam product.
By the time MII was finally released Sony had the market as their BetaCam SP was backwards compatible to BetaCam which by the was in every TV station here making MII a very hard sell. We found MII markets in higher education, university, defence, post production. I dealt with these customers with some success, higher education for example would have used S-VHS in parts of their facilities and if MII was compatible with S-VHS it would have been a selling feature and may have made sales easier because of it however no MII that I saw any such compatibility.
I was also responsible for selling the Panasonic industrial S-VHS products some of which you have done videos on your You Tube channel. AG Series ....AG-7650, AG-7500 edit vtrs , AG-7450 dockable, AG -7350 and list goes on.
I stand to be corrected...
@@video99couk There never existed an MII player or recorder that could play back a S-VHS tape. I don't know where you have heard this. Just like "TheFleetz" I am also curious to know which model this was. The only professional machine that could play S-VHS tapes was a JVC BR-D51. This player came from the first line of JVC's Digital-S (D-9) equipment. Keep up the good work on those nostalgic machines! 👌
12voltvids would have given up by now, saying the machine is shot and trash it.
Oh I don't know, he gets pretty stuck in sometimes. He is very good at what he does. It's just that many consumer products aren't worth the time and cost that expensive and rare professional machines can justify.
🇹🇷🇹🇷🇹🇷🇹🇷💯💯💯💯👍👍👍👍
Not a nice job removing all the incontinent caps, I did a Sony PSU last year, I can still smell the rotting fish stink!