SVHS VCR Repair question (JVC HR-S9800U)

[DrJoe]

I have a 3 year old JVS HR-S9800U sVHS video recorder. I never used it much, but recently recorded ROME on HBO for my parents and several days worth of childeren/s programming for my 3 year old who lives with her mother sans cable TV. Recently, it has lost all video signal, with a U01 error message and every now and then goes to "blue scree" and says "clean tape heads with dry tabe cleaner". I purchased a Memorex dry VHS cleaning tape and it hasn't helped.

When I purchased this, it was expensive -- $400 or so. I'm not sure what the replacement cost would be these days. Does anyone have an idea what the maximum repair cost I should make on this (before replacing it with a new SVHS VCR)?

Thanks,

Joe

[57U]

You may have difficulty even finding VCRs these days. I debated getting mine repaired several years ago (original price was also around $500, similar JVC model).

I did get it repaired at the time for about $150 since it was a much better unit than they make these days, but you can buy a new S-VHS machine for about that, if you can find one...

I'd suggest buying a DVD recorder if you need to record stuff for others. "Everyone" has a DVD player...

If you absolutely need VHS, consider a D-VHS machine?

[DrJoe]

Thanks for the suggestion...

Can you tell me anything about the "functionality" of these as recorders? One of the things I've been doing lately is using a DVR to record a show and then burning it to VHS -- this lets me only record on tape only the "show" -- with VHS I can rewind to the end of the previous show and start it recording at the beginning of the next. Even for commercial free kiddie TV (my daughter's favorite show is "Dora the Explorer"), there is only about 20 minutes of "show" in the 30 minute DVR recording.

Thanks,

Joe

[logman]

I have a similar JVC S-VHS, I've always hated it. It's the most un-intuitive piece of electronics I have.

I believe that if you recorded the tape in s-vhs mode it won't playback on a non-s-vhs deck.

Jim in Houston

[57U]

If you get a DVD recorder with HDD, you record to the HDD, mark the commercials and then burn to DVD without commercials. The functionality of the various DVD recorders differs as they are not "equal". You must do your research on each machine as to whether it does what you want.

Recent S&V issues have had reviews of several units showing the difference in capability. One cannot generalize.

Or you could continue to record to the DVR and then record to the DVD recorder same way as you've been recording to the S-VHS deck, however, this requires "real time" recording.

On a DVD recorder with HDD, the "process" can be done in minutes instead of hours, once the recording is on the HDD - find the commercials, mark them, record in minutes...

I guess it depends on how often you do this sort of thing.

[DrJoe]

Thanks; I wasn't awar that THAT was the reason the hard drive was on them... I'll take a look around -- I have a call into a local repair shop and will see what they estimate the cost at -- I would find it hard to believe it would be less than $60, and it looks like some DVD recordes on ebay are only 2x that...

logman, I was aware that you have to record in standard VHS mode, and I agree that it has an extremely clunky user interface.

Thanks,

Joe

[videobruce]

I debated getting mine repaired several years ago (original price was also around $500, similar JVC model). Oh, you bought one od the less expensive models.
Gee, my two machines were around $670 & $2000 new. Of course that was a few years ago; 1989 & 1991. :wow:

That was also when you didn't need the remote to program the machines either. :hyper:

As far as the problem, try recording in a different speed, try it in regular VHS and even try recording through the external input.