Getting Up To Speed

Old clunker indeed ! If it's not a silly question Ron, why on earth would you want to keep using this outdated technology, when hard disk recorders capable of more than 100 hours continuous recording at full broadcast quality, are available for next to nothing now ... ?

Arfa

Somebody gave it to me free, it works, and tapes are cheap... :-)

Ron

Well ... Yes ... But a hard disk is cheaper still ! And it only sorta works with not being able to select low speed, and doesn't have the proper remote !

Arfa

ld

rs

Hear, hear! It works. Why throw it away?!

Plus, for me, I have a catalog of films, over 1,000 titles on tape.

Just a caution: EP has such a problem tracking that next year you may not be able to view a tape recorded at that speed, even on the same machine.

"Grandpa!! Oh Grandpa!! Mommy doesn't know. She said to ask you. What's a VCR?"

Would of been handy if you gave the model, but I don't think RCA made any of these units, probably a rebadged Funai or worse.

Just taking a guess, a lot of those combo sets used a menu to set the recording speed, not a button. So if it has onscreen menus and arrow keys on the remote, try those arrows (left/right mostly) to see if it switches to another one for the vcr settings. At some point in time they decided record speed was a set-once feature.

Toshiba made some with a dedicated sp/ep button on the remote, so it's entirely possible but without a model number, only guesses.

-bruce snipped-for-privacy@ripco.com

on

record

Another possibility is extra button pads/traces/overlays on the front panel pcb , unused on your model, that may be active if jumpered

Yep, but I got the thing "as is" and if there's a model number anywhere, it's buried on the back of a 50 lb unit...

on

rd

Ahhh, here's the problem: according to the menu to change the tape speed, one needs only to press the *clear* button... but there is NO "clear" button, nor does any button pushed act as/like a "clear" button. Oy!

Ron

Since tapes are cheap, why the obsession with reducing the picture quality to use fewer tapes? I have to agree with Mr. Daley on this - DVRs are inexpensive and produce much better results.

PlainBill

ut

CA

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uld

ers

No obsession but if there's a 2-1/2 hour movie on like say, Lean on Me, but the tape will record only 2 hours, obviously I am gonna miss the last half hour of my movie on SP. Six hours is always better than two any day!

Ron

RCA

an

would

recorders

No obsession but if there's a 2-1/2 hour movie on like say, Lean on Me, but the tape will record only 2 hours, obviously I am gonna miss the last half hour of my movie on SP. Six hours is always better than two any day!

Ron

Why the aversion to 4 hour tapes? Sellers at car-boot/radio rallies almost give them away.

ice

ny

old

You don't use VCRs do you? It's not a matter of the tapes themselves, but of changing the VCR's recording speed from SP that is [still] the problem.

Ron

choice

any

old

You don't use VCRs do you? It's not a matter of the tapes themselves, but of changing the VCR's recording speed from SP that is [still] the problem.

Ron

I certainly do use VCRs as I cannot watch these new fangled flat TVs for more than a few minutes because of cross-screen movement/ update judder . So good old CRT especially with my local UHF transmitter has just gone digital only. VCRs mean I can hook up 2 VCR (and 2 STB) to a single-scart TV, via the modulators . Leaving the scart for a PVR that tends to only get used for transfering MD audio to DVD rather than timeshifted video/DVD

Flat screen pc monitor is fine as used for text and static graphics only