Hopefully someone can help me troubleshoot this problem.
I have a Panasonic PV-V4522 "omnivision" VCR, and a few days ago, I put an old rental tape in it. It played for just a second, then the picture got garbled and snowy. I figured it may be a bad spot on the tape, so I rewound it. It rewound at a curiously slow speed, and still had massive snow on playback. This tape also kept trying to eject from the standalone tape rewinder, so I don't know if it was sticking or what.
Anyway, I tried a different tape, and it also showed snow. Tried yet another, and more snow. If I manually adjust the tracking enough, you can get a glimpse of a picture hidden in the snow.
So I tried a head cleaning cassette. The VCR didn't seem to like that. Groaning and so forth. Problem remained. Got a newer "brush" style cleaner tape, and it didn't help either.
So here are the symptoms: The sound is fine, but the picture is nothing but white "static". However, if you fast forward or rewind while the tape is playing, the image returns, color and all. If you pause the tape, the picture returns (although in a garbled "pause" state). Here's the interesting part: If you take the tape off "pause" (resume playing), it plays just fine for about a second, then the picture goes back to being white static.
Do you have any idea what might cause this sort of behavior?
Thanks!