Panasonic VCR is really noisy in Pause mode

One third of the picture is noisy when paused. Its always on the top half. Slow motion shows a slight amount of noise. Normal Play is OK. The problem still shows up on store bought pre recorded tapes, but to a lesser degree.

Also, the audio takes 15 seconds to clear up on SLP tapes.

Thanks for any ideas on how to remedy this.

The machine is a Panasonic PV-4456.

It's the video head. Sorry. Common symptom of a failing head.

Reverse-search will also be bad.

Mark Z.

It might just be a clogged (dirty) head. Try a full manual cleaning first. Note that if you do it wrong you can destroy the heads. If you do it right you could solve the problem. Good Luck.

Not with just the 1/3 snow. Clogged head would give either picture overlaid with snow or total snow. A few models give a different, kind of bright white with other artifact over the whole screen due to head preamp design (like some old Hitachi models), but I still think it's a failing head.

Mark Z.

OK, I double checked Reverse-search and it looks good. After some cleaning, it looks like Pause mode gives snow on the top half of the picture. Slow motion mode gives snow between one third to one half of the picture. So it seems that there is more snow after some cleaning.

Oh, the machine still takes 15 seconds for the audio to clear up on a SLP tape. It takes 5 seconds to clear on a SP tape. This happens anytime the machine is rewound.

Thanks in advance for more suggestions.

Zac

I still think video head.

mz