JVC HM-DH40000U D-Theater VCR in action (overview, quick repair tips, "hidden" DTS feature)

Had this open for a quick cleaning and thought, since the older chassis (the 30000U) generally gets all of the attention on here, that it'd be cool to hit record and go over the insides of this one, as well as look at how she operates. This one was given to me earlier in the year and was told she was in very rough shape--unit was definitely stored in an area with a lot of moisture. And yet, she refuses to die! Well, the VCR is very sensitive to drop-outs on the tape, but it's as good of a start as any.
Something not mentioned on the casing or even in the instructions manual, this chassis does indeed support DTS playback! On tapes that have DTS, it will appear as "STREAM". Even though the 'Audio Functions' menu allows you to set the default optical out as "STREAM", it still defaults to Dolby when the option is selected.

[@orihalcon8693]

Awesome video! Just restored a couple of these units - almost all of the SMT caps in the digital section were bad on both and neither really appeared particularly heavily used. They are kind of annoying to get to because the outer shielding is soldered on in many areas and there's about 25 of them. Guessing most of these DVHS machines have bad SMT caps that go unchecked. I think regular VHS playback also goes through the digital board as I think these will output an MPEG2 stream over firewire for regular VHS and they also have a line time base corrector which is ideal for VHS tape transfers and that would need to go through the digital section for that to function. Side note was that almost all of the push button switches on the front on both were also not making good contacts, so I would bet a fair amount of these machines could be listed for parts for non-responsive buttons - switch replace those is a 6x6mmx9.5mm 2 pin tactile switch.

[@johnnyd3195]

Hi, just wanted to let you know while watching your video there is a large capacitor to the right front side of the tape loading mechanism (The capacitor in question is also directly to the left of the 1” wide ribbon cable that come down into the right front side of the pcb). When you “insert” and “eject” the tape that capacitor is moving around from something hitting it. I would look into this further as this could be a problem waiting to happen. Good luck and keep us posted of your findings.

[@TheMediaHoarder]

Such a shame these machines were so cheaply made, especially for how high they were priced. They should have been industrial-quality with linear stereo playback and overall best playback available for any VHS tapes. A few D-Theater tapes have DTS tracks but aren't mentioned anywhere on the cover, would be nice if you could set the default audio tracks to play back when available. I don't know what was different about DTS that the first players couldn't access it, there was a similar issue with the first-generation DVD players and DTS on DVD.

[@MrBushMan]

My dh40000u has screen flickering and I hear replacing the fan can fix this. Can you do a video on that

[@VideoStore64]

Does the fan spin up when the unit's turned on? As long as it does and there is no major dust accumulation on the inside, then the fan is fine. Do you have a description of what you mean by "screen flickering"? Can your unit do anything else? It's more than likely bad capacitors; those go bad easily on the D-Theater decks.