Sure do, Betamax was my favorite format. The only reason I had VHS was for tape conversions and delivering my content before DVD. I used beta for all my personal recording and time shifting, and Laserdisk and the premium movie channels for content. I have never in my life rented a VHS movie. I have a few that were given to me, and I bought a nex-rental for testing. The big video store would bring in 100 copies of a movie when it was new and then after a few weeks would sell the excess inventory for the cost of a rental. Jurassic Park was the only one I ever bought for $6.99. So basically the cost of 2 rentals as movies back then rented for 3.50 each or 3 for 10.00 for 2 days. I used to rent a few laserdisks.
@@12voltvids Thank you very much for your reply. And a very big thank you for all of your videos and the contribution you make on UA-cam. When we get a bit stuck on fixing something that is not working, we can always look at your videos for assistance or even ask you for insights. Thank you ! 👍👌💯
everytime i get rid of something i wish i hadn't. But thats up to you. If he is willing to pay enough and yet you still have one for parts maybe - money talks.
Exactly, but if there is an offer on the table that would cover the parts I would expect to be able to reuse then I'll part with one of them. The other is staying in my collection. I have an SL7200, 8600, 5200, 2000, 2500, 2700, hf300, hf400, hf900, hf1000 and a few others. So basically every generation of beta except the 5400-5800 top loaders. Have a sanyo as well. All of them except the 1000 are in storage.
Portable HAHAHA My 1st Portable was a Panasonic 1/2" open reel . I have Canons HIFI VHS Portable Deck with the Docking Tuner. The Tuner was blown up by Ma Nature and the 2/3" Saticon Camera. (Plumbicon) Which is/was a very good cold weather camera. Recorded many a Christmas parades and every year from 1988 till 2019 it was static out in the cold using My 1.2 FM ATV Ham gear to watch the Starting line for the Annual Badger State Games X-Ski venue from inside the Chalet So I can turn off the outside Music for the person starting each Wave of Skiers. And with the internal title Gen I had My Ham call in the lower right corner . I built an adaptor to run the Cameras 10 pin direct from 12 Vdc and Video to the Transmitter. Back in 1988 Some Guys that worked with my Father built Me an enclosed Aluminum box with wheels like a common Hand truck. the top was built so I could stand on it and all the equipment was inside. It was primarily built for the Oshkosh Air shows so I could be above the crowd for some great Video. For winter I have a matched pair of Snow Boards for it to sit on...
I had an Akai 1/4" B/W portapack. Have tape of my sister winning best in show at a horse show riding her arabian. No I didn't like horse shows but was requested to go film them on this old antique machine. This was when I was a teen before I knew anything about how to fix them. This thing was so bad it used slip rings to send the video to the heads. It broke around 1980 and I sent it to akai service. They charged me about 200 and it worked for about 3 weeks and then died again. Back it went, and was waiting for parts for months. Every time I called they were waiting for a replacement part. They never did get the part and closed their doors. I never got the unit back nor saw the money I paid them to fix it when it lasted only 3 weeks.
I have a few portable 2 SL2000 and 2 Panasonic VHS they all work and in very good cosmetic condition one of the Beta has a little issue that the video goes out and comes back when I press the board in the rear around the battery connection area probably a loose solder connection somewhere and one of the Panasonic has a broken piece that holds a spring to eject the tape so I have to help it pop up but plays fine also have the cameras not sure if those work anymore. I love collecting old video gear.
I have an SL2000 and camera. I also have tapes that I haven't seen in two decades. I need to see if it runs so I can copy them to digital. I bought a Beta-HiFi at Goodwill a few years ago as a backup. I don't know if it works either. Thank you very much for making this video. I know you get discouraged at times, but you really do a great service by providing this information! Edit: If I can't get my machines working, what is the possibility of having tapes archived? I live in northern Oregon, so not that far. (I don't know how difficult it would be to mail tapes.) Thanks!
Every time I see one of these Beta machines I think of that VHS vs Beta format war, Not sure why VHS (At least in America) took off so quickly compared to Beta which seemed Superior in many ways. I was an early adopter many times over the years, (Laserdisc, HD-DVD, Sony Minidisk) Thankfully I was not taken in by RCA Selectavision capacitance disc players... (They got my brother, but not me LOL) But Beta at least where I lived, just never seemed to gain any traction, I can't even recall the last time I saw an actual Beta machine.
I have two of these, one of them works perfectly and I've shot videos with it, but the other one has a failed DC-DC converter so all it just does is spin the drum when you turn it on. It also had other mechanical issues. The SL-2000 is a great machine though, I've abused mine when shooting with my Sony HVC cameras and it still works.
@@12voltvids It's a pretty good machine though, at least mine is. The only stupid design is that some of the PCBs are soldered together via a flat flex cable when they swing out and I've heard you might rip them. I've never had a problem with that though. I've dropped my SL-2000 multiple times (never onto pavement or anything hard) and it never had an issue. Only issue I've had is that DC-DC converter failing. I've also had a DC-DC converter fail on a Umatic portable causing it to eat tapes because the takeup reel wasn't getting power during unthreading.
I do and don't. I'll probably let the one that the cabinet is a bit warped (from sitting to close to a fireplace) go, and hang on to the one I cleaned the heads on. That was the first one I hauled out that was fully functional.
The parts are one reason to keep but I can think of just as many to sell it. I'll likely never need them for 1 and by the time I do will they be any good. Might be further ahead now to get some cash and let someone else enjoy. And it gets another one our of the storage unit.
One way to tell whether you have an early production SL-2000 is by looking at the variable speed buttons. If it says "VIDEOLA" then it's an early one. The later ones say "SWING SEARCH" because Sony got in trouble with (I think) Disney for copyright infringement.
@@12voltvids Yes, but I was wrong about Disney. It was apparently the company that made the Moviola film editing machine. From Wikipedia: "BetaScan was originally called "Videola" until the company that made the Moviola threatened legal action."
@@crashbandicoot4everr I think that is off base. Would love to see any documentation to this theory. The reason is it was NOT called Movieola. You can't trademark the "ola". A company back in the 20's produced the Radiola and sold them under the RCA name. The Radio Corporation as it was known back then did not manufacture anything, but bought them from the likes of Westinghouse, General Electric ect. The Victor Orthophonic Victrola, first demonstrated publicly in 1925, was the first consumer phonograph designed specifically to play electrically recorded phonograph records. The combination was recognized as a major step forward in sound reproduction. The company was the victor talking machine company. It was sold to RCA in 1929. RCA Victor was the record company owned by RCA. Movieola was a film editing machine dating back to 1920. Galvin Manufacturing Corporation by brothers Paul and Joseph Galvin produced a radio for cars, they called it the "Motorola" which became the company name in 1947. Videola was used on the SL2000 and differs from swing search. Swing search was on the SL2500 and 2700, and it provided clear slo motion in speeds 1/10, 1/5, x1 and x2 in both directions as well as single frame advance forward and reverse. Both the 2500 and 2700 had a 3 head drum. The B field head had a second A field head. When you entered the swing search speeds the machine switched to the second "A" field head. The earlier "videola" on the SL2000 was a 2 head machine. Once put in pause you could press the 4 buttons to move the tape slow forward or reverse in a slow frame by frame speed (It was very slow about 2 frames per second, with the switching lines present) or momentary forward or reverse at regular speed and as soon as you released the button it stopped. I have an early, and late model SL2000. In fact the one I ended up with originally was from the last batch as the sl2001 had already been released and mine is listed as swing search, and it was total garbage. Completely unusable. They would hype it as to analyze your golf swing. Sure, from a 2 head machine, not bloody likely. So I doubt that there was any legal threat from movieola because videola is a completely different name, and you can't trademark 3 letters that was part of a name. Look at all the crap that went on betwen apple and mocrosoft. Trying to patent the look and feel. Videola and Swing search are 2 completely different things. One worked and the other didn't. Sony abandoned the videola feature and changed the name because videola was a useless feature that was half baked at best, no it wasn't even half baked it was still raw in the center. Another feature, betascan, and beta skip. 2 totally different features. Early machines had betascan, and later had beta skip/scan. Do you know the difference? I will tell you. Betascan was the original. When in play you can hit FF or REW and the tape will shuttle forward or reverse with a picture and return to play when you release. If you are in FF or Rew and you press the button nothing happens. Later machines with Betaskip if you are in FF or REW and you hit the FF or REW key it will show you a picture (at an even faster speed) and when return to full FF or rew when you release it. Of course the machine with skip also had scan, but the machines with scan only required that you go to play to see where you were. Now you are educated in betamax. Swing search was only used on the SL2500 and 2700, when the HF900 hit it was called Jog/Shuttle.
Old ones did and the gears seized up. This one was the worst design with the pop up pins that sheared off. The 2000, 2500 and 2700 were the 3 least reliable betamax machines Sony ever made.
See it's worth much more than 40 just for the parts. I fixed an SLHF1000 a year or so ago for a guy that needed a pinch roller. Made some good money on that repair, and that is why I tend to hang onto old chassis for VCRs and tape decks as they become a good source of parts. If someone made an offer I couldn't refuse then that's a different story. Same goes for my Thorens TD165 or Sansui 9090 or even my McIntosh 1600. If someone was standing there with a pile of cash I would let them go. I let my old Technics SLP50 CD player go. I got it for free and when the guy at innovative audio offered to buy it and handed me 7 crisp 100 bills I couldn't say no. He turned around and found some sucker to buy it for a grand.
@@12voltvidsmaybe i'll get it then i guess they are selling it cheap because they don't have a way to test it. i don't really have a use for a beta machine unless i just want to try & make a few bucks off of it I'm sure i can find a tuner on ebay but you know how that is your always taking a chance buying something online when you can't see it in person. with my luck it probably won't work & would have to be sold for parts.
Sony developed beta hifi. The first model was the sl5200. That was 1983. I was working for Sony at the time and grabbed one for 1200 from the first shipment. Still have it. Vhs followed about 18 months later. Panasonjc pv1730 was the first as far as I know and I have one of those too buy it doesn't work. The sl2000 hit the market in 81, followed in 82 by sl2001 and bmc110 betamovie in 83.
@@12voltvids Will you do a video on the PV-1730? I really like the look of this machine. Over in Europe we had the NV-850 as Panasonic's first hi-fi VCR.
@@12voltvids The only portable HiFi Betamax that was ever made was from Sanyo. However there might have been a Sony HiFi portable sold only in Japan, I'm not sure. There's definitely one Sony portable that was only sold in Japan, I've seen it.
Of course. The vagaries of format snobbery. Brinkmanship of the lowest order, the very cause of the 22 second attention span. Don't believe me! Go look it up, its all out there. SCART- 2 -HDMI, that's novel. Do yòu know your Plasma has Blue over saturated, and Red n Green are muted.!? Must be NTSC.
No the plasma is fine. The color balance on the camera was not set. But if you knew anything about photography you would have known that. Has nothing to do with ntsc which by the way has more detail off tape than pal because the head drum is spinning faster. Higher tape speed equals more bandwidth. Pal might beat ntsc over the air because our sound carrier was at 4.5 vs 6.5 but off tape ntsc is better. Vhs 240 lines vs 200.
Yeah, you're probably right. What camera doesn't have Auto Balance or auto white balance or can't store colour balance settings?! It only sits above the work bench after all.
The gcs1 i used at the aquarium was full manual. When I turned it on I forgot to hit the button and check the light. Remember these old cameras unlike modern had a b/w viewfinder. The bench cam is on auto. Yes I can manually set it but after it is off for awhile it returns to auto.
The classic Sony L-750 Betamax cassette tapes... You just got to love these ! 😊
Sure do, Betamax was my favorite format. The only reason I had VHS was for tape conversions and delivering my content before DVD. I used beta for all my personal recording and time shifting, and Laserdisk and the premium movie channels for content. I have never in my life rented a VHS movie. I have a few that were given to me, and I bought a nex-rental for testing. The big video store would bring in 100 copies of a movie when it was new and then after a few weeks would sell the excess inventory for the cost of a rental. Jurassic Park was the only one I ever bought for $6.99. So basically the cost of 2 rentals as movies back then rented for 3.50 each or 3 for 10.00 for 2 days. I used to rent a few laserdisks.
@@12voltvids Thank you very much for your reply. And a very big thank you for all of your videos and the contribution you make on UA-cam. When we get a bit stuck on fixing something that is not working, we can always look at your videos for assistance or even ask you for insights. Thank you ! 👍👌💯
That was pure Sony, Excellent!!!!! Had one with the camera! Kept it for 30yrs!!
everytime i get rid of something i wish i hadn't. But thats up to you. If he is willing to pay enough and yet you still have one for parts maybe - money talks.
Exactly, but if there is an offer on the table that would cover the parts I would expect to be able to reuse then I'll part with one of them. The other is staying in my collection. I have an SL7200, 8600, 5200, 2000, 2500, 2700, hf300, hf400, hf900, hf1000 and a few others. So basically every generation of beta except the 5400-5800 top loaders. Have a sanyo as well. All of them except the 1000 are in storage.
Portable HAHAHA My 1st Portable was a Panasonic 1/2" open reel .
I have Canons HIFI VHS Portable Deck with the Docking Tuner. The Tuner was blown up by Ma Nature
and the 2/3" Saticon Camera. (Plumbicon) Which is/was a very good cold weather camera. Recorded many a Christmas parades and every year from 1988 till 2019 it was static out in the cold using My 1.2 FM ATV Ham gear to watch the Starting line for the Annual Badger State Games X-Ski venue from inside the Chalet So I can turn off the outside Music for the person starting each Wave of Skiers.
And with the internal title Gen I had My Ham call in the lower right corner .
I built an adaptor to run the Cameras 10 pin direct from 12 Vdc and Video to the Transmitter.
Back in 1988 Some Guys that worked with my Father built Me an enclosed Aluminum box with wheels like a common Hand truck. the top was built so I could stand on it and all the equipment was inside.
It was primarily built for the Oshkosh Air shows so I could be above the crowd for some great Video.
For winter I have a matched pair of Snow Boards for it to sit on...
I had an Akai 1/4" B/W portapack. Have tape of my sister winning best in show at a horse show riding her arabian. No I didn't like horse shows but was requested to go film them on this old antique machine. This was when I was a teen before I knew anything about how to fix them. This thing was so bad it used slip rings to send the video to the heads. It broke around 1980 and I sent it to akai service. They charged me about 200 and it worked for about 3 weeks and then died again.
Back it went, and was waiting for parts for months. Every time I called they were waiting for a replacement part. They never did get the part and closed their doors. I never got the unit back nor saw the money I paid them to fix it when it lasted only 3 weeks.
@@12voltvids Bummer.
I have a Sister that owns 2 Horses. LOL
I just go around them to Hear them make monster Farts HAHAHAHAHA
Betamax👍📼
I have a few portable 2 SL2000 and 2 Panasonic VHS they all work and in very good cosmetic condition one of the Beta has a little issue that the video goes out and comes back when I press the board in the rear around the battery connection area probably a loose solder connection somewhere and one of the Panasonic has a broken piece that holds a spring to eject the tape so I have to help it pop up but plays fine also have the cameras not sure if those work anymore. I love collecting old video gear.
I have an SL2000 and camera. I also have tapes that I haven't seen in two decades. I need to see if it runs so I can copy them to digital. I bought a Beta-HiFi at Goodwill a few years ago as a backup. I don't know if it works either. Thank you very much for making this video. I know you get discouraged at times, but you really do a great service by providing this information!
Edit: If I can't get my machines working, what is the possibility of having tapes archived? I live in northern Oregon, so not that far. (I don't know how difficult it would be to mail tapes.) Thanks!
Every time I see one of these Beta machines I think of that VHS vs Beta format war, Not sure why VHS (At least in America) took off so quickly compared to Beta which seemed Superior in many ways. I was an early adopter many times over the years, (Laserdisc, HD-DVD, Sony Minidisk) Thankfully I was not taken in by RCA Selectavision capacitance disc players... (They got my brother, but not me LOL) But Beta at least where I lived, just never seemed to gain any traction, I can't even recall the last time I saw an actual Beta machine.
One word, Blockbuster.
They chose to only stock movies on vhs.
@@12voltvids that does make sense.
I have two of these, one of them works perfectly and I've shot videos with it, but the other one has a failed DC-DC converter so all it just does is spin the drum when you turn it on. It also had other mechanical issues. The SL-2000 is a great machine though, I've abused mine when shooting with my Sony HVC cameras and it still works.
They were not really reliable machines. Circuit boards made out of paper. They fracture just by looking at them.
@@12voltvids It's a pretty good machine though, at least mine is. The only stupid design is that some of the PCBs are soldered together via a flat flex cable when they swing out and I've heard you might rip them. I've never had a problem with that though. I've dropped my SL-2000 multiple times (never onto pavement or anything hard) and it never had an issue.
Only issue I've had is that DC-DC converter failing. I've also had a DC-DC converter fail on a Umatic portable causing it to eat tapes because the takeup reel wasn't getting power during unthreading.
The one I have had a few issues. Several small cracks on the board I had to repair when I got it. It was an overengineered
Very interesting!
What a dilemma. To give away (or sell), or not. Tough decision! Looks like you don't want to "part" with it.
I do and don't. I'll probably let the one that the cabinet is a bit warped (from sitting to close to a fireplace) go, and hang on to the one I cleaned the heads on. That was the first one I hauled out that was fully functional.
I wouldnt get rid of the unit personally.. especially with low hiurs and its history...
The parts are one reason to keep but I can think of just as many to sell it. I'll likely never need them for 1 and by the time I do will they be any good. Might be further ahead now to get some cash and let someone else enjoy. And it gets another one our of the storage unit.
One way to tell whether you have an early production SL-2000 is by looking at the variable speed buttons. If it says "VIDEOLA" then it's an early one. The later ones say "SWING SEARCH" because Sony got in trouble with (I think) Disney for copyright infringement.
Copyright infringement?
@@12voltvids Yes, but I was wrong about Disney. It was apparently the company that made the Moviola film editing machine. From Wikipedia:
"BetaScan was originally called "Videola" until the company that made the Moviola threatened legal action."
@@crashbandicoot4everr I think that is off base. Would love to see any documentation to this theory. The reason is it was NOT called Movieola. You can't trademark the "ola". A company back in the 20's produced the Radiola and sold them under the RCA name. The Radio Corporation as it was known back then did not manufacture anything, but bought them from the likes of Westinghouse, General Electric ect. The Victor Orthophonic Victrola, first demonstrated publicly in 1925, was the first consumer phonograph designed specifically to play electrically recorded phonograph records. The combination was recognized as a major step forward in sound reproduction. The company was the victor talking machine company. It was sold to RCA in 1929. RCA Victor was the record company owned by RCA. Movieola was a film editing machine dating back to 1920.
Galvin Manufacturing Corporation by brothers Paul and Joseph Galvin produced a radio for cars, they called it the "Motorola" which became the company name in 1947. Videola was used on the SL2000 and differs from swing search. Swing search was on the SL2500 and 2700, and it provided clear slo motion in speeds 1/10, 1/5, x1 and x2 in both directions as well as single frame advance forward and reverse. Both the 2500 and 2700 had a 3 head drum. The B field head had a second A field head. When you entered the swing search speeds the machine switched to the second "A" field head.
The earlier "videola" on the SL2000 was a 2 head machine. Once put in pause you could press the 4 buttons to move the tape slow forward or reverse in a slow frame by frame speed (It was very slow about 2 frames per second, with the switching lines present) or momentary forward or reverse at regular speed and as soon as you released the button it stopped. I have an early, and late model SL2000. In fact the one I ended up with originally was from the last batch as the sl2001 had already been released and mine is listed as swing search, and it was total garbage. Completely unusable.
They would hype it as to analyze your golf swing. Sure, from a 2 head machine, not bloody likely. So I doubt that there was any legal threat from movieola because videola is a completely different name, and you can't trademark 3 letters that was part of a name. Look at all the crap that went on betwen apple and mocrosoft. Trying to patent the look and feel.
Videola and Swing search are 2 completely different things. One worked and the other didn't. Sony abandoned the videola feature and changed the name because videola was a useless feature that was half baked at best, no it wasn't even half baked it was still raw in the center.
Another feature, betascan, and beta skip. 2 totally different features. Early machines had betascan, and later had beta skip/scan.
Do you know the difference? I will tell you. Betascan was the original. When in play you can hit FF or REW and the tape will shuttle forward or reverse with a picture and return to play when you release. If you are in FF or Rew and you press the button nothing happens. Later machines with Betaskip if you are in FF or REW and you hit the FF or REW key it will show you a picture (at an even faster speed) and when return to full FF or rew when you release it. Of course the machine with skip also had scan, but the machines with scan only required that you go to play to see where you were.
Now you are educated in betamax.
Swing search was only used on the SL2500 and 2700, when the HF900 hit it was called Jog/Shuttle.
wow
Best beta machine! Should have used cast aluminum gear,parts!
Old ones did and the gears seized up. This one was the worst design with the pop up pins that sheared off. The 2000, 2500 and 2700 were the 3 least reliable betamax machines Sony ever made.
This wasn't the best. It was junk, like the 2500 and 2700. Those were the 3 worst ever made from a reliability stand point.
i seen one for $40 don't know if it works. not sure if it's worth buying as i would have to find a tuner to plug it into.
See it's worth much more than 40 just for the parts. I fixed an SLHF1000 a year or so ago for a guy that needed a pinch roller. Made some good money on that repair, and that is why I tend to hang onto old chassis for VCRs and tape decks as they become a good source of parts. If someone made an offer I couldn't refuse then that's a different story. Same goes for my Thorens TD165 or Sansui 9090 or even my McIntosh 1600. If someone was standing there with a pile of cash I would let them go. I let my old Technics SLP50 CD player go. I got it for free and when the guy at innovative audio offered to buy it and handed me 7 crisp 100 bills I couldn't say no. He turned around and found some sucker to buy it for a grand.
@@12voltvidsmaybe i'll get it then i guess they are selling it cheap because they don't have a way to test it. i don't really have a use for a beta machine unless i just want to try & make a few bucks off of it I'm sure i can find a tuner on ebay but you know how that is your always taking a chance buying something online when you can't see it in person. with my luck it probably won't work & would have to be sold for parts.
Keep
The damper assembly is missing?
Apparantly so.
Less "portable" and more "potable"
Funaivcp-3000A
Are they Hi Fi?
Hifi hadn't even been dreamed up at this time.
I think at this point in the early 80s the HiFi audio was in the development stages.
Sony developed beta hifi. The first model was the sl5200. That was 1983. I was working for Sony at the time and grabbed one for 1200 from the first shipment. Still have it. Vhs followed about 18 months later. Panasonjc pv1730 was the first as far as I know and I have one of those too buy it doesn't work.
The sl2000 hit the market in 81, followed in 82 by sl2001 and bmc110 betamovie in 83.
@@12voltvids Will you do a video on the PV-1730? I really like the look of this machine. Over in Europe we had the NV-850 as Panasonic's first hi-fi VCR.
@@12voltvids The only portable HiFi Betamax that was ever made was from Sanyo. However there might have been a Sony HiFi portable sold only in Japan, I'm not sure. There's definitely one Sony portable that was only sold in Japan, I've seen it.
Of course. The vagaries of format snobbery. Brinkmanship of the lowest order, the very cause of the 22 second attention span.
Don't believe me! Go look it up, its all out there.
SCART- 2 -HDMI, that's novel.
Do yòu know your Plasma has Blue over saturated, and Red n Green are muted.!? Must be NTSC.
No the plasma is fine. The color balance on the camera was not set. But if you knew anything about photography you would have known that. Has nothing to do with ntsc which by the way has more detail off tape than pal because the head drum is spinning faster. Higher tape speed equals more bandwidth. Pal might beat ntsc over the air because our sound carrier was at 4.5 vs 6.5 but off tape ntsc is better. Vhs 240 lines vs 200.
Yeah, you're probably right.
What camera doesn't have Auto Balance or auto white balance or can't store colour balance settings?!
It only sits above the work bench after all.
The gcs1 i used at the aquarium was full manual. When I turned it on I forgot to hit the button and check the light. Remember these old cameras unlike modern had a b/w viewfinder. The bench cam is on auto. Yes I can manually set it but after it is off for awhile it returns to auto.