I had my doubts if this would be a fixer! Luckily the caps haven’t affected the layers on the board! Hopefully see a full fix on this. I agree that many older electronics do need a wee run occasionally to keep them fresh!
Yeah I had my doubts too that it would work. Many of these cameras it doesn't work out as well for especially the older ccdf series which had about 70 capacitors that had to be replaced. There's some knucklehead right now on Facebook trying to sell an old CCD v5000 and they're asking a couple hundred bucks for it. I sent them a message telling them that I wouldn't give them $1 for it because it's going to need so much work it just would not be economical. The reply was that someone will buy it for a fixer upper, I said not for what you're asking they won't. told the person I bought a broadcast beta cam for much less than what they're asking for a consumer and then inform them that the camera they're calling professional is not it's just a home camera made to look like a professional camera but it is no way a professional camera and then sent them a picture of my betacam and told him this is a professional camera and I paid less for it then they're asking for theirs and it works. offered $10 for it I thought that might be a nice one to have as a display piece too but they haven't accepted 10 bucks, and even 10 bucks is too much in my opinion it should be $0 because a ccdv5000 will definitely not work. If you've ever seen the inside of one of those there's about 300 capacitors or close to it that have to be replaced they are just loaded with surface body caps and they're all leaking. I would pay $10 for it though just so I could take it apart on camera if I could get it for that but so far they're not backing down from the 300 they're asking.
@@12voltvids the dangers of eBay! Even if you changed all the capacitors you’re still looking at probable damage to the layers! These jokers really don’t care who they rip off! Sounds like a fixer upper for a magician not a technician!
@@gartmorn the only way to guarantee a repair on these devices would be to change the board. Once that corossive electrolytic has leaked you don't know how far it has got. That is not an option these days but even back when it was it was usually not done as a board could easily coat 400 for a main board. Even that little audio board would have been 70 or 80 new. Used to see many cameras where salt water had splashed. No attempt was ever made to clean. It was new board or throw the camera out.
Hi I use methylated spirit that u buy from the hardware store and it removes all the stickyness and restores the rubber have used it on my cannon cameras flashlight and power winder and they all have come up like new with no damage to equipment Mike
Very informative, the tr81 seems very similar to my tr705, and I´m working on it, making one good one out of two semi broken units. Thank´s to your Vid´s my workdesk looks a mess but it´s fun and if I should succeed I know who to thank! All the best and keep it going 🙂
Once a month I play a tape and then try the camera to make sure that the lense is okay. I did copy my tapes, but nice to know that my camera still works.
1:28 manufactured December 1992....this camera must have been a best seller in its day. Earliest I've seen these be manufactured was July 1991 I found an offer for a 3rd party refurbished TR81 which I took up 3 years ago.
Yes this camera we sold the shop that I worked at hundreds of them. It was the first small high eight camcorder that Sony had and it was a big seller. It was also expensive though so the regular 8mm still sold quite well because the height was quite a bit more money then the regular eight and some people just could not justify the additional expense and the more expensive tapes that were required for the quality. It's funny how that goes you know what you think about it. What were people using camcorders for back in the day? Recording family events kids growing up playing sports all the things that they do when they're little or going on vacations sightseeing that type of stuff. You would think that people when they were going to invest the kind of money that a video camera cost would spend a couple hundred extra dollars to get one that would deliver a picture that was almost twice as good as the cheaper model because after all you're recording once in a lifetime memories in many cases and you would think that people would want to have the best possible quality. Even if you had to spend 30% more to buy it and 30% more for every tape that you bought you would think that the picture quality would matter but it didn't to a lot of people they are going strictly on price. That's why vhsc continued to hang in there so long. not only that but people would buy them and then use the EP speed because they were so concerned about the cost of blank tape that they had to get the most amount of recording on the tape that they could. those are the same people incidentally that I have to deal with today when they want their tapes digitized and put on to USB sticks or DVDs and they always remark about how come the quality is so bad? My reply is how can you use the EP speed where you made the recording? And then go on to explain that you can't make something good when there's nothing there. this is not a TV show like CSI where we can enhance an image and get something out of there that isn't there so that's make believe this is reality garbage in garbage out sucks to be you. Just like the woman who 5 years ago I digitized her home videos for her and I recommended that she get a copy on DVD as a backup but her reply was I don't have a DVD player so why would I want to spend the extra five bucks to have a DVD made I just want my recordings on my memory stick. Then she puts said memory stick away does not make a backup copy onto her computer which I also told her to do put some memory stick away let's sit in a drawer for 5 years and then decides that she wants to look at some of the old footage only to find that the files are now corrupt. She calls me up out of the blue and asked me if I can make a backup copy cuz she can't play the files. Brings me back the memory stick I plug it in my computer there's nothing there. I told her the memory stick is obviously failed or it's just sitting around and lost the data which can happen that she should get her backup copy and go to that. Her reply was she didn't make a backup copy she watched them when she got at home and they were fine and now they don't work. I said to her do you have the original tapes I can make another copy and I will certainly charge you again for it and her reply was she didn't think she needed to keep them she threw them out. my reply was oh well sucks to be you I can't help you have a nice day. Now she's mad at me she tells everybody she knows not to have me digitize their tapes. Oh well no big gloss I don't need customers like that anyway. I would much rather deal with intelligent people that follow advice like get a backup copy or at least back it up onto your computer and make multiple backups in case something happens. You know the saying you can't fix stupid.
Cool! so I have a ccd-tr202e, and it works good, only that the video has some noise and some other weird problem that I plan to make a video about, and its probably the caps, and I did replace a few of them with "through hole" caps like you did, cause I didn't have any SMD ones.. after replacing about 70% of them, still no difference, video still has noise and some weird thing.. that I don't know how to explain. but I can give you an example of how this "weird problem" looks: so if you put your hand in front of the camera and focus on your hand, its as if it "over sharpens" the picture, and so the hand has some weird BIG squiggly lines on it, that shouldn't be there.... I hope you get what I mean lol, and I'm curious if you have seen some similar problem like that?
Very entertaining video, i have been watching your channel for couple days now. Have watched couple other electronics channels like shango066 and jordan pier, good to find more similiar content
Interesting! I am glad you have posted this video! I have a Kyocera KX-V1 Hi-8 camcorder that has several issues. When I purchased it the camera shop informed me that this was actually a Sony clone, just rebranded for Kyocera. Years ago I dropped it onto my foot and then it hit the hard floor but without hitting hard. Net results was I lost the ability to record video from the camera itself. It would play just fine with output to the monitor and video output. Fast forward to a few years ago I tried to play tapes to an interface unit to my pc so as to archive them but zero video out. Any source for schematics ( ie Sams Photofacts ) where I can at least recover the playback mode so as to archive my tapes? No longer living in the States and I will. Have to order parts from Farnell from the UK. Again thanks for posting this video!
I will probably shotgun ALL of the caps in my unit. Had to do the same for a Motorola Spectra mobile radio, change all of those surface mount electrolytics to preserve the radio. Control head was the major issue with Motorola. How are you keeping track of all of those small screws? Ice cube trays with labels? If I can return the playback function it would be a blessing, get everything moved over to the PC. Thanks for the informative video!
@@Subgunman yes with surface mount you pretty much need to do all of them because they all leak their alkaline contents out and that will attack the board.
I suggest getting a hot air soldering station for surface mounted component replacement. Weller has really good hot air soldering equipment for repairs like this.
hey! I have two tr-81s which both have different problems, the one with less problems (no focus, color) is the one i mainly use, while the other doesnt play tapes, or color, plus view finder and mini crt is broken, would it be a smart idea to switch out the actual lenses/autofocus motherboard part of camera 2 (the more broken one) with my main one? I dont really care about color but the focus is so bothering when i have to open the autolock door, turn off the camera and close it, then turn it off again all so the autofocus doesnt really focus so i can manually focus, thanks!
Yes i did know the noise was the fan, good thing you have it 😀 A hand full of capacitors and what a difference!. The audio recording method sounds a bit like the hifi vcr way, but i never really looked close. If it works i don't touch it.
I only mentioned the fan noise because somebody was whining like a spoiled child and one of the other videos about how it was giving them a headache. Poor baby as my mother used to say if I was whining about something like that. As you can tell I don't have much compassion. I lost a friend a few years back because his brother just wanted to experience heroin once. That once turned into an addiction which resulted in an OD when he was got fentanyl. Well my old friend from high school told me that his brother passed away my response was something like play Russian roulette don't be surprised when one day the gun goes off or something along that line anyway he called me in a hole and I haven't talked to him in 10 years.
@@12voltvids Sometimes it's good to make the right noises, even if you have no connection to the person that's passed away. I used to say what i thought, Hell the shit hit the fan too often. I blame it on my birth sign, LEO (Well i had to blame something lol )
I have my tr450 which i recapped but only thing not working is the date and time display. What could that be? I can't set it i can't show it and i can't reset the tape counter rest works fine
Have no idea. Buttons? Why worry about the date and time. It was an annoying feature. Biggest complaint i get when archiving is " why did you leave the date and time on through the video?" I have to remind them that it was turned on in the camera when it was recorded and is permanently burned on the image no way to remove it.
I bet the Betacam isn't going to last either, but tearing into these cameras is fun to see how they work and how they come apart as well as go back together😀
This one was a very good camera and as I was mentioning in the video with my own it has so much use. And most of that not all of that use was before my kids were born. I use it as a backup camera when I was shooting weddings and using High eight I was using usually three cameras. I started out using this and a v5000 and then I got a vx3 and an evw300 professional camera. I still carry the tr-81 as a backup and usually put it up in a balcony or something and turn it on and left it locked off for a third shot with no one operating it because there was two of us running manned cameras when I shot weddings. This one went with me everywhere. Amusement parks riding the roller coaster with the camera in hand no problem and I've got footage of that. To all the house parties I went to when I was in my twenties and early 30s which was pretty much every weekend all my crazy friends we'd all get together and not remember much from the night before it was always a blur but we got some great footage I've got a couple dozen full tapes that would I'm sure embarrass and mortify every single one of us now if we saw some of the stuff that was done when we were in an early twenties. I'm talking jackass kind of stuff if you catch my drift.
Got news 4 U. Every professional tech did the same because we have burned our fingers so many time that the heat detecting nerves are all desebtizied and we don't feel the burn the way say you would. Pulling out hot tubes does that.
First AGAIN! That was the second Sony camcorder I bought. I was deciding between the 81 and the 101 (had steady shot) I chose the 81
I already had a v5000 I used for production work. This was a backup camera and for fun stuff
My camcorder V-100e from 1986 works perfect 36 years old in 2022 no problems with caps this camcorder have throoghole caps! 💖
I had my doubts if this would be a fixer! Luckily the caps haven’t affected the layers on the board! Hopefully see a full fix on this. I agree that many older electronics do need a wee run occasionally to keep them fresh!
Yeah I had my doubts too that it would work. Many of these cameras it doesn't work out as well for especially the older ccdf series which had about 70 capacitors that had to be replaced. There's some knucklehead right now on Facebook trying to sell an old CCD v5000 and they're asking a couple hundred bucks for it. I sent them a message telling them that I wouldn't give them $1 for it because it's going to need so much work it just would not be economical. The reply was that someone will buy it for a fixer upper, I said not for what you're asking they won't. told the person I bought a broadcast beta cam for much less than what they're asking for a consumer and then inform them that the camera they're calling professional is not it's just a home camera made to look like a professional camera but it is no way a professional camera and then sent them a picture of my betacam and told him this is a professional camera and I paid less for it then they're asking for theirs and it works. offered $10 for it I thought that might be a nice one to have as a display piece too but they haven't accepted 10 bucks, and even 10 bucks is too much in my opinion it should be $0 because a ccdv5000 will definitely not work. If you've ever seen the inside of one of those there's about 300 capacitors or close to it that have to be replaced they are just loaded with surface body caps and they're all leaking. I would pay $10 for it though just so I could take it apart on camera if I could get it for that but so far they're not backing down from the 300 they're asking.
@@12voltvids the dangers of eBay! Even if you changed all the capacitors you’re still looking at probable damage to the layers! These jokers really don’t care who they rip off! Sounds like a fixer upper for a magician not a technician!
@@gartmorn the only way to guarantee a repair on these devices would be to change the board. Once that corossive electrolytic has leaked you don't know how far it has got. That is not an option these days but even back when it was it was usually not done as a board could easily coat 400 for a main board. Even that little audio board would have been 70 or 80 new. Used to see many cameras where salt water had splashed. No attempt was ever made to clean. It was new board or throw the camera out.
Finally, I like the idea of restoring a piece of video history.😄
Very interesting and informative as usual, Love your Videos.
Hi I use methylated spirit that u buy from the hardware store and it removes all the stickyness and restores the rubber have used it on my cannon cameras flashlight and power winder and they all have come up like new with no damage to equipment
Mike
Very informative, the tr81 seems very similar to my tr705, and I´m working on it, making one good one out of two semi broken units. Thank´s to your Vid´s my workdesk looks a mess but it´s fun and if I should succeed I know who to thank!
All the best and keep it going 🙂
Tr81 was the American name for this handycam, TR705 was the national name if you will...for Europe, Japan, etc
Once a month I play a tape and then try the camera to make sure that the lense is okay. I did copy my tapes, but nice to know that my camera still works.
1:28 manufactured December 1992....this camera must have been a best seller in its day. Earliest I've seen these be manufactured was July 1991
I found an offer for a 3rd party refurbished TR81 which I took up 3 years ago.
Yes this camera we sold the shop that I worked at hundreds of them. It was the first small high eight camcorder that Sony had and it was a big seller. It was also expensive though so the regular 8mm still sold quite well because the height was quite a bit more money then the regular eight and some people just could not justify the additional expense and the more expensive tapes that were required for the quality. It's funny how that goes you know what you think about it. What were people using camcorders for back in the day? Recording family events kids growing up playing sports all the things that they do when they're little or going on vacations sightseeing that type of stuff. You would think that people when they were going to invest the kind of money that a video camera cost would spend a couple hundred extra dollars to get one that would deliver a picture that was almost twice as good as the cheaper model because after all you're recording once in a lifetime memories in many cases and you would think that people would want to have the best possible quality. Even if you had to spend 30% more to buy it and 30% more for every tape that you bought you would think that the picture quality would matter but it didn't to a lot of people they are going strictly on price. That's why vhsc continued to hang in there so long. not only that but people would buy them and then use the EP speed because they were so concerned about the cost of blank tape that they had to get the most amount of recording on the tape that they could. those are the same people incidentally that I have to deal with today when they want their tapes digitized and put on to USB sticks or DVDs and they always remark about how come the quality is so bad? My reply is how can you use the EP speed where you made the recording? And then go on to explain that you can't make something good when there's nothing there. this is not a TV show like CSI where we can enhance an image and get something out of there that isn't there so that's make believe this is reality garbage in garbage out sucks to be you. Just like the woman who 5 years ago I digitized her home videos for her and I recommended that she get a copy on DVD as a backup but her reply was I don't have a DVD player so why would I want to spend the extra five bucks to have a DVD made I just want my recordings on my memory stick. Then she puts said memory stick away does not make a backup copy onto her computer which I also told her to do put some memory stick away let's sit in a drawer for 5 years and then decides that she wants to look at some of the old footage only to find that the files are now corrupt. She calls me up out of the blue and asked me if I can make a backup copy cuz she can't play the files. Brings me back the memory stick I plug it in my computer there's nothing there. I told her the memory stick is obviously failed or it's just sitting around and lost the data which can happen that she should get her backup copy and go to that. Her reply was she didn't make a backup copy she watched them when she got at home and they were fine and now they don't work. I said to her do you have the original tapes I can make another copy and I will certainly charge you again for it and her reply was she didn't think she needed to keep them she threw them out. my reply was oh well sucks to be you I can't help you have a nice day. Now she's mad at me she tells everybody she knows not to have me digitize their tapes. Oh well no big gloss I don't need customers like that anyway. I would much rather deal with intelligent people that follow advice like get a backup copy or at least back it up onto your computer and make multiple backups in case something happens. You know the saying you can't fix stupid.
This camera was better than what I had hoped for.
Cool!
so I have a ccd-tr202e, and it works good, only that the video has some noise and some other weird problem that I plan to make a video about, and its probably the caps,
and I did replace a few of them with "through hole" caps like you did, cause I didn't have any SMD ones.. after replacing about 70% of them, still no difference, video still has noise and some weird thing.. that I don't know how to explain. but I can give you an example of how this "weird problem" looks: so if you put your hand in front of the camera and focus on your hand, its as if it "over sharpens" the picture, and so the hand has some weird BIG squiggly lines on it, that shouldn't be there.... I hope you get what I mean lol, and I'm curious if you have seen some similar problem like that?
Very entertaining video, i have been watching your channel for couple days now. Have watched couple other electronics channels like shango066 and jordan pier, good to find more similiar content
Been doing this about 10 years now.
Did you have a solution for the sticky plastic?
Interesting! I am glad you have posted this video! I have a Kyocera KX-V1 Hi-8 camcorder that has several issues. When I purchased it the camera shop informed me that this was actually a Sony clone, just rebranded for Kyocera.
Years ago I dropped it onto my foot and then it hit the hard floor but without hitting hard. Net results was I lost the ability to record video from the camera itself. It would play just fine with output to the monitor and video output. Fast forward to a few years ago I tried to play tapes to an interface unit to my pc so as to archive them but zero video out. Any source for schematics ( ie Sams Photofacts ) where I can at least recover the playback mode so as to archive my tapes? No longer living in the States and I will. Have to order parts from Farnell from the UK. Again thanks for posting this video!
Not a Sony clone. Made by Sony as were many Canon cameras.
I will probably shotgun ALL of the caps in my unit. Had to do the same for a Motorola Spectra mobile radio, change all of those surface mount electrolytics to preserve the radio. Control head was the major issue with Motorola. How are you keeping track of all of those small screws? Ice cube trays with labels?
If I can return the playback function it would be a blessing, get everything moved over to the PC.
Thanks for the informative video!
@@Subgunman yes with surface mount you pretty much need to do all of them because they all leak their alkaline contents out and that will attack the board.
Awesome how U did that !
I suggest getting a hot air soldering station for surface mounted component replacement. Weller has really good hot air soldering equipment for repairs like this.
Useless on these boards. Component on bottom that will fall off when board heated.
Great video. I need to get myself one of those cap testers
I built it
hey! I have two tr-81s which both have different problems, the one with less problems (no focus, color) is the one i mainly use, while the other doesnt play tapes, or color, plus view finder and mini crt is broken, would it be a smart idea to switch out the actual lenses/autofocus motherboard part of camera 2 (the more broken one) with my main one? I dont really care about color but the focus is so bothering when i have to open the autolock door, turn off the camera and close it, then turn it off again all so the autofocus doesnt really focus so i can manually focus, thanks!
They are about 36 years old what do you expect. It's going to be leaking caps. Give up while you're ahead.
Yes i did know the noise was the fan, good thing you have it 😀
A hand full of capacitors and what a difference!.
The audio recording method sounds a bit like the hifi vcr way, but i never really looked close.
If it works i don't touch it.
I only mentioned the fan noise because somebody was whining like a spoiled child and one of the other videos about how it was giving them a headache. Poor baby as my mother used to say if I was whining about something like that. As you can tell I don't have much compassion. I lost a friend a few years back because his brother just wanted to experience heroin once. That once turned into an addiction which resulted in an OD when he was got fentanyl. Well my old friend from high school told me that his brother passed away my response was something like play Russian roulette don't be surprised when one day the gun goes off or something along that line anyway he called me in a hole and I haven't talked to him in 10 years.
@@12voltvids Sometimes it's good to make the right noises, even if you have no connection to the person that's passed away.
I used to say what i thought, Hell the shit hit the fan too often.
I blame it on my birth sign, LEO (Well i had to blame something lol )
I have my tr450 which i recapped but only thing not working is the date and time display. What could that be? I can't set it i can't show it and i can't reset the tape counter rest works fine
Have no idea. Buttons? Why worry about the date and time. It was an annoying feature. Biggest complaint i get when archiving is " why did you leave the date and time on through the video?" I have to remind them that it was turned on in the camera when it was recorded and is permanently burned on the image no way to remove it.
i like adding short timestamps in my recordings@@12voltvids
I bet the Betacam isn't going to last either, but tearing into these cameras is fun to see how they work and how they come apart as well as go back together😀
Probably not but i bought it as a decoration.
First handy Came , a great product
This one was a very good camera and as I was mentioning in the video with my own it has so much use. And most of that not all of that use was before my kids were born. I use it as a backup camera when I was shooting weddings and using High eight I was using usually three cameras. I started out using this and a v5000 and then I got a vx3 and an evw300 professional camera. I still carry the tr-81 as a backup and usually put it up in a balcony or something and turn it on and left it locked off for a third shot with no one operating it because there was two of us running manned cameras when I shot weddings. This one went with me everywhere. Amusement parks riding the roller coaster with the camera in hand no problem and I've got footage of that. To all the house parties I went to when I was in my twenties and early 30s which was pretty much every weekend all my crazy friends we'd all get together and not remember much from the night before it was always a blur but we got some great footage I've got a couple dozen full tapes that would I'm sure embarrass and mortify every single one of us now if we saw some of the stuff that was done when we were in an early twenties. I'm talking jackass kind of stuff if you catch my drift.
Bro swipes the lead of the hot solder iron with his finger 😬
Got news 4 U. Every professional tech did the same because we have burned our fingers so many time that the heat detecting nerves are all desebtizied and we don't feel the burn the way say you would. Pulling out hot tubes does that.
😀👍
ahh yes those crappy SMT caps... did they smell like rotten fish when you cut them out? worst smell in electronics
Smells like the backbend of a tuna schooner.
Surprised people still use hi8 camcorders Lol
I wonder the same. Couldn't wait to ditch tape.