Vintage Rare PV1730 The First Panasonic VHS HiFi VCR with both linear and HiFi Stereo Audio
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 9 ก.ย. 2024
- This VCR is 40 years old. It was the very first HiFi model offered by Panasonic and features both Linear stereo with Dolby NR and HiFi stereo. Has not worked in probably 20 years. The repair started about 10 years ago but it was shelved when other projects came along and has been sitting for years until now. Will it work again? This video features the 2 previous sessions where some things were worked on, but never finished.
It's an interesting machine that is completely unique, as it was only available for less than 1 year and then cheaper models arrived.
Hi Dave. Here in Australia we never had Panasonic branded machines till the late 1980s, our electronics from Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd Japan were all branded National. The first Hi-Fi VHS from Matsushita Electric in Australia was the National NV-850 which I bought second hand in 1987, I never had any issues while I had it, I sold the unit around 1994. I’ve always liked the majority of National/Panasonic products.
Doing the lords work. This was such a cool watch
Im watching her in Philippines 4:23am and i learned a lot on ur video sir thank u.
last time I saw that machine was in 1985 at my Aunt boyfriends house - I remember being wowed by the picture quality and the way it felt with the buttons ect. I didn't know about the Hi-Fi audio thing at all at the time. Good work getting her goin.
This Machine is worth restoring fully - it's a good quality machine
Actually its not good quality. There is a reason they abandoned the design. Cost to make was one but with those big heavy tape reels/motors they had a habit of snapping tapes on rewind. Also the picture was not as good as later models. The early hifi models the hifi audio on the deep layer of tape had a habit of causing interference to the video in the high frequency range resulting in a softer picture. That figured that out a few years later and put in better equalization and filtering to restore the picture. This one always had a soft picture. I used to use it as a duplicator to record.😊
I have one with remote I got from the trash like 20 years ago and it still works
I thought the NV-850 was the first hi-fi Panasonic, released in 1984, same year as JVC introduced the HiFi VHS format. It was a modification of a previous model, the HiFi feature was such an afterthought in it that it has a separate rotary transformer for the hifi heads on the top of the drum. Panasonic's HiFi VHS service training manual is based on that model (available for free on elektrotanya), that pretty much confirms to me it was their first HiFi model. BUT its linear audio is mono.
I hope I'm right about NV-850 being the first, because I paid big money for it for this reason, about 100USD in feb. 2022 🙄 .
Maybe this PV 1730 was their first HiFi model for the US market, but not their very first worldwide. This already has the HiFi rotary transformer integraged into the main rotary transformer, why would they make it separated in a later model?
The NV-850 was the first hi-fi VCR by Panasonic for the European market. The PV-1730 was the first for North America.
The 1730 was the first vhs hi fi sold in North America. Perhaps they just added a bodge to an existing European machine to add hifi. Europe was a very small vcr market back in the 80s compared to North America, and also considering that tech center of the world, Japan also used NTSC color it makes perfect sense that we got the real first vhs hifi machine and the pal countries got that hack.
@@12voltvids I wonder which model was developed first. Because it doesn't make sense to me that *after* they solved the problem of integrating the hi fi rotary transformer with the video rotary transformer in the 1730, they came out with the NV-850 which has a bodged-on separate rotary transformer for the hifi heads.
Maybe they just thrown together the NV-850 as an experiment, and decided it is good enough for the European an Aussie market, than they developed it further, and that became the PV 1730 for the Japanese and US market. I wonder if the 1730 also has an older brother without hifi audio.
BTW the NV-850 is a lot lower grade model compared to the PV 1730, it has the most basic mechanism with a rubber idler drive for the reel tables, it (fortunately) has a linear power supply, the linear audio is mono without Dolby, and it has no camera connector. It seems also a lot taller (and heavier). I'm pretty sure the 1730 was a lot more expensive with its 4 DD motors. Probably at least 50% more expensive.
@@crashbandicoot4everr But which came out first? The NV-850 seems like an experimental prototype thrown together in a hurry. I guess the 850 was developed first, which not neccessarily means that it was also released first.
@@mrnmrn1 My NV-850E/EG/B service manual is dated October 1983. I am 99% sure the National NV-800 (Japanese market) came out a few months before that. It was a hi-fi machine with no VU meters!
Thanks, that was a fun one
Hi Dave, very interesting video. My background is in computers and I have tried to repair some older multi-layer motherboards and struggled and lost patience. It's nice to see when persistence pays off and that I'm not the only one who gets fed up sometimes.
I won't touch multi layer boards. Camera for example when craps have pissed on the board and its wicked to internal layers I don't care how much someone offers me to fix it, I am walking away. Don't need the money that bad. Lol.
@@12voltvids :-) The boards I have are not that bad, I think just bad caps but it's a slow process removing them, big ground plane.... I could also do with some of those magnifying googles, I'm short-sighted with one stronger eye.
I think I would have just fired this one into the scrap bin without looking back. That machine will continue to be a pain in the ass for the rest of its (short, fickle) time.
its rare for sure i dont ever recall coming across that model
It was an expensive machine. Not many were sold.
Thanks Dave.
WOW. just think, I almost had one of those before I bought My Canon Package. VR HF600, the VR-40 portable with docking tuner. and the Big Camera. The Camera and portable unit are still in working condition.
The Tuner was Blowed up by lightning and the HF600 needs a new head drum.
I have an HF 600 was well. Last time I checked it was working.
@@12voltvids I saw that video.
The head drum completely froze solid.
I soaked it for days in FREE-ALL to no avail.
I could just get it to rotate with force.
With nothing to loose I had to actually break it to get it apart to see what the issue was.
The substrate that supported the rotary Transformer swelled up locking the 2 halved together.
Well-done :)
I do remember our shop selling these new along with RCA, Zenith, Sony and a couple others.
Yes we had rca, Sony panasonic toshiba and jvc.
I was waiting for this machine to be put up on the bench for a while. Thanks! What is that normal and thin tape selector switch for on the top? Is it related to the tape remaining indication for T-160 (thin) tapes?
Yes and it adjusts the rewind speed. This machine has trouble with the odd ball lengths on small hubs. It was built when the and less were on large hub tapes and 120 160 on small hubs. Things like the on small hub or the or 20 ect wrack havoc on ff and rewind. Snap!
@@12voltvids I recently bought a Sony SL-C9 and the direct drive reel motor setup looks exactly the same as this Panasonic. Mine has a tape remaining indicator too but you don't have to manually switch it for L-500, 750, 830 etc. And yes it does slow down when the beginning or end of tape is approaching. Interestingly mine had the shiny upper drum syndrome but it didn't slap the tapes on rewind. I removed the shine using dish soap and the green (abrassive) side of a sponge.
@crashbandicoot4everr i have an sl2700 and 2000 with same setuo. I also have an sl2500 but its not working. Ill fix it some day.
I have the same machine.. thanks so much for this video!!! Also please how can I make contact with you?? Can you fix my Panasonic .. please ???
Thing of beauty despite some overcomplicated stuff in it - like 6 motors. :)
And to think that panasonic brought us the "G" mechanism which only had 2 motors, a solenoid and a bunch of gears. One extreme to another and 2 of the least reliable chassis ever produced.
Its the BMW of vcr.
@@12voltvidsHey Dave you are right the Cadillac (American saying LOL) of VCRs. I was looking at the colors bars the red/pink on your recording camera made it look impure. I remember VCRs seemed to really struggle reproducing the color red without some distortion. I definitely think as you do, you made leaps and bounds in your progress. After the color was restored it didn't seem distorted in the tone anymore or at least as far as I could hear. It sounded like it would blip. I think you are excited to see if you can get it back to a pristine working condition. Belts do seem much better however if they become gooey and like tar that's no fun at all. Back to the color red issue in VCRs I suppose that was more in consumer units rather than commercial units. 8 guessing you know the exact reason or have an explanation of why the purity of red was somewhat distorted. The Price is Right (the contestant losing their game sound is classic LOL) was an excellent example many scenes have red in the background. If memory serves me that is magenta not red anyway as always a great video. I bet that was loads of fun repairing that circuit board on the reel motor assembly too.
All video cassette formats that use hetrodyne (color under) recirding, that is vhs, betamax, 8mm and 3/4" umatic have noisy color especially in the reds. This is because the chroma is directly recorded to the tape. The luminance is recorded as an fm signal. The frequency shifts to track video signal. As the signal goes to max white the frequency goes to max and the horizontal sync the frequency js minimum. The playback is amplified and clipped before demod so fluctuations. In signals do not cause brightness changes as its fm. There is not enough bandwidth to record the color where it was on the composite video,so it is stripped and converted down to 629 kHz for vhs / svhs, 688 for betamax and 3/4" umatic and 733 for 8mm and hi8. Umatic used 930. Its recorded directly as an am signal on the tape. There are 2 signals, the I and Q that are 90' out of phase with each other for the cyan and magenta representations. The red vector unfortunately is derived from the phases of the i and q and just happens to be the poorest of signal to noise. It affects all forms of color under recording. CNR, chroma noise reduction helps but doesn't eliminate. Farodja labs developed a very good chroma processor and that was used on some high end svhs and hi8 devices by Sony (slvr1000 for example) that did a very good job of cleaning up the chroma. None of these cassette formats however were ever good enough for broadcast and that is why Sony developed betacam. It puts the chroma signal on its own dedicated track recorded by a dedicated chroma head and uses time compression for the r-y and b-y components. They are fm recorded by a separate head on a separate track. Quality was fantastic however this came a a big expense. Actually 2, one was the cost of the machine and the other the recording time. A 3 hour betamax tape flew through a betacam deck in only 30 minutes. Can't beat the quality though.
@@12voltvids Thank You Dave you know so much info in the electronics field that really is what I wanted to do for a career as well. I'm kind of glad things didn't work out for me that way because old electronics aren't made anymore it's "throw out and buy a new one". I would have lost my job or had to have closed up shop because of the "throw it out..." that companies responded to make it cheap, cheap, cheap and non-repairable, sell it at 3000% profit so we (the company) can keep designing more cheap product that will quit working in a year or two and sell the newly designed garbage product.
Okay rant over LOL. THANK YOU for taking the time to explain the answers to these types of questions. Your trouble shooting skills are second to none and top notch.
I have to admit I don't fully understand everything in your explanations, but I will say I ALWAYS learn something. Chroma and Luminous for example such fancy words the engineers decided to use. Chroma (the video image) luminous (adding the color) info. I didn't know that before. I didn't know it was higher frequencies the higher the quality of the equipment I didn't know about time base correction or how it affected picture clarity.
Most of that isn't an issue these days with DVD and Blu-ray. The same with digital recording eliminated the need for any type of noise reduction, it reproduces the sound exactly as it was recorded. I found that interesting just how much the studios manipulate the original audio from the instruments and even the singers voice to make it sound as it does in the final mastered mix. I'd say you know a good bit about that too LOL.
Anyway thanks again for sharing your knowledge and explaining in detail.
Such a rare machine
A rare piece of junk
Music is dying a slow death since 1998...
Payola must be alive and well for that shit to get on the radio. Will never make it to the station I listen to all day thank God.
I can't believe some of the crap I hear these days! Lol
@@HankWheelersay after me..... payola. Thats where the artist or promoter slips a dj or program director a c note to get the crap into rotation. Its illegal but has been going on for years. We used to have prog rock / punk band here in Vancouver called "the payola$" and were poking fun at the practice by calling their band that and were quotes as saying that would be the only way they would get air play. Actually they were good and their guitarist Bob Rock is one of the greatest producers of our time producing for big bands such as acdc and Metallica. Even the bass player has gone onto success, Alexander Boyton Jr. He is a big time jazz guy these days. Hear him on the radio all the time.
Never knew there was a stereo-type difference.
Yup, the first vcrs were linear stereo and that is probably all they ever would have had if Sony hadn't developed beta hifi. The vhs players were happy with 2 tracks of am radio sound. Sony brought hifi sound our and caught them with their pants down because the way that Sony did it on beta wouldn't work on vhs. No room between the chroma and luminance to put the carriers.
@@12voltvids My SL-C9 also has "2 tracks of AM radio" with BNR noise reduction. It's in fact one of the handful of Beta machines that were built that way, excluding the SLO professional series.
So the story goes that Sony was going to put linear stereo on the sl2500 because vhs had linear stereo. The sl2500 even had a stereo head, but that was put on hold as an engineer proposed shifting the luminance carrier slightly higher to leave some space between the chroma and luminance. Enough to insert a few narrow band stereo carriers. It worked and hifi audio was born. The machine they added it to was the sl5000. They numbered it the sl5200 and the rest is history. Linear stereo ended up on pal betamax machines because due to the slower rotational drum speed there was no room to insert the audio carriers. It wasn't for another year or so before beta hifi was available. They had to develop a system that was similar to how its done with vhs hifi. 2 more heads dedicated for the audio. The pro models did have 2 linear channels but that was more for dubbing 1 channel.
@@12voltvids The SL-C9 came out in 1982, long before Beta hi-fi was released. Mine is the SL-C9ES variant which has a stereo tuner apart from the stereo line inputs and outputs. Linear stereo isn't great but it's nice to have it as a novelty. :)
The 5200 was released in 83 back when I worked for Sony. Development started in 81 and there were working prototypes in 82.
58:46 - Not sure if I could trust modern elec tapes. In my experience the glue on them fails too soon and becomes a messy goo (probably from moisture). Some vintage tapes hold up after so many decades on the other hand.
This machine is nor going back in service. I would never use a machine this age for archive work. It's going back in storage or being disposed of.
It's not an HQ VHS machine, will the image quality be on par with the best HQ ones that came out later ? I know HQ is just a bunch of filters but they did seem to improve image a bit.
Hq sharpened hard edges on playback. In addition to hq modern machines had much better processing and did have an improved picture compared to the old units
I have a Panasonic HiFi VCR PV-S7670 that worked before I put it away in it's box and that was around 1998. The only problem I had with it was on very HiFi movie I would get out an alignment sound and it was bought to a tech while under warranty and they did an alignment on it! But it needs a good alignment and I think you could do it! Would it be worth sending it out to you?
It will have ceramic modules with bad surface caps on it. Not worth fixing as parts not available.
@@12voltvids Well I can take it out of box and plug it in to see if it will run! If it does you still won't do anything to it?
Hi, I'm trying to transfer tapes and I can't find a good working condition VCR with S-Video. I've tried two Panasonic PV-VS4820 and both have a few issues. Do you have any recommendations?
Are they svhs tapes recorded with a svhs camera? If the answer is no then there is no advantage of a svhs deck.
Of you really need an svhs deck it will cost you. You are going to want a modern unit like a Sony slvr1000 or svo2000. Pretty much all the others used the jvc comb filter module and they have all pretty much crapped out by now. All those old decks are ready for the scrap heap.
@@12voltvids Most aren't S-VHS but S-VHS players are more likely to have the S-Video hook up which I am told is the best option when dumping video off a cassette. If you have something awesome you would like to sell me I'll take a look(no promises).
(Thanks for the responses!)
The only thing the svideo connection does is prevent crosstalk when the luminance signal bandwidth wise gets to 3.579545 mhz, the color carrier frequency. Only svhs, hi8 and digital can get to that frequency aproxinently 350 lines. Vhs is limited to 240 so no chance of interference. You should see no difference playing a regular vhs tape between composite and svideo. If you see a difference then something isn't calibrated.
Good working svhs decks fetch top dollar. Last one I sold went for 650.
holy overbuilt batman. what is this, the BMW of VCRs?
Lol I already said that on reference to over engineering and reliability issues.
Dude, you should come hang out with my group of buddies on TH-cam who do console repairs. We're a diverse group with differing political views(we don't get political except for Right to Repair!) and nationalities we're also pretty friendly. These are their TH-cam channels that stream live: "ACE Console Repairs 🇦🇺", "The Cod3r", "Computer Booter"(On vacation visiting his mom, right now.), and "Joey Does Tech" with special mentions for "RIP Felix" who doesn't stream live but his videos help us all out greatly.
I know you don't do game consoles but you will be welcomed and respected for working on vintage tech none the less so please join us.
🥱...
I have one of those. Don’t know if it still works. Bought it new, I remember it was very expensive. Never had any problems with it when I was using it.
99.9% chance it doesn't work.