a bit OT: a video recorder, the law and everything

[Dave]

My 3 month old dvd/video player has developed snow which fades out to entire picture loss on the video. Naively I called the well-know box-shifting warehouse where I bought it hoping I could get it replacement. Apparently the guarantee means they will send it away for repair, cannot say how long it will take to get back and (the manager told me), "we have legal protection as well as the consumer"! This customer-facing response was merely in reply to my request asking if they could just give me a new machine as this was so new.

AFAI can make out, the situation is indeed as they say: no requirement to change it - just repair it. Oh well, live and learn I suppose. I sort of hoped an "unfit for purpose" argument might apply - it seems not.

Ok I can live without a video machine, but somehow I have little confidence in any "repair" these places could do on a pretty delicate item such as a video recorder. I had thoughts of not getting it back for months then it wouldn't be fixed properly, then sending it back etc etc.

Faced with the above I decided to run a dreaded video head cleaning tape (we grind to destruction) through it. Yes these are evil sporn of the devil things but as I have zero confidence in getting it fixed anyway before tape is entirely obsolete, I did it anyway. Almost everything worked fine *except" for *any tape* from a brand new batch of *** tapes which would always produce the symptoms above. Bought a differnet batch of tapes - they all work fine!

[Jeff]

Many years ago I bought a toshiba video £300 + in those days when a cheapo was £100, this toshiba would not play 75% of my childrens disney collection, as luck had it I tried these tapes in next doors goodmans and the Minlaws currys own brand m/c to find both played them all with no probs. When I phoned toshiba's helpline I was told that these pre-recorded films are on very poor quality tapes and when I pointed out that the lesser m/cs played them no problem I was told that there mechanism was not really compatable....... needless to say the m/c was swapped for a sharp and a refund !

Regards Jeff

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Yup. 'Snow' like that is a sign of either worn heads or oxide shedding from the tape. And with a new machine, worn heads are unlikely.

A better way to clean it is to blast the heads with a suitable aerosol cleaner - or something like IPA and baby buds. But this obviously involves some dismantling.

I'd take the tapes which caused the problems back. They shouldn't show symptoms of oxide shedding for perhaps 10 years.

[mike ring]

"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in news: [e-mail]:

IPA cetainly used to give *my* head a seeing to ;o)

mike