Seeking Help With Philips VR713 Problem

[masbe12]

Hi All,

I'm new to the forum, so apologies in advance if I make any newbie errors!

Summary
Philips VR713 video recorder unresponsive. There's a tape in the unit. It's a copy I made in the 1990s of a cine movie my father made in the 1970s, so it is of sentimental value.

When I power the unit on, it makes all the usual tape clicking sounds. Nothing sounds wrong. The display is blank though (e.g. no clock), and there is no video output. And the unit does not respond to any button presses on the unit.

However, when a press a button on the remote control, the (what I call) "IR Receive" indication comes on on the display. It looks something like this:
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i.e. the reverse of the "IR Transmit" button on the remote control, which looks something like this:
O)))
But that's all that happens. Nothing else on the display, and no video out.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to what I can try to coax the machine back to life?

More Information
The machine was sitting in the attic for years. I took it down a few months ago. At that time, the symptoms were exactly the same. After fiddling with it for some time, I (now, presumably mistakenly) came to the conclusion that the icon being displayed was a key icon for the child lock - the display is not very bright anymore, so it's difficult to make out the exact icon without looking very, very closely.

So I pressed (can't remember if it was a single press or a long press) the Lock button on the remote control (which actually has a key icon on it) and the unit sprung into life.

Over the past couple of months, I used the unit in conjunction with a USB Video Capture Adapter to digitise my Father's VHS-C tapes. Then I tried to digitise the tape that is in it now. Back in the 1990s I used a ZX Spectrum to create a title sequence for the cine video that’s on the tape. That title sequence used a black background with coloured text. (And I used the audio capabilities of the unit to add a nice soundtrack from a CD player – but I digress…) The problem with that is for some reason, the video capture card cannot capture a stable image of the title sequence. It plays on TV no problem – just the video capture card can’t manage to get a stable image (and I tried another one too with no success).

I the back of my brain I had a faded memory of issues like this that could be fixed with a video stabiliser. So I popped on eBay and bought one for a tenner. It arrived the other day. So I brough the unit downstairs (I had been using it with an old TV upstairs – I’ve more space downstairs to hook up the video stabiliser) and discovered that the unit was back to its old trick of being unresponsive on power on. “No problem!” I thought, “I’ll just hit the lock button on the remote control again and I’ll be back in action!”. But no.

That led to me checking that the unit and remote are registered as VCR1 (people might recall that there was an option to have one remote control two units), which it is, and to look more closely at the display. That was when I realised that it was not in fact showing a key icon, but (what I’m calling) an “IR Receive” icon:
(((O

I’m baffled as to how I managed to get it to work previously. Maybe I accidentally hit some key combination on the remote control which brought the unit to life – I don’t know.

Any assistance that anyone can give to help me get this unit working again would be greatly appreciated (not least as the sentimental tape is in the machine at the moment!)

Thanks in advance,
Brian

PS Now I’m wondering if the icon displayed last time was different than this time. But IIRC they look the same. Also, I believe the unit is supposed to display LOCK when a button is pressed in lock mode, and that wasn’t happening. I'm just doubting myself now, given the same steps are not producing the same results this time round.

[John123]

Hello, and welcome to the forum,

I've had experience with the VR712, and the VR813. I assume this is cosmetically the same as the VR712, but with the OSD menus and VPT programming feature of its S-VHS bigger brother (VR813).

These machines use one or two small NiCad battery cells as backup for the clock and timer etc. They have a tendency to leak which may cause erroneous operation, and/ or the no power-up symptom. The cells are located on the clock/ timer board behind the display (underneath the top mainboard).

Worst-case scenario; they've leaked and eaten through the copper traces on the reverse of the PCB. A thorough clean-up and repair may be required. If there's no leak damage, the batteries can often be removed and left at that. It just won't hold the clock and timer programming data in the event of a power cut.

The second issue is power supply capacitors, as the original blue Philips ones tend to leak quite badly over time. I've even had the main filter go open in one of these, so if you want any sort of continued reliability, blanket replacement is highly recommended. This often explains why the display goes dim.

To answer your later question; I'm not entirely sure if this model outputs an RGB signal like the VR813. If it does, try switching it down to composite video output (CVBS) in the initial setup menu, as that will give better compatibility with image capture devices. You can use a TBC (Time-Base Corrector) between the VCR and image capture device to further stabilise the image.