Anyone have experience with SECAM VHS?

[6r4nicky]

Evening all,

I’m new to the group and was wondering if anyone can help at all? I recently started to collect secam vhs tapes. I recently purchased a LG secam video player and to make it display the image in colour on my LED TV, I purchased a SECAM and NTSC converter.

When I put a secam video in the player, the blue screen is displayed fine. However, when I go to play the video I have it in colour, but there are faint dark lines, all equally separated in the image. I first thought it was one or two of the videos, but it displays this with every video.

Is there something I’m doing wrong that is causing the dark faint lines to show up in the video? It’s not a making it unwatchable but when it’s noticed, it spoils the viewing of the videos.

I can’t get to my laptop tonight but I will post a couple of pics tomorrow evening to show the issue. Any help or advice for now till I post some pics tomorrow, would be really appreciated.

Many thanks

[dj_fivos_sak]

Are the tapes recorded in French SECAM or Middle East SECAM? These two are not compatible with each other. In Greece, back in the 80s we used the SECAM B/G broadcast systems and VCRs recorded in MESECAM and many multi system machines are still around here.

Fivos

[Scimitar]

I found that none of the freely available converters were much good and resorted to a multi-standard TV in the end. I believe it is to do with the converters not doing it properly and being a bit of a "fudge". I can't recall the reasoning behind that though.

[Max Ripple]

Do you really need the SECAM/NTSC converter?
Most modern LCD tv's seem to be multi standard, as long as you connect using say a Scart cable?
Nick

[alayn91]

Hello,
For French SECAM, you can use Toshiba video K7 recorder & player RDXV50.
( If you can find one)
With HDMI connection, you can use progressive scan. The quality is a little better.

[Davewantsone]

When I had a house in France I bought a Hypson Nicam stereo video recorder.
It would play PAL and SECAM tapes and record in both formats. I brought it back to the UK. When using it to pick up analogue TV before it closed I would get no FM sound (set only received 5.5MHz FM or 6.5MHz am) but the Nicam would kick in and give me stereo sound even though I believe the French Nicam frequency is different to the UK. I have several SECAM tapes. If put in a PAL VCR you will only get a flashing blue colour though the sound and BW content will be OK.
When using my Hypson VCR you still need a SECAM capable TV to view in colour.

[ben]

You say you bought an LG SECAM player. If this is not a French unit, then it is almost certainly not SECAM L. Such VHS machines from France record the signals in a totally different way, using FM subcarriers in the low Mhz range, there is no heterodyne downconverter, unlike PAL.

MESECAM was a sort of clever bodge that used the PAL downcoverter in machines used in PAL/ SECAM areas outside France. I have seen this on many 1990s era VCRS. If the VCR was bought outside France it is 99% likely to use this circuit. As such it will play French SECAM L tapes in black and white or with patterning you describe. Likewise, MESECAM tapes will play in B&W on a French Secam L unit.

I have somewhere a Sony SL-SX70, the French version of the SE70. That is a true SECAM L machine which also operates in PAL B/G. I also have Hitachi and Sharp multi system VCRS which can use all three standards.

I have a German Fisher VCR which has a 'DDR-Empfang' switch on the front which uses the same MESECAM circuitry mentioned earlier to record Secam B/G from the former East Germany in West Germany, which along with Spain, Belgium, Portugal and (I think) the Netherlands, used PAL B/G.

[winston_1]

Originally Posted by Davewantsone

When I had a house in France I bought a Hypson Nicam stereo video recorder.
It would play PAL and SECAM tapes and record in both formats. I brought it back to the UK. When using it to pick up analogue TV before it closed I would get no FM sound (set only received 5.5MHz FM or 6.5MHz am) but the Nicam would kick in and give me stereo sound even though I believe the French Nicam frequency is different to the UK.

Now that is really interesting. The Nicam system developed in the UK used a Nicam carrier at 6.552MHz (0.728 x 9).
When Nicam was adopted in system B countries the 7MHz bandwidth channel was not wide enough so the Nicam carrier was moved to 5.824MHz (0.728 x 8). In system DK and L countries with the sound at 6.5MHZ the Nicam carrier was also placed at 5.824MHz.
Early UK Nicam receivers only worked with 6.552MHz though I am aware that the (mostly unused) Nicam decoders in modern digital receivers will work with both 6.552 and 5.824MHz. I'm surprised that something as old as a VHS machine is dual Nicam standard, but there you are.
When I have a moment or three I will try my Panasonic NV-HD650B with 5.824MHz Nicam which I can generate from my a2b Multibox.

[winston_1]

OK I found time to experiment this evening and I found that neither my NV-HD650B nor an Akai CRT analogue TV would decode 5.825MHz Nicam.
But both my Philips and Blaupunkt (UMC) modern TVs were happy with it.