Beautiful SR machine, what a great find! The endless menus seem a little too much, but it's a top hdtv broadcast beast. Sooo expensive, one could easily buy a residential flat for that price. Everest peak in tape vcr history! Fun sidekick, that kid is smart. Cheers 🇵🇹
I have to admit I was one of those people shouting at the screen when watching this! To be fair this is far from being a intuitive machine and as a professional VT operator (1992 - 2008) I learnt to operate this machine after operating D1, D2, D3, Digibeta, D5 and ampex DCT machines for many years. So, you kind of developed a mind set for how these machines worked and just adopted their different approaches. Great to see one of these old beasts working. Non-playback of Digibeta is probably a good thing in this case - In my opinion it would have been a waste of very precious head hours to use this machine for anything less than HDCAM playback. Also, be mindful of Sony HDCAM SR tapes dating from 2004 - 2005 there was a batch that had a tendency to snap (humidity problem in the factory I believe). If the tape snaps in one of these machine it tends to whip off the heads with it unfortunately! The head spin speed is ferocious in these things.
Oh I hope I don't come across one of those bad HDCAM-SR tapes, that would be heartbreaking. I have an J-H3 so I probably should run HDCAM on that and only SR tapes on this big beast. You are right, DigiBeta machines are plentiful and cheap, so no need to run those tapes on this much more expensive machine. Any idea what setting is wrong that when I power up it starts in Remote 2 (50P) mode, since I've changed the battery?
This is great! I have never seen a HDCAM VTR. Really interesting to see that intriguing battery clipin design, classic Sony design concepts. Have you used XDCAM as well?
Wow, what a coincidence, I recently bought a srw5500 on eBay and it was delivered to me yesterday 😅 Amazing machine! Also does very high quality upconversion from SD to HD (including very good deinterlacing).
Well yours might. But as mine lacks the DigiBeta option, I'm not sure it will do. Or will it do so in E-E mode? Prices seem to vary wildly from about £1000 to many times that.
There were 2 SRW-5500 and 2 SRW-5800 HDCamSR decks where I used to work and neither of the 5500's had the Digital Betacam playback board fitted as it was an optional extra. Apart from the extra cost of the board I think it wasn't fitted to prevent people from unnecessarily putting wear on the very expensive heads playing back Digi-Beta tapes when there were plenty of Sony DVW-A500P decks around to play those at the time. The SRW-5500 can record in both HDCam and HDCamSR formats but the SRW-5800 was a slightly later and cheaper model and they could only record in HDCamSR and the HDCam format was playback only. Also the cheaper 5800 didn't come with the 4:4:4 RGB colour space or the format converter, it was another optional extra. The lack of the Rewind and Fast Forward buttons probably started on the Sony HDW-F500 HDCam deck, but that version of the front control panel was also available as an option for the DVW-A500 series but I only ever came across one A500 with that panel fitted and it was a hired deck. Note of caution if you ever need to remove the tape carriage to extract a jammed tape beware that there's a piece of razor sharp metal somewhere on it, as I managed to slice into one of my fingers while trying to remove a tape from one of these last year.
"You don't know what you're doing! " fucking hell 🤣🤣🤣 great video! That machine looks like a right old faff. You can see why people were getting more amped up to go solid state. I can't imagine trying to use this in a TV station!
Broadcast video recorders can be picked up for very low prices now, but you were lucky to get a HDCAM SR. I would be interested to see what connections are provided on the machine; I’ve never seen an HDCAM SR running, only one sitting on a bench awaiting repair, and I couldn’t see the back of it. Does it cane analogue audio and video connections or only digital? Does at use reference video like SD machines do. Does it use RS-422 serial interface for remote control like SD machines do. Does it have an Ethernet connection? I’m astonished that you need to manually set the clock on the thing and that it doesn’t talk to a NTP or SNTP server on a network. In a studio environment with lots of machines setting them manually would be a pain, and they would not be accurately synchronised with each other. Even the little 8 port Netgear GS-308T switches on my home network, about £50 each, can be configured to talk to up to three SNTP servers.
Apart from some audio connector options, generally the inputs and outputs are all digital. Yes it has a network port, but I don't know if it can pick up the time that way, I would have to wade through the manuals.
Two smashing machines :-D That clock chip reminds me of the dallas r.t.c found in old pc's, but the battery was molded to the chip. The sony looks very complex, smoke would be coming out of my ears if i had to use it ha ha :-D I like the Philips, hopefully it can be repaired, i bet it won't take you long lol.
Seem to recall the 2324 was superior playback to standard VHS/Bmax but correct me if it was a false memory.Sound was pretty good too certainly a lot better than the dire standard Bmax.
Generally V2000 performance was not as good as VHS and especially Beta, both in picture and sound. Beta linear sound is almost identical to VHS, that's to say, not very good.
Excellent. Always wanted one of my own as the last iteration of Betacam before tape largely went away. I think you'll find your issue with it returning to remote/ lockout on a power-cycle might be a menu setting (of which there are many on that thing.) Quite a piece of engineering. I believe the sale price of that in the 2000s was close to the GDP of a small European nation.
19:44 I know that there's no way to correct the spelling mistakes on CZcams, but I'll say that the text should say "Let's get the SRW-5500 home onto the workbench.".
At 19:44, the text was supposed to say "Let's get the SRW-5500 home onto the workbench.", but the typos on CZcams, were non-fixable, because that's just the way you edited it with typos via DaVinci Resolve.
It doesn't matter how you edit a video, typos on screen can't be fixed. It happens to everyone, even big channels with millions of subscribers have on-screen typos sometimes.
SR decks are the most finicky, picky, and least user-friendly VTRs I've ever encountered. Every time you use it, you've got to change something deep within a menu just to play back a tape. The warning you're seeing is likely due to the system frame rate and format not matching the input or there being no input. The menus are dreadfully designed, too. Hearing the beep of that menu here triggered some minor PTSD for me... As far as the M4T28-BR12SH1 battery, there's a lot that these seem to do, including keeping internal RAM settings and timecode information, and user settings. I've had to replace them in numerous decks and cameras. Fortunately yours was on a board that was easy to locate.
NV-FS200 is essentially NV-FS88 + TBC and front inputs, also share a fair bit with the NV-F55 and F77 standard VHS hi-fi decks sans the video boards. The FS90 and FS100 are a little older. Been wanting to do a video about the digital scanner feature at some point once I can find the correct remove for my F77 - Managed to find the scanner for an older model + code sheet basically for free but not sure if it works with the newer VCR.
It was a failure because the print quality in newspapers wasn't high enough for the barcodes to work reliably. By the time I bought my FS-88 they had already stopped printing them and so I never used the feature.
We have a stack of NV-FS200s, they're our 'go to' S-VHS machine for transfer work. I adore them. The built in TBC isn't the absolute best but it's better than nothing, for it's main duty of stabilising television playback for viewing it was no doubt a great improvement over a non-TBC model. I need to put up a video tour of our transfer suite as we've got a few odd and unusual machines kicking about.
Great video's, after watching these I decided to rescue my Ferguson FV14 T videostar from the loft , switched on loaded a tape all seemed well until it slowly closed down, first the display went off than the deck shut down, now all dead😢. Anyway thought I'd take a look and I found CP1 on the power supply o/c after a replacement it works accept there is NO display and the red power light is not as bright has I remember!! Great picture and Hifi sound. Would you have any ideas? I've got the service manuals , but I only have a basic understanding of schematics etc. Any help would be much appreciated thanks Rich.
You should look at the power supply voltages compared to the service manual. It might be that one or more of those has failed. The reason could be many, but in general most video recorders use a monolithic regulator IC (STKxxxx part number often) and these can fail. But I can't diagnose further than that from a distance.
Wait... What?! Four questions. 1. How the heck did this happen, and where did you get a Sony SRW-5500 HDCAM SR videocassette recorder from? 2. Will there be a Part 2 of this? 3. Where did you get a BBC Digital Betacam master videocassette (plus several HDCAM and HDCAM SR master videocassettes) from? And 4. What do you mean by "a free-to-collect Sony SRW-5500 HDCAM SR videocassette recorder from a Ukraine Humanitarian Appeal"?
1: Can't say where from, they want to remain anonymous. 2: Yes, I'll do more with this 3: Various places over the years 4: It was free to collect, but the donor suggested we donate to a charity and we decided on the Ukraine Humanitarian Appeal. I will do that once I have a response from my accountant regarding tax, to make sure they receive as much as possible.
Tapes with content produced by BBC (thus with BBC logo on them) can be found all over the world. These are usually dubs (not masters) that have been sent to other broadcasters/clients that have bought a license to air/use BBC produced programs, as well as archive footage from the BBC archive. I believe they do not require to return the dub tapes (that would be a lot of tapes to deal with), so they either get discarded by the recipient or reused for other purposes, and most probably this is how they end up in places like Colins'. Regarding the usage hours of SR decks, I've been told (by a broadcast engineer that used to work on these machines a lot) that SR heads do not last as long as DigiBeta or regular HDCAM heads, and usually 2000+ drum hours are considered high hours for SR. 3000+ drum hours is when they start to fall apart. This probably applies more to record heads than the playback heads, and I can imagine a drum with over 3000 hours should still have some life left in it for trouble-free playback. Never used SR decks myself though - only regular HDCAM and all SD Betacam variants.
hi have you had any md cam discs 600mb ones i know about them i know techmeon has not done them yet if he have i have missed it i watched the new video you posted why i would never go past digi betacam it's all the setting in the decks are a right pain when getting a used deck when i pick up a used deck i have to check all the setting like you did in the video love the audio in betacam very high audio level you could use as some kind of master tapes stop them ending up in the ground wait to the next video
What are you going to use the Sony SRW-5500 HDCAM SR videocassette recorder for? Capturing HDCAM SR, conventional HDCAM and Digital Betacam cassettes (if the Digital Betacam playback board is installed)?
Hmm... These HDCAM SR recorders do not have neither the fast forward and rewind buttons. Is there a reason for the lack of those buttons on HDCAM SR videocassette recorders like this Sony SRW-5500?
Those SRW5500 machines are such a pain to use, Sony really messed up the software after the delightful digibeta machines. The power supplies are not very reliable either.
hi again there are alot of working used Capture cards on the market now i need one to record of a betacam it a mind find now i know what all the in out do what is the best on the used market place now so many are using them for gaming not me just asking what you think as i don't have the space in the rig for isd recorder card in the computer
Really the capture card you choose is partly driven by what connectors you have on your BetacamSP, if you are using a timebase corrector and various other factors. My preferred route is a DVW-A500P player then SDI cable to SDI capture card or via DV bridge to Firewire capture.
hi i know when having a youtube you get people asking homes for gear i used to have this myself where alot of my A/V gear came from in the past i need to get ahead with the fixing as well i have seen new in box video's i had some and a mate to re cap is a right pain i had to do it for mates they don't like it as it takes alot of hrs i can tell you the 16 24 track reel to reel uk model s are easy to fix it's the time some like are fee's are £60 a hour bbc tec out there told me
Yes, but not the range of formats I cover. So we are slightly competitors, but that's fine. I get on well with a number of my competitors. I might even do a zoom call with several of them as a CZcams video one day, that could be fun.
It's great you get your son involved in your videos
Beautiful SR machine, what a great find! The endless menus seem a little too much, but it's a top hdtv broadcast beast. Sooo expensive, one could easily buy a residential flat for that price.
Everest peak in tape vcr history!
Fun sidekick, that kid is smart.
Cheers 🇵🇹
I have to admit I was one of those people shouting at the screen when watching this! To be fair this is far from being a intuitive machine and as a professional VT operator (1992 - 2008) I learnt to operate this machine after operating D1, D2, D3, Digibeta, D5 and ampex DCT machines for many years. So, you kind of developed a mind set for how these machines worked and just adopted their different approaches. Great to see one of these old beasts working. Non-playback of Digibeta is probably a good thing in this case - In my opinion it would have been a waste of very precious head hours to use this machine for anything less than HDCAM playback. Also, be mindful of Sony HDCAM SR tapes dating from 2004 - 2005 there was a batch that had a tendency to snap (humidity problem in the factory I believe). If the tape snaps in one of these machine it tends to whip off the heads with it unfortunately! The head spin speed is ferocious in these things.
Oh I hope I don't come across one of those bad HDCAM-SR tapes, that would be heartbreaking. I have an J-H3 so I probably should run HDCAM on that and only SR tapes on this big beast. You are right, DigiBeta machines are plentiful and cheap, so no need to run those tapes on this much more expensive machine. Any idea what setting is wrong that when I power up it starts in Remote 2 (50P) mode, since I've changed the battery?
Just to help there is another same back up battery with it's crystal on the control panel....xxx
This is great! I have never seen a HDCAM VTR. Really interesting to see that intriguing battery clipin design, classic Sony design concepts. Have you used XDCAM as well?
Not used XDCAM. Most of the XDCAM disc machines out there now seem to be very high hours with knackered lasers.
Wow, what a coincidence, I recently bought a srw5500 on eBay and it was delivered to me yesterday 😅
Amazing machine! Also does very high quality upconversion from SD to HD (including very good deinterlacing).
Well yours might. But as mine lacks the DigiBeta option, I'm not sure it will do. Or will it do so in E-E mode?
Prices seem to vary wildly from about £1000 to many times that.
There were 2 SRW-5500 and 2 SRW-5800 HDCamSR decks where I used to work and neither of the 5500's had the Digital Betacam playback board fitted as it was an optional extra. Apart from the extra cost of the board I think it wasn't fitted to prevent people from unnecessarily putting wear on the very expensive heads playing back Digi-Beta tapes when there were plenty of Sony DVW-A500P decks around to play those at the time. The SRW-5500 can record in both HDCam and HDCamSR formats but the SRW-5800 was a slightly later and cheaper model and they could only record in HDCamSR and the HDCam format was playback only. Also the cheaper 5800 didn't come with the 4:4:4 RGB colour space or the format converter, it was another optional extra.
The lack of the Rewind and Fast Forward buttons probably started on the Sony HDW-F500 HDCam deck, but that version of the front control panel was also available as an option for the DVW-A500 series but I only ever came across one A500 with that panel fitted and it was a hired deck.
Note of caution if you ever need to remove the tape carriage to extract a jammed tape beware that there's a piece of razor sharp metal somewhere on it, as I managed to slice into one of my fingers while trying to remove a tape from one of these last year.
All good information, thanks.
"You don't know what you're doing! " fucking hell 🤣🤣🤣 great video!
That machine looks like a right old faff. You can see why people were getting more amped up to go solid state. I can't imagine trying to use this in a TV station!
It's not the easiest thing to set up and use. Nice though.
Broadcast video recorders can be picked up for very low prices now, but you were lucky to get a HDCAM SR.
I would be interested to see what connections are provided on the machine; I’ve never seen an HDCAM SR running, only one sitting on a bench awaiting repair, and I couldn’t see the back of it. Does it cane analogue audio and video connections or only digital? Does at use reference video like SD machines do.
Does it use RS-422 serial interface for remote control like SD machines do. Does it have an Ethernet connection? I’m astonished that you need to manually set the clock on the thing and that it doesn’t talk to a NTP or SNTP server on a network. In a studio environment with lots of machines setting them manually would be a pain, and they would not be accurately synchronised with each other. Even the little 8 port Netgear GS-308T switches on my home network, about £50 each, can be configured to talk to up to three SNTP servers.
Apart from some audio connector options, generally the inputs and outputs are all digital. Yes it has a network port, but I don't know if it can pick up the time that way, I would have to wade through the manuals.
Probably just the pinch roller...or maybe back-tension haha
Two smashing machines :-D
That clock chip reminds me of the dallas r.t.c found in old pc's, but the battery was molded to the chip.
The sony looks very complex, smoke would be coming out of my ears if i had to use it ha ha :-D
I like the Philips, hopefully it can be repaired, i bet it won't take you long lol.
Looking forward to working on the Philips but I have a few other subjects lined up in the next couple of weeks.
Seem to recall the 2324 was superior playback to standard VHS/Bmax but correct me if it was a false memory.Sound was pretty good too certainly a lot better than the dire standard Bmax.
Generally V2000 performance was not as good as VHS and especially Beta, both in picture and sound. Beta linear sound is almost identical to VHS, that's to say, not very good.
Excellent. Always wanted one of my own as the last iteration of Betacam before tape largely went away.
I think you'll find your issue with it returning to remote/ lockout on a power-cycle might be a menu setting (of which there are many on that thing.) Quite a piece of engineering. I believe the sale price of that in the 2000s was close to the GDP of a small European nation.
Yes it's probably a setting somewhere but can I find it?!
You may be able to fool the machine into playing the digibeta by placing tape over the holes on the bottom of the cassette
19:44 I know that there's no way to correct the spelling mistakes on CZcams, but I'll say that the text should say "Let's get the SRW-5500 home onto the workbench.".
I knew about that one but with upload time being 24 hours, I just had to let it ride.
At 19:44, the text was supposed to say "Let's get the SRW-5500 home onto the workbench.", but the typos on CZcams, were non-fixable, because that's just the way you edited it with typos via DaVinci Resolve.
It doesn't matter how you edit a video, typos on screen can't be fixed. It happens to everyone, even big channels with millions of subscribers have on-screen typos sometimes.
@@video99couk Oh... I see.
SR decks are the most finicky, picky, and least user-friendly VTRs I've ever encountered. Every time you use it, you've got to change something deep within a menu just to play back a tape. The warning you're seeing is likely due to the system frame rate and format not matching the input or there being no input. The menus are dreadfully designed, too. Hearing the beep of that menu here triggered some minor PTSD for me... As far as the M4T28-BR12SH1 battery, there's a lot that these seem to do, including keeping internal RAM settings and timecode information, and user settings. I've had to replace them in numerous decks and cameras. Fortunately yours was on a board that was easy to locate.
The system could just suggest proper settings to suit a tape and offer to set them, but no, you have to work it out yourself.
NV-FS200 is essentially NV-FS88 + TBC and front inputs, also share a fair bit with the NV-F55 and F77 standard VHS hi-fi decks sans the video boards. The FS90 and FS100 are a little older.
Been wanting to do a video about the digital scanner feature at some point once I can find the correct remove for my F77 - Managed to find the scanner for an older model + code sheet basically for free but not sure if it works with the newer VCR.
It was a failure because the print quality in newspapers wasn't high enough for the barcodes to work reliably. By the time I bought my FS-88 they had already stopped printing them and so I never used the feature.
We have a stack of NV-FS200s, they're our 'go to' S-VHS machine for transfer work. I adore them. The built in TBC isn't the absolute best but it's better than nothing, for it's main duty of stabilising television playback for viewing it was no doubt a great improvement over a non-TBC model.
I need to put up a video tour of our transfer suite as we've got a few odd and unusual machines kicking about.
what a behemoth !
Nice. Don't you just love an easy fix.
There's also one bad pixel on the display. Now that's not an easy fix so it will have to stay that way, and it's only cosmetic.
Could you make an in deep review of the Sony SRW-9000PL HDCAM-SR CAMCORDER?
I'm not likely to get hold of one of those.
This with a last gen BARCO crt projector...
Great video's, after watching these I decided to rescue my Ferguson FV14 T videostar from the loft , switched on loaded a tape all seemed well until it slowly closed down, first the display went off than the deck shut down, now all dead😢. Anyway thought I'd take a look and I found CP1 on the power supply o/c after a replacement it works accept there is NO display and the red power light is not as bright has I remember!! Great picture and Hifi sound. Would you have any ideas? I've got the service manuals , but I only have a basic understanding of schematics etc.
Any help would be much appreciated thanks Rich.
You should look at the power supply voltages compared to the service manual. It might be that one or more of those has failed. The reason could be many, but in general most video recorders use a monolithic regulator IC (STKxxxx part number often) and these can fail. But I can't diagnose further than that from a distance.
Wait... What?! Four questions.
1. How the heck did this happen, and where did you get a Sony SRW-5500 HDCAM SR videocassette recorder from?
2. Will there be a Part 2 of this?
3. Where did you get a BBC Digital Betacam master videocassette (plus several HDCAM and HDCAM SR master videocassettes) from?
And 4. What do you mean by "a free-to-collect Sony SRW-5500 HDCAM SR videocassette recorder from a Ukraine Humanitarian Appeal"?
1: Can't say where from, they want to remain anonymous.
2: Yes, I'll do more with this
3: Various places over the years
4: It was free to collect, but the donor suggested we donate to a charity and we decided on the Ukraine Humanitarian Appeal. I will do that once I have a response from my accountant regarding tax, to make sure they receive as much as possible.
Tapes with content produced by BBC (thus with BBC logo on them) can be found all over the world. These are usually dubs (not masters) that have been sent to other broadcasters/clients that have bought a license to air/use BBC produced programs, as well as archive footage from the BBC archive. I believe they do not require to return the dub tapes (that would be a lot of tapes to deal with), so they either get discarded by the recipient or reused for other purposes, and most probably this is how they end up in places like Colins'.
Regarding the usage hours of SR decks, I've been told (by a broadcast engineer that used to work on these machines a lot) that SR heads do not last as long as DigiBeta or regular HDCAM heads, and usually 2000+ drum hours are considered high hours for SR. 3000+ drum hours is when they start to fall apart. This probably applies more to record heads than the playback heads, and I can imagine a drum with over 3000 hours should still have some life left in it for trouble-free playback. Never used SR decks myself though - only regular HDCAM and all SD Betacam variants.
hi have you had any md cam discs 600mb ones i know about them i know techmeon has not done them yet if he have i have missed it i watched the new video you posted why i would never go past digi betacam it's all the setting in the decks are a right pain when getting a used deck when i pick up a used deck i have to check all the setting like you did in the video love the audio in betacam very high audio level you could use as some kind of master tapes stop them ending up in the ground wait to the next video
Not come across MD Camera discs, no.
seems like you'd need a degree just to press the buttons on this one lmao
What are you going to use the Sony SRW-5500 HDCAM SR videocassette recorder for? Capturing HDCAM SR, conventional HDCAM and Digital Betacam cassettes (if the Digital Betacam playback board is installed)?
Mainly for capturing HDCAM-SR tapes, though I may use it for HDCAM too.
Hmm... These HDCAM SR recorders do not have neither the fast forward and rewind buttons. Is there a reason for the lack of those buttons on HDCAM SR videocassette recorders like this Sony SRW-5500?
I don't know why it lacks FF/REW buttons and I think Sony messed up by not including them.
Those SRW5500 machines are such a pain to use, Sony really messed up the software after the delightful digibeta machines. The power supplies are not very reliable either.
I have to agree, the human interface on this is not the best.
hi again there are alot of working used Capture cards on the market now i need one to record of a betacam it a mind find now
i know what all the in out do what is the best on the used market place now
so many are using them for gaming not me just asking what you think as i don't have the space in the rig for isd recorder card in the computer
Really the capture card you choose is partly driven by what connectors you have on your BetacamSP, if you are using a timebase corrector and various other factors. My preferred route is a DVW-A500P player then SDI cable to SDI capture card or via DV bridge to Firewire capture.
Will you add an option of capturing HDCAM SR cassettes onto your webpage?
Yes, once I've proven out the SDI capture route.
hi i know when having a youtube you get people asking homes for gear i used to have this myself where alot of my A/V gear came from in the past
i need to get ahead with the fixing as well i have seen new in box video's i had some and a mate to
re cap is a right pain i had to do it for mates they don't like it as it takes alot of hrs i can tell you the 16 24 track reel to reel uk model s are easy to fix it's the time
some like are fee's are £60 a hour bbc tec out there told me
£60 per hour is not so unreasonable given how skilled it can be to change capacitors on some boards.
Chris does tape transfers in addition to film transfer?
Yes, but not the range of formats I cover. So we are slightly competitors, but that's fine. I get on well with a number of my competitors. I might even do a zoom call with several of them as a CZcams video one day, that could be fun.
Do you need panasonic MII PAL? I have 30 units.
MII Machines, or tapes?
@@video99couk IM IN CHINA PR，MII PAL matchine