I counted the heads, and to my great surprise, there are four! It's amazing what a good cleaning can do. Before, it had this horrible pukey green hue to the plastic face. I cleaned the cover and face, and now it's a nice silver-grey! I gave it a head cleaning and pinchroller cleaning and all it needs now is belts.

Cool, and strange that it doesn't advertise the 4 heads on the front.

I completely forgot until now, I did get a hold of a Casio VF-3000 back in February. I got it for $40 on eBay. The seller said the VCR didn't work (likely just belts), but the TV worked just fine. When I tried it, the TV was useless, just showing a blank green screen that you often see on sick Casio TVs. I decided that a repair attempt was an undertaking outside of my skill, so I returned it as a not-as-described item and wasn't out any money. Too bad because it was in beautiful shape otherwise. Even the battery held a charge.

Video of the JVC VHS-C camcorder is now up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vy2ZMKdP1G4

I got a circa 1988 Sony SL-390 Betamax today at Goodwill for $8.09. I'm pretty excited about it. I've had a pretty hard time with Betamax reliability issues in the past, maybe this one will work.  It's mono non HiFi, but at least it's Super Beta.

Wow nice! You seem to have a knack for finding Betamax VCRs. I've never seen one in the wild, myself. Now if you ever find a Video8 or Hi8 VCR, that would be something way neat. 

I'm sad to report that this VCR does not work. What did I expect? Every other Beta I've ever gotten has been broken - why should this be an exception? It has some stupid mechanical problem where it's stuck in play mode and the load/eject gears are stripped/broken. I tried to e-mail MisterBetamax for a repair estimate, but it just kicked my e-mail back saying COMMUNICATION FAIL-SMPT ERROR. In short, this VCR has already become a PITA. Just like all the other Betas I've ever owned. Not only that, my iPhone has just taken a turn for the worse. The performance has been going downhill for a long time. It's getting worse every week.

Darn. Funny you say that about your iPhone, I just made a thread polling other members regarding what kind of phone they use and why.

Video of the Hi8-XR Handycam is now up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkim2WTf8aM

I'm not into AV technology as such, but for many years from my childhood I had a Sony VCR deck that had a large flap in front of the video loading slot of the player. The flap was thick black plastic and when the flap was down revealing the video loading slot, it revealed buttons for minor adjustments like turning on or off the automatic tracking as well as manual tracking. It also had a clear window on the bottom half of the flap to reveal the VFD display. It also had plenty of LEDs on the front. 

It was a great deck that was from circa 1994. It spent much of it's life hooked up to a late 1980s Philips CRT based TV and had played and recorded many videos during it's time and had been well looked after.

As children, me and my little brother was always fooling around with video cams etc, recording moments of our childhood and sometimes our friends too. I still have a few of those tapes and treasure them as they are precious memories. 

I saved two awesome vintage camcorders from recycling today. Zenith VideoMovie VM6200 VHS-C camcorders, made in 1986. They are rebranded JVC VideoMovie GR-C7 camcorders, differing only cosmetically. I got them complete with two carry cases, two power supplies, six batteries, and two sets of all the original cables. Aside from one having its viewfinder held together with a string, they are both in perfect shape. They both power on and output video and sound. I haven't tested the VCRs on them yet since I don't have a tape here with me, but Mom is visiting me tomorrow, and is bringing one. Amazingly, all six batteries hold a charge, ranging from 20 minutes to over an hour, just sitting without a tape. The batteries do get very hot when you charge them, though.

I can't wait to fully test these tomorrow. I really hope they work, although I unfortunately won't be surprised if they don't. Camcorders aren't one of those things that stand the test of time very well.

The JVC GR-C7 was the smallest, lightest full-featured camcorder of its time. It was also one of the first camcorders to use a CCD image sensor, instead of a pickup tube. Retail price was $1500. As you can see, the Zenith version doesn't look nearly as cool as the bright red JVC. Although early CCDs usually had very poor low-light performance, these actually do pretty good; as good or better than my phone.

Mom brought me one of my VHS-C tapes. Both camcorders work absolutely perfect, and produce a pretty good picture. The batteries came to life a bit more, too - they no longer get so hot when charging, and they last 20-45 minutes of recording time. When I (eventually) make a video of the camcorders and put it on YouTube, I'll link it here.

I got some nice blank tapes at the thrift store today for $.33 each. I don't have any equipment to use the Hi8 or the VHS-C, but I thought I should get them in case I get something in the future.

I had a sony VHS camcorder but I couldn't get it to work, even with the wall adapter. 

Dunno if it applies with VCRs, but with cassette decks, they get a "hunger" after sitting for a long time (They "eat" tapes; test with something you don't care about; for me it'd be something like Willie Nelson).

I can confirm that. We had a clock radio cassette player that set outside in the sunroom as a clock for years. I brought it inside to listen to the cassettes if found in my basement and it pulverized the tape I put in it (pat benatar I think.)   The thing was in bad shape since it was exposed to so much humidity.