Panasonic 6850H record mode?
 

I have recently purchased a Panasonic 6850H Vhs unit. I believe it is broadcast quality, Hifi, svhs. I have the AG-A600 attached remote. I cannot get the record function to engage. Every combination of buttons has yielded no results. It plays, rewinds, jog wheel works, etc. Everything, but record. It just doesn't respond to record button, record/play, rec/audio dub. It does say 'hifi duplicator', perhaps I need another machine connected to it, or daisy chain for the record option to respond? Playback function works fine and reproduces audio and video. I can get an audio signal via the rca connection to show signal, in and out. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

No panel indications what so ever?

The simplest cause could be the cassette has the write protect tab missing, or the write protection sensor in the VCR is inoperative.

These were nominally commercial/industrial use devices, designed for use in applications such as tape duplication services because they could be daisy chained. VHS was never what one could call"broadcast quality" although stations may have used VHS to make copies of broadcasts for distribution to consumers. Except for retro fun purposes it would not be my choice for a video recorder, or playback for capture purposes.

Some very low rent broadcasters in the US I believe could get away with S-VHS for some duties, but it's rare we deal with US tapes and even rarer an event from US broadcasters.

VHS did find uses in broadcast, but most of it is quite tangential such as rushes for domestic viewing, RoTs, and contestant/interviewee tapes. A lot of VHS was used by broadcasters but not for actual production duty. 3M/Scotch did make a line of very high-quality archival tapes with the simple moniker 'BROADCAST' on the tape lid and were sold as VHS 'Broadcast' cassettes.

They're all red-flap S-VHS tapes with gold lettering, short leaders and were used here by all the main national broadcasters; I've seen a few thousand of them so I can vouch for this. They were not used for playout or edit duty I must stress.

The machine looks like fun, no input, it's a bit of nerdy intrigue, but I can't see how useful it can be in 2022 except as bit of nerdy tinkering fun?

thank you
 

I will check out the write protection sensor you mentioned. The tabs are on all tapes I have used. I am only actually using it for bouncing digital audio off of the tape. Kind of an experiment, I'm an audio engineer and would like to use it on various signals versus DAW tape saturation plugins. Thanks so much for the input.