VCR picture good, then jumpy, then green screen?
 

I have been experimenting on an old VCR that was producing a green screen. I gave it a good clean following TGrant's guide with the soggy paper. There was a bit of muck from the heads and drum.

I ran a tape through it and it looked pretty good, so I tried another tape, and after a minute or so, the screen went green.

I saw on Tom's guide that running a tape in fast forward will reveal dirty heads (snow on the cue lines). This VCR sort of does that, but also jumps and rolls as well.

The green screen (which I assume is no signal) occurs with or without an ES15 in the workflow. Also note the jumping OSD.

The attached capture is of Fast Forward, then Play.

The heads themselves seem to produce a good picture; could it be something else?

Is this a bin job?

Does the menu screen jump without a tape playing as well? It doesn't look like bad heads, maybe one or more capacitors are starting to go bad.

Thanks hodgey, the menu does jump all the time, without a tape playing.

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Here's another, with a different machine (once again with an ES15 and DVK200):

Could this jumpiness be a trait of old, worn out machines, and if so, is there a "simple" fix? I have other VCRs where this videotape looks great.

-- merged --

I'll add that for the second VCR (NV FJ630) I did adjust the tracking pretty accurately but still got the jumping.

Odd. The VCR may just be bad. That green screen is from the VCR itself.

OK, thanks LS, a couple of my other VCRs play this tape OK so I conclude the jumpy machines have had it.