JVC HR-S7600 detects recording as S-VHS
 

Hi there. I have a recording that is probably poor and my VHS unit interprets it as an S-VHS recording while it is highly unlikely to be and as a result plays pretty garbled. Audio is mostly OK. Do I have any course of action for forcing the VCR to NOT play as if the recording is S-VHS?

It's probably detecting S-VHS ET mode, Bad recordings can trigger the high frequency mode detection circuit that S-VHS ET system uses on normal VHS tapes, There is probably no fix for this but post a sample to look at to see what kind of situation we are talking about here.

Thanks for taking the time to help. Here's the sample. When I go forward or backwards while playing, the picture is almost OK. Can't decide whether toggling TBC/NR makes it better, maybe better on or same.

Situation with the tape is it has some camcorder footage transferred at beginning which is fine, rest of it is from TV which are separate recordings and are all bad.

https://losttribesource.org/store/test2.mp4

Some low speed recordings do not have a standard speed, therefore it can only played back on the VCR or at least the brand of VCR that made that low speed recording. I've had tapes like that in NTSC and was able to play them back in a multi-standard multi-scan VCR, but don't play on a single scan standard VCR, My multi-scan VCR don't even register what speed is like SP, LP, EP, the indicator is completely off with those oddball tapes but playback is fine.

What I mean by multi-scan VCR is the scan speed of 525 and 625 native recordings, The capstan and drum motors have variable speeds on those machines, Unlike other machines that are set to either 525 (60 fields/s) or 625 (50 fields/s).

Not all multi-standard VCR's are multi-scan, Some use color standard conversion schemes such as PAL60, NTSC 4.43 or convert to another color format entirely, but cannot output the native frame rate. So if you can get one of those VCRs you should try it.

Thanks again for taking the time. I'm in Eastern Europe so the tape is European PAL (although some TV in the 90s was SECAM). I have a JVC VCR from the UK and a Sony one, both don't play the tape. I'll probably have to move on from this particular tape. It's odd how many different types of tape corruption I encounter... but it's probably mostly due to inept recording on bad quality tapes, overwriting tapes and maybe degradation...