Dear members,
I have a low hour (300 hours) SR365u. Really clean.
The machine has been solid, and worked fine the last time I used it about 4 months ago.
Now it has declined to play tapes.
It loads and ejects fine.
Everything lights up, drum is spinning, but the tape remains stationary.
I tried several tapes, and with the cover off I see nothing amiss.
Where might I look closer? I don’t see any loose or snapped belts but maybe they are underneath.
The manuals I’ve seen are of poor quality and I can’t read the parts lists, not that it would help me…
I’m hoping to sell this but I may need to take it somewhere for service.

-- merged --

Cannot access my 365u post topic
Too many redirects (20 limit).
I’m trying to make an update but cannot get to it.

If you're curious what happened:
You used a "funny character" in the post title. Not a normal ' but a fancy Microsoft Word style ’
See the difference ' vs ’
Well, the ’ is sanitized, and the thread link becomes /forum/vcr-repair/15240-sr365u-tape-won%92.html
The % is further sanitized, so it loops with infinite redirect.
-LS

I know you know the default answer:
Not a recommended deck, not suggested, not worth using for actual capture usage.

And then, as you also know, decks (and TBCs) are failing all the time now. The tech was not made to last 20-30+ years. All along, it needed maintenance, and probably never got it. But now, for sure, it needs refurb work. Or repair work.

So that's where you are now. It's time for maintenance, refurb, repair.

I detest your service guy, but good luck if using him again.

JVC 365U has no real value. And yet, newbies suckers pay far too much for these on eBay, anywhere from under to $100 to $500+, although we don't know if those were returned later. (This is why eBay "sold" listings is misleading worthless info for AV gear. Much of it is returned, at the seller's expense, often with excessive hassle.) So that's your target market for this thing: people that don't know any better, fools asking to be parted from their money. No TBC, no better than a HR-S29xx, 35xx-38xx, 48xx, 59xx. If you want a low-end VHS, zero reason to spend $500 on it, unless refurb'd + minty condition (maybe, but even then).

- I'd not sink money into it.
- Consider the time ROI on DIY repair. I say "nope", better things to do.
- Perhaps consider freebie/donate ("buyer" pays shipping) for it. Even then, I think you'll be hard pressed to find takers.
- Or keep it for "learning on", but I don't think you need more decks for that.

Yep, one of my less-nice and less-optimistic posts. Just being real with you. Them's the facts! :2cents:

Well, it certainly does help to operate the unit properly if the operational mode is set correctly.
There is a switch for serial/local/remote on the front, and I must have hit it during some cleaning or moving or whatever.
The machine works great, it's very clean, and gives a nice picture.
As for my tech guy, let it go.

Even if the model is not recommended you did get if gifted to you for free and it seems tough to get just a working composite regular VCR for free much less an Svideo deck. Everyone has that old one they will give you that should work great but actually eats tapes or has other issues.

This is no tape eater.

I'm now in a similar situation. :(

About 15 minutes after I replied to this post, our washing machine seized, and the room was full of smoke. What caused it? No idea, nothing obvious was wrong. I unplugged it, aired out the house. That wore me out, I was done for the day.

Hours later, the decision was made (while I was napping) to plug it back in, to see if they could at least get the water drain cycle to work. Magically, the unit started to function as if nothing had ever been wrong. So they washed another load. I don't trust it at all now.

If I can't see an issue here, then no DIY fix is possible. I'm not paying for a service call with parts, as it'd start to creep towards the price of a newer machine.

So, getting back to your situation...

Without a service manual, without any obvious issues, DIY repair will be difficult.

You can always try it again. Maybe it was just cranky? But even if that's the case, you cannot trust it anymore.

I'd still suggest not dumping money into this model VCR, especially since it will easily match or exceed the cost of a comparable non-TBC S-VHS deck. Currently, $200 is standard pricing for all the low-end non-TBC S-VHS decks. There is nothing special about the 365U in the 2020s.

This model broken VCR is probably worth as much as a broken washing machine, so resale is unlikely.

It was not being kranky, I had the operation switch in the wrong position.

Ah, okay, I didn't understand your prior post. I'd assumed you had checked everything (as you're not a newbie), and came to this conclusion that it needed repair/refurb type attention. Bad assumption. Simple user error, something not toggled. Yep, been there before myself, it happens.

But still, for others, where it's not simple user error, my advice still applies. Not worth fixing once broken.

And share a video sample of your 365U. :)

Here is a DSC (direct stream copy) of a commercial tape capture with the 365u.
Windows 7, using a Tevion, default settings, with my CMD-1200 to keep sync.

Capture looks nice, though in a vacuum it is hard to tell how it differs. You have any other VCRs to compare the same scene to from the same tape?

Yes, in a vacuum, it seems decent.

But I do question the luma on it, similar to this thread:
https://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/vid...ty-darker.html

That is a common issue with lower-end decks. Usually just consumer VHS, but S-VHS is not necessarily immune.

Comparisons would help.

I bet it was capacitor between power wires :) It is something new for me that they blows like RIFA miniprint (called Smoke Bomb) in Studer/Revox even in washing machines (at least from this century). But if so, you can continue to use it, however check if you have 30ma leakage current protection switch for your bathroom anyway.