I hooked up the FireWire input, and the HD/digital circuitry works fine. Old DHVS tapes don't play back hardly at all, but a newly recorded section will almost play back fine. So I assume that the alignment is out of whack for some reason. In order to test the capacitors on the back of the motherboard I had to remove the tape transport. I won't do that again!

I've had the "Calibrating 201" error on my HM-DH40000U system and a recap of all caps on the power supply board of 1500uf and below fixed it. Another very odd thing.... Only when the top of the VCR was on did it fix the pixilation issues and at least one additional 201 error after the recap. I've ran it for many hours since then and all is well. I wonder if the top of the machine is responsible for grounding or shielding something some how? I could take the top off mid watch and the 201 error would come up on one occasion and a D-Theater picture would start to get weird.... Standard VHS was fine.

Maybe this will help someone out there.

Thats great news that you got the power supply working! I wonder if the act of removing the cover flexes the circuit board and/or connectors? I see that in some stereo receiver repair videos that they apply DeoxIT D5 to connectors. I'm also wondering if cold solder joints might lose contact with the cover off.