Multistandard VCR - Hitachi M70EM (M7OEM) and PAL vs NTSC
 

Anyone know anything about this VCR? Got a manual? What's your highscore on the game? :)

For me this is quite a treat, to see a European VCR in NTSC-land. I just wish I had a real PAL tape to play, which I've never seen before. It does multistandard conversion, but I haven't decoded how it works yet.

It's interesting that your buttons say Operate, ours would say on/off or more ISO 1/0. It surprises that your VCR's had games on them. Our system of non-SCART must be really confusing, changing the channel on the TV doesn't affect the VCR. Your antenna connector and of course power plug is different. I like your power plug, it's more foolproof.

We also don't have a channel 1, it got taken over by the FM band somewhere in history. Our channels are at random spots, not just 1-5. And we used to have these codes which would set the record time, listed along with the show.

I've never seen teletext - I'd love to have a tape from a teletext channel, that I could read some 10 years old news and local London weather :)

The antenna connector used in Europe is called a Belling-Lee plug. SCART was certainly neater from a wiring perspective, but the plugs themselves weren't all that reliable. They easily fall out due to the heavy weight of the cables, and the jacks themselves are known to come off the PCB of equipment after repeated use if they aren't properly supported. VCR Plus+ was used in Europe, but was called ShowView and VideoPlus+ (UK and Ireland only) due to Phillips owning the trademark to "VCR" in PAL land. The power plugs are far from foolproof. While ungrounded leads interchange, every country seems to have taken their own route in designing a grounded version of the lead. The most common (and found on step up/down transformers) is the CEE 7/7 plug. The UK has a completely different plug, which is quite large due to the local laws that requires every single plug to be fused.

You may want to dig here: http://www.hitachiserviceeu.com/supp...userguides.htm

Drop down to Video Tape Recorders (VTRs) and don't enter a model number, click search. All VTRs with manuals will be listed.
I don't see this model listed, but sometimes similar models have useful manuals.