ARCHIVED FORUM -- March 2012 to February 2022READ ONLY FORUM
This is the second Archived Forum which was active between 1st March 2012 and 23rd February 2022
Forgive me if I express my concern about the quality of some B&O products. I have two beocord 8000 vcr machines both purchased on eBay. One after the other they developed the same fault. On trying to insert the tape this stops half a way. A sound is heard and the tape tries to go up and down remaining stuck. I opened the top and checked inside and overall this seem a cheap machine. I'm asking myself how they could charge £800-900 when it was first sold. I've seen far better recorders from "cheap" companies.
Clocks then seem to be another issues as they all go slow. Both vcrs, both my tvs beovision 7000 and 4002, the Ouverture all go slow by one minute every few days. How is it possible? I actually forgot to mention the Ouverture changes month without any warning.
Don't you think it's a bit too much to be a coincidence?
What is your opinion and have you experienced anything similar with your products?
Cheers
☺
Certainly with VCRs, B&O were nothing special - Philips or Hitachi things with nice design and a huge profit margin. I learnt that lesson when I paid £750 for the DVD1 dvd player thinking that it was the ultimate player. It turned out to be a basic Pioneer with limited connectivity. It wouldn't play DivX and had no HDMI output. I was a fool buying into that.
Experience has shown that for Video recorders, there is nothing that competes to Panasonic both for performance/engineering & longevity so sadly the B&O was nothing more than a pretty face.
I have to agree with you. I still use a vcr as have lots of tapes plus I like recording the old way. The digital recorders also seem to have problems sometimes with distortions or even no recording. I'll dig to find my old Hitachi which has always worked flawlessly.
Öhm - actually, I've always thought that the VCRs of B&O were pretty darn amazing (not to be compared with the DVD 1 or 2, which were also good from my point of view but nothing special as has already been pointed out). Just like (some of) the cassette decks. I always thought that these were - probably not so well-known to a wider public - areas their quality of picture/sound reproduction was on par with or ahead of the competition. In particular, the VX 7000 was/is great. Let's not forget that you are talking about eventually pretty old products with a lot of turning/moving elements and above all a ton of capacitors in use. It's physics. I doubt that there is any mass manufacturer that can overcome the shortcomings of having such components in use. Of course you can in principle, but the firm would probably not have survived.
Cheers,
Kai
Beocord 8000 is more than 30 years old, right? Maybe one could accept malfunction after all those years?
Livingroom: BL3, BL11, BV11-46 Kitchen: Beosound 1 GVA, Beocom 2 Bathroom: M3 Homeoffice: M3, Beocom 2 Library: Beosound Emerge, Beocom 6000 Bedroom: M5, Essence remote Travel: Beoplay E8 2.0, Beoplay EQ, Beoplay Earset
Both vcrs have not been used a lot. One started having this problem very soon then the other. I believe they are cheap and there is a serious design fault in its mechanism.
I'm sorry but I'll have to disagree with you. I've had other vcrs stored away then re used without any problem. This only happens with B&O. As for the clocks again I had no issues with my other equipment and believe me I've had many. Even my beotalk 1200 stays behind one minute every week or so. Why?
Too much of a simple coincidence.
Bit of an odd one this. My Beotalk and Beocoms keep perfect time as do all of my B&O items - and believe you me, I have a lot as other members here will testify to. The only time they are incorrect is after a power cut - which we have frequently in France.
However, many of my other appliances from AEG, Panasonic etc do not keep time that well.
All electronic components deteriorate over time, as do rubber components such as belts on drives and wheels, grease dries and siezes components. This is universal and occurs for every brand. To expect a 30 year old machine to operate flawlessly without any servicing having been in and out of storage for a long time is unreasonable and I wouldn't expect any manufacturers products to be able to do that better than anyone elses. If I stored a Rolls Royce for 20 years I wouldn't just be able to drive it away without doing all sorts of work - change hoses, fluids, brakes etc etc. Does that mean that a Rolls Royce is poor quality?
For any brand, some products will be viewed as being 'better, or higher quality' than some others. You can't deny the quality of TV's such as the 'old' Avant - the picture quality has been described as the best CRT picture available. Sound and material quality was also excellent as were the features which outstripped most TV's of that time. The same cannot be said of all products - possibly including some VCR's and DVD and HD players - but they too have their strong points with excellent features not found on other machines.
Dave.
Actually, I would say Rolls Royce in a sense is or better used to be poor quality
Manbearpig: Actually, I would say Rolls Royce is poor quality
Actually, I would say Rolls Royce is poor quality
Same applies for Audi, Porsche, Mercedes or any other 'quality' car manufacturer though. It was just an example.
Don't take me too seriously, Dave. Point well taken. I don't think there's much of a difference nowadays in terms of quality between the various brands when it comes to car manufacturers.
Manbearpig:Don't take me too seriously, Dave.
I never do! Only kidding.
I think you are right, these days, especially with cars. Even more so now that one brand seems to be buying all of the others! I don't think the same can be said for consumer electronics though - or can it?
The 8000-series (90's ones) are pretty average build quality, I think they were made by Hitachi like a lot of other Beocord VCR's. For an example, the VX4500/5500 are ver good machines but every small electrolytic capacitor needs replacing for trouble free operation. The pówer supply and capstan motor driver heats up a lot, you'd like to invest in at least 105°C electrolytics for the most part.
Broke my left arm in a traffic accident yesterday so my post takes a bit longer to write!
Vinyl records, cassettes, open reel, valve amplifiers and film photography.
Søren Hammer: The 8000-series (90's ones) are pretty average build quality, I think they were made by Hitachi like a lot of other Beocord VCR's. For an example, the VX4500/5500 are ver good machines but every small electrolytic capacitor needs replacing for trouble free operation. The pówer supply and capstan motor driver heats up a lot, you'd like to invest in at least 105°C electrolytics for the most part. Broke my left arm in a traffic accident yesterday so my post takes a bit longer to write!
Oh no! I'm very sorry to hear about your accident and broken bone Soren. I hope it's a relatively simple break that will heal well and quickly. I shattered my right elbow decades ago and still have the TSA airport security scan tripping metal in there, I never get to walk thru without being wanded.
As for VCRs, perhaps it's just me, but every single one I ever owned, from an early generation RCA thru JVC and Mitsubishi and other brands all were problematic with respect to long term reliability, mainly due to aging and slipping of belts. I got pretty good at changing belts and idler wheels. I kept the old RCA of mine and the one my parents owned running for the better part of a decade or so. If you look at the convolutions and such the mechanism has to perform to get the tape out of the shell and wrap it around the helical scan heads, well, it's no surprise that there would be issues now and then.
As for other B&O kit, I've found it to be quite reliable so far, knock on wood aluminum. The only service I've had to have done was the glass started to get loose on my BS9000, first gen early one, and I had to get it reattached. As it'd been about a decade I went ahead and had them change the laser as many of the first gen ones were having issues though mine was fine, more preventative maintenance as it was while it was in the shop. Other than that, it and my BL8000s have been fine since 1997 when I got them. My Beogram 3000 tangential works fine and I got it in 1987!
But, there are good and bad examples of everything. My dad used to be in the Air Force and did aircraft maintenance. He said some aircraft would fly forever without breaking and some were "hanger queens" that never managed to work properly and fly without some issue. Sometimes the tolerances all seem to stack up in one direction and cause issues.
Jeff
I'm afraid I'm recovering from the BeoVirus.
Just connected my old Hitachi vcr and works fine. Was stored away for at least 10 years. This is the third time I've put it out and it has always worked. Before I also had two VX7000 and even those gave me problems. For what they cost they are not worth it!
The V8000 was a Philips based machine of pretty moderate quality - I have one somewhere! The VHS deck to have at the time was the VX5000, made by Hitachi. All sorts of electronic trickery in a very slim design. The only problem was reliability as they tended to run hot and are also really designed for use with the LX2802 models so not much use now. I have one and a later VX7000 which is very basic in comparison. The VX5500, although not as sophisticated, is probably more reliable than the VX5000 and has more to it than the VX7000.
The VX5000 sold for what would now be £2500 in 1990 (£1145)
Peter
Jeff: Søren Hammer: The 8000-series (90's ones) are pretty average build quality, I think they were made by Hitachi like a lot of other Beocord VCR's. For an example, the VX4500/5500 are ver good machines but every small electrolytic capacitor needs replacing for trouble free operation. The pówer supply and capstan motor driver heats up a lot, you'd like to invest in at least 105°C electrolytics for the most part. Broke my left arm in a traffic accident yesterday so my post takes a bit longer to write! Oh no! I'm very sorry to hear about your accident and broken bone Soren. I hope it's a relatively simple break that will heal well and quickly. I shattered my right elbow decades ago and still have the TSA airport security scan tripping metal in there, I never get to walk thru without being wanded.
That doesn't sound very good either Jeff! How functional is your elbow now?
Mine isn't too bad; the doctor told me that the fracture is small and the majority of the pain is because of the shock my arm muscles received on impact. I was riding my motorcycle (a small model due to my licence restrictions) peacefully when a car driver didn't see me at an intersection - luckily I was wearing full riding gear and picked up the 210 kg bike myself in the adrenaline rush.
By the way, as a note to your dad's work; I was an apprentice at the national railway service main workshop where about 20% of the trains of one type kept returning with poor service intervals to boot. One particular train set visited the shop five times during the two months I were working there while we didn't see any abnormal issues in many other sets in spite of almost 100.000 km service intervals.
Sorry for your accident Soren. I too hope you recover well - and Jeff too!
From my own experience, the V8000 issue is down to one tiny cog on the end of a steel spindle. The plastic goes brittle, cracks, and the cog then just spins on the rod. Way too much for one little component to take - and even if you glue it, it gives way shortly and the loading mechanism fails again.
I'm sure Martin could elaborate in a more informative manner though!!
If we ever get a 'scrap' Avant VCR at LifeStyle AV, we always rob this part from the VCR mech if it works and use it to repair any faulty V8000's. We've 'saved' so many of them by doing this and enabled so many people to watch their old wedding videos, christening videos - and cheesy 80's films it's untrue!
Lee
9 LEE: Sorry for your accident Soren. I too hope you recover well - and Jeff too! From my own experience, the V8000 issue is down to one tiny cog on the end of a steel spindle. The plastic goes brittle, cracks, and the cog then just spins on the rod. Way too much for one little component to take - and even if you glue it, it gives way shortly and the loading mechanism fails again.
Thank you Lee, I'll do my best!
Regarding the breaking cog, it reminds me of some certain Akai open-reel tape decks where the plastic cams that control the play/stop/wind modes tend to break because of brittleness or by being underdimensioned.
Soren, I used to ride a motorcycle when I was young and single, and the one conclusion I came to was there are two kinds of car drivers, those that don't see you and those that do but don't care! Glad it's not a very bad break, but sorry it had to happen to you. Stay safe! If possible, and Don't Panic!
I got almost full use back on my elbow, only remainders are weakness and not being able to quite fully extend it, but almost. While I was in the emergency room every doctor kept coming by and looking at my elbow saying I just saw your x rays, that's a really interesting break. Great, just what you don't want a doctor to tell you!
oh, and it acts as a better, more accurate weather predictor than the weatherman. Heh.
BeoNut since '75
Soren, as a high milage cyclist you have my total sympathy.
Get a few cans in , put on some vinyl and get well soon
I can only speak for VX7000 as I got one of those and though it has been some years since I last used it it was working pretty good. Though after playback for an hour or so it would distort the picture. Cool of and it would be fine.
Then I have the VX7000 style in my '98 Beovision AV9000 which still works great. I had other trouble serviced to get everything going but the video always works in that television.
On the audio side you get what you pay for. After years of experience it comes down to 20 -25 odd years of use leaves most of B&O products to need service.