VHS to DVD Errors

[bondc]

I have a Magnavox MWR20V6 VHS/DVD standalone, only about a year old. I've been burning VHS tapes to DVD-R, and have run into odd and annoying behavior from the Magnavox.

Before I go on, understand that I'm not talking about commercial VHS tapes. These are tapes I recorded, some so old that I had one of those top-loading VHS machines at the time. There is no copy protection on these tapes.

Here's what happens. Say, after perhaps 30 minutes of recording, it suddenly stops and tells me that the tape is copy protected and cannot be copied. It writes the title to DVD, and then I can start dubbing again. Sometimes, it will go another 30 minutes before giving me the same error, other times only 2 or 3 minutes. I can burn the tape to DVD-R, but it takes twice as long as it should, because it keeps stopping, giving me the error, and writing the title to DVD.

There's an 800 tech support number for Magnavox, and I called, but you can imagine how helpful that was. The three times I called, the conversation went something like this:

"Your tape is copy protected."

"No, it is not. I recorded it myself."

"You cannot copy from copy-protected tapes."

"I realize that, but this tape isn't copy-protected."

"It would not give you that error if it weren't copy-protected."

And we get no further than that.

So has anyone run into this, or have any idea what's going on here?

Thanks.

[jagabo]

Macrovision decection is very unreliable. False positives like you're seeing is common. You'll need a video "clarifier" or full frame time base corrector.

[somebodeez]

Hi there,
We use to have a top loader too.
It was a big beast with dials and knobs.

I don't know if this could have anything to do with it or not but sometimes, before loaning my TV recordings to friends back then, I'd pull the little tab off of the tape because one of the friends had a habit of pushing random buttons and would accidentally record over my stuff.

Could the tab missing cause recording problems like what you're having? If so, maybe check your tapes for that...

Edit: I just read jagabo's response and that's probably more plausible.

[Krispy Kritter]

This seems to be a common side effect of old tapes that have a lot of "noise". The recorder is interpreting this "noise" as MV. Your best bet, would be two seperate units (one for playback and one for recording). If you still have issues that way, then you will also need a "video clarifier" bewteen the two unit as stated by jagabo.

[LCSHG]

bondc

Yuu say that you have run into this problem. Did it always do this or just start

Way back, the ilo 04 DVD recorders were very [tight] in MV protection. They would do much as you say the Magnavox does With a Non CP Source. A new firmware was brought that [Relaxed] the MV detection and the problem was solved.
A number of Mfg, especially on combo units set the MV detection so tight that they often registered MV when it wasn’t there.
Tight and relaxed are words that were used by the MFG

Your unit may be set very [tight] in MV protection and be reacting to noise etc.
Most often you will get the response you did from tech support


If you are using the combo to dub from VHS to DVD a TBC may not be possible, and it should not be needed with tapes that do mot have CP.

A number of units had this problem. If I remember even some Pioneer units had issues with VHS tapes

To Check
I would first Get another working VHS unit, even a top loader and play it into the Magnavox and see if it records OK If that doesn’t work [and you can]. Get another DVD recorder, using the separate VCR as the source.