Digital glitch on Toshiba RD-XS35 HDD

[moxiecat]

I've used a Toshiba RD-XS35 for a few years and love it. But recently, I have been noticing what is best described as a digital glitch while recording to the internal hard drive. My best description is that it is a digitally-stuttery picture that lasts for a few seconds. If I go back and re-record the same section of tape, it then plays and records fine.

Here's a brief sample. You can see the digital glitch in the first shot after the camera zooms in, and then it gets worse when the kids are onscreen:
http://www.oneworldonehealth.org/toshiba_glitch.mpg
(BTW, this is an MPEG-2 file. It is easier to see the glitch on a TV than on a computer, but hopefully it will be apparent.)

My source deck is a Panasonic AG-1980, and I'm also using a Datavideo TBC-1000. This is an LP tape and the Panny is the only deck that stabilizes it sufficiently; the picture and the audio are FAR worse when played with my JVC. I only started seeing these glitches recently while running a bunch of EP and LP tapes, so I don't know if the types of tapes are to blame.

On a related note, I have also seen occasional dropped frames when running these same tapes, which I never noticed before. Since I am using a good VCR and TBC, this should not be happening either, and I don't know if it's related to the glitch. I have tried two different TBCs to rule out a wonky TBC, but the glitch happens with both. I have not tried a different VCR, but since the glitch looks so digital in nature, I wasn't sure the Panny was the culprit.

If a fragmented hard drive is to blame, would I see the glitch WHILE the encoding was happening? I thought that what you see while recording is the original video coming through the recorder's input--not the actual encoded video that ends up on the hard drive. So would this indicate that the hard drive itself is not to blame, but perhaps the encoding chip, input, or playback hardware? (Yikes!)

Nevertheless, my next step is to re-format the Toshiba's hard drive. Since I have lots of stuff stored on the hard drive that I would have to back up, I thought I would try to get some advice before taking that ultimate step. Maybe someone else has had the same problem with this machine? All ideas very appreciated. Thank you very much.

[samijubal]

That looks like a VCR glitch, not a DVD recorder. If you see it when playing the tape, it's the tape. DVD recorder glitches are usually blocks, pixellation, etc. The way it goes from the top of the screen to the bottom adds to the tape being the culprit. Tapes are scanned from the bottom to the top, but show the opposite way on the screen, thus the scrolling from top to bottom.

[p_l]

It also looks like a VCR glitch to me. Start with the simple solutions: Have you tried cleaning your VCR's heads recently?