Early Australian Video recorders.

Dear Video Karma members. Recently I have been reading on Video Karma about early V.C.R's, and realise that I do not recognise any of the models, and hardly any of the brands.

Therefore I have decided to share some of my collection of early V.C.R's built for the Australian market.

First for those of you who enjoy the technical side, I shall briefly list some of the technical specifications.

Mains supply 240 volts at 50 Hz
System B/G. Vertical 50 frames per second. Horizontal 625 lines.
Channel width 7 MHz.
Colour system P.A.L.
Channels received
Band 1 channels 0,1,2
Band 2 channels 3,4,5,5A
Band 3 channels 6,7,8,9,9A,10,11,12

V.C.R.
Tape width 12.7 mm
Tape speed 23.39 mm/s
Video head speed 1500 RPM.
Head to tape speed 4.86 metres per second.
Video track width 49μm

If you think that the received channels make no sense, that is not the half of it all. I shall go into it at a greater depth some time in the future. It gets weirder/more strange, gets added to, shifted, off-set, even has an extra carrier added. But that is for another day.


Now, let me describe the following V.C.R. The second model “National”, (as they were then referred to) model NV-8610 A. This is an update of the NV-8600A By the way, the suffix A, refers to models intended for the Australian market.

It took me a couple of years to get this V.C.R. And I regard it as a better model to have than the first model the NV-8600 A. I bought this one on e-bay early this year, and although it was located around 900km away, it was only about 3km away from where a relative has a holiday house, which he regularly visits. Anyway. I soon had the set delivered to me and at first it appeared to have a servo fault with the rewind/fast forward drive. I thoroughly cleaned it and replaced the belts and video heads, but did not replace the pinch roller as it appeared to be in excellent condition. I do wish that I has bought a new brake band. After much study of the meagre service data to hand, the fault was finally traced to a faulty tape!

After more cleaning, replacing parts, re-greasing, cleaning switches and pots, I hooked-up the V.C.R. Because of its age I was tricked by its non-standard connections between the antenna and V.C.R. Both Belling Lee, (now called “PAL” connectors, “F” connectors are only used up to the wall plate) were female, and not, female for aerial in, and male for V.C.R. To TV.

The next trick to fool me. Tuning-in the local stations. This model has the tuning indicators operating in reverse. The high frequency stations are at the bottom of the scale, and the lower frequency stations are at the top of the dial. Once I had the set tuned into the TV, I began alignment using my old dual trace oscilloscope. I found that my adjustment tool for the A.C.E. Head was not valid for this early set. Anyway after aligning the tape-path A.C.E. Head and balancing the output of the head amps, the picture was quite good although not perfect. A non-technical person would never pick it.

And now for some pictures of the Piano Key NV-8610 A V.C.R.