Latest chapter in the Saga of Sven

[veg-o-matic]

Hello, all:
Youall are probably familiar with my good friend Sven, the '65 Zenith model M2737U, subject of a recent thread.
Well, he's feeling fine now and brings in a jolly decent picture. This is using rabbit ears in an area I was told couldn't get decent reception. Must have one hell of a tuner in there!
Anyhoo, I connected him up to a VCR so I could use the remote control and the picture is still fine 'n dandy. Unfortunately, when I play a tape, the picture ain't so good.
At first, there were blank parts of the screen at upper left and lower right. Fiddling with the horizontal hold knob took care of that. Still, the upper half of the picture is significantly bent to the right. I looks like someone is pulling the picture over. The picture on the bottom half of the screen is perfect.
WTF?
Naturally, I tried messing with the fine tuning but that didn't seem to help. In fact, it didn't seem to do anything at all, so I'm not sure it even works.
Anyone got any ideas? Is this a common problem with older sets? I seem to remember that being mentioned when VCRs first came out.
Thanks again for your help!
Bob

If your picture is decent on rabbit ears but shows problems with the VCR, I think the problem might be with the pre-recorded tapes. We had a circa 1968 Admiral console at one point (this would have been in the mid 80's) and when we hooked up a VCR to it to play pre-recorded tapes, we experienced major picture problems. If I recall, it hae something to do with anti-copying encription on the tape, which modern sets can filter out, but the older sets couldn't due to being older technology. If the set works ok without the VCR, and the VCR and tape work OK on newer sets, this might be the problem. I might be grasping at straws here (I'm far from a techie) but I hope it helps.


Eric

[Rob]

Veg-O,

The problem is likely what they call flagging. You need to get into the horizontal AFC circuit in the TV and reduce the size of the horizontal AFC timebase capacitor. This is a common problem trying to play VTR or VCR into an old tube TV. Sometimes on a professional monitor you will see a rear apron switch labelled H-AFC with positions 'fast' and 'slow'. You want 'fast'.

Rob

[andy]

...