[720p/50p] BBC1 (Scotland) | continuity | 20th November 1995 | Part 1 of 3

© BBC TELEVISION 1995

From 30 years ago tonight...

This was from one of about 150+ VHS tapes I bought as a joblot from a house clearance guy on eBay who was based in Aberdeenshire. Unfortunately, all of the tapes were very mouldy. And all were recorded on a couple of VCRs that had serious tape guide alignment issues on both SP and LP recordings (only one of my four VCRs would get something approximating good tracking! And I know that all of my VCRs have good tape guide alignment). And almost all were recorded in LP speed. So we have mouldy tapes... made on machines with tape guide alignment issues... and most of those recordings were made on LP. So there was NO chance of perfect tracking with any of these! I am NOT ruining any of my VCRs by messing with the tape guides as there's no guarantee I'll ever be able to get them correctly aligned again as the screw threads in tape guides are not meant to be messed about with. Ever. It's extremely doubtful that the person who recorded these knew that both of their machines ever went out of alignment as a machine with misaligned tape guides can still play back it's own recordings perfectly. It's when you start swapping recordings between machines that the issue becomes obvious. So all I can say is fair play Samsung! Your VCRs may be cheap and nasty but the one I have was the only one to play most of these recordings back semi-perfectly!

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