[720p/50p] BBC1 (Scotland) | Telly Addicts edition | 20th November 1995

© BBC TELEVISION 1995

The only bits I had to cut out was a 30 second clip from Smell of Reeves and Mortimer S1 E5 where the boys had fishing gear on and were reviewing hair parting magazines... Oh, and about a minute of Doctor Who from Remembrance of the Daleks Part 4 (the bit where the Doctor lasoos a cable to the Dalek shuttle from the classroom window, tells the people with him what he’s going to do, slides down the cable by his umbrella, smashes into the shuttle and short circuits a Dalek on guard inside it).

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!