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Sony Betamovie BMC-500p Camcorder...

Started by twocvbloke, June 28, 2018, 02:25:17 PM

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twocvbloke

Was going to post this in with the cameras, but as it's more television-based, I thought it'd be more appropriate here... :)

Anyway, I was perusing ebay the other day, looking at the wide range of Betamax products at extortionate prices, and spotted this Sony Betamovie BMC-500p camcorder, for £20 (plus £20 for shipping), and it was a case of I just had to have it!  ;D

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/312146780640

I'm not exactly obsessed with Betamax, but I do love the format, despite having been a financial flop for Sony in the domestic market, it was a better quality medium for recording onto with the different methods of writing the signals to the tape compared to VHS, making for a sharper image with better colour rendering...

The camcorder, I'll admit I've had two of them previously, sadly neither worked due to what at the time seemed to be water damage, so they never came back to life, and somewhere around here I have the predecessor, the BMC-200p, also not quite "working", but that's largely due to a lack of power (bad NiCad battery), and also a complete SL-F1UB (known as the SL-2000 in North America) portable recorder kit including the HVC-2000 or 3000p camera (I forget which!), again suffering power issues, but that's more to do with the Tuner-Timer unit which I think has bad caps...

Anyway, the 500p camera is interesting to me as it's one of the earliest (that I know of) examples of a domestic camcorder using a CCD sensor, replacing the earlier mainstay of the tube sensor as used in the earlier cameras, so was quite the technological leap for Sony. Not long after though, they ditched Betamax and went to their 8mm tape format (which technically speaking was essentially a reduced-size Betamax format!), so is the last of its' kind...

Plus, it just looks so cool, very well designed looks-wise, makes you look like you're using a high-end TV camera, when it's just a basic record-only camcorder that needs a separate Beta machine to play the tapes back on, also I don't know if it has a battery charger or not, but looking at what is in the case, I'm going to say not...  ;D

Enough of my waffle though, pictures!!

FABphones

#1
Yikes, I'd forgotten just how HUGE they were. Don't forget your accessories -
The turned up collar
Batwing leather jacket - with the sleeves rolled up
Leg warmers... Fluorescent ones...
oh - and a Mullet.
;)

*I found a BBC Betamax tape in one of my fields once. Took me ages to find an old Betamax recorder (Boot Sale) to play it on.
And when I did.... It was blank.  ::)
A collector of  'Monochrome Phones with Sepia Tones'   ...and a Duck!
***********
Vintage Phones - 10% man made, 90% Tribble
*************

twocvbloke

Quote from: FabPhones on June 28, 2018, 02:57:47 PM*I found a BBC Betamax tape in one of my fields once. Took me ages to find an old Betamax recorder (Boot Sale) to play it on.
And when I did.... It was blank.  ::)

Now was that Betamax or Betacam? The latter wouldn't play properly on a regular Betamax machine (Betacam run at a higher tape speed) and would appear "blank"... :)

FABphones

Ohhhh man! I bet you are right.

The tape got thrown out with the machine. So I'll never know what was on it.
....And now I have a new ending to the story.

I'm a proper twerp sometimes.
A collector of  'Monochrome Phones with Sepia Tones'   ...and a Duck!
***********
Vintage Phones - 10% man made, 90% Tribble
*************

twocvbloke

Well, if you didn't know the difference between the two then you weren't to blame, though the irony is, you can use Betacam tapes in Betamax machines as they're the same tape type as each other, though Betacam SP can't be used in any Betamax except two or three of the high-end models due to the tape being a metal type that would destroy the heads in the other machines...

19and41

The Betamax system was developed by Peter Goldmark,  who also developed the 33 1/3 long playing microgroove record system.
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
— Arthur C. Clarke

twocvbloke

And amusingly, come the 8th of December, I'll be 33 & 1/3rd, so I could consider myself an LP...  ;D

twocvbloke

The camcorder arrived today, and it came with the battery charger (it lives in what I thought was a cassette tape case in the carry box as I have a similarly shaped tape case somewhere!), two batteries (though one has been dismantled presumably to be rebuilt or had been rebuilt), and of course the camera itself... :)

And amazingly, the one battery, it still works!!!!  ;D

That said though, the camera won't eject the tape deck, so I can't put a tape in to test it, but, I dug out my other Betamovie, which turns out is a BMC-100p (the 200p came with a fuzzy-logic auto-focus feature, this one is entirely manual focus), and for the first time in a very long time, that one has powered up perfectly, and ejected the deck, and took a tape without tangling, and started recording without problem, whether or not it actually recorded anything I don't know as yet as my SL-F1UB is still in its' box on the shelf... :)

So, the 500p needs some work to get the tape deck to open up, probably a drive belt that has degraded, but overall it seems to be in great shape, quite happy about this find...  ;D

No pics as yet as I'm waiting for an important call, and don't want to be taking pics on my mobile waiting for it to ring...

twocvbloke

Okay, maybe just one pic, just to show how things have changed so much with "handheld" camcorders...  ;D

twocvbloke

Phonecall knocked me sideways (counselling-related stuff, cos my brain be broken, if it wasn't obvious by now!! ;D ), so didn't get around to taking pictures, so took the 500p to bits, mostly to check the CCD sensor board as they apparently can suffer from leaking capacitors, this one doesn't it seems (but not a guarantee that it won't), and I also sorted out the eject issue, turned out to be old hardened grease that locked up the worm gear that operated the eject and the tape loading mechanism, light drop of oil softened that back up and brought it back to life... :)

The battery seemed to run for a while in my 200p, so it seems to be "good", but being a NiCad, and not having anything to fully discharge it before a recharge, erm, yeah, that'll be fun to try to recondition to keep it "alive"... ???

But I'm pretty darned happy with this kit, should go nicely in my Betamax "collection" (barely anything, and I'm not 100% sure where all my Beta tapes have gone!!), just need to put up some more shelves to put things on display properly, including my phones which have been a tad neglected lately... ;D

HarrySmith

A little trick I used back in the day with my battery RC cars to drain the batteries was I took a 12 volt automobile light bulb, soldered a wire to each of the contacts on the bulb (on the bottom for positive and on the side for negative) added a battery connector on the wires and plugged in the battery. Leave it sit for a few hours, or overnight, and let the bulb drain them down.
Harry Smith
ATCA 4434
TCI

"There is no try,
there is only
do or do not"

twocvbloke

Come to think of it, I do have a 12v Bus Bulb somewhere I could connect up to the battery, must dig it out...

(said bulb shown here - http://www.classicrotaryphones.com/forum/index.php?topic=6457.msg98429#msg98429 )

HarrySmith

Harry Smith
ATCA 4434
TCI

"There is no try,
there is only
do or do not"

twocvbloke

That's that sorted and discharging, only downside is light at this time of night in my bedroom might get a touch annoying, but oh well... ;D

The battery holster case was certainly helpful here, was trying to think of how to connect the battery terminals, just a simple case of wedge the wires inbetween the terminals and the holster, sorted...  ;D

twocvbloke

The bulb popped....................  ::)

Ah well, I think I have a 120v bayonet bulb somewhere, should provide a good resistive load to drain the battery... :)