# VCR showing color programs as b/w

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vcr-showing-color-programs-as-b-w/95810>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [November 28, 2001, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vcr-showing-color-programs-as-b-w/95810 "2001-11-28T23:59:53Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![sorrel554](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/91b2a8/32.png) [@sorrel554](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sorrel554)\
**Post date:** [November 28, 2001, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vcr-showing-color-programs-as-b-w/95810/1 "2001-11-28T23:59:53Z")

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Last night I popped a tape in the VCR and when the picture appeared, it was black and white. I stopped the tape, and the TV picture was in color, as normal. I restarted the tape, and it was black and white again. I had to turn off the VCR completely and repower it for it to operate normally. I rewound a bit and rewatched the part that had just appeared b/w, and it was normal, so it’s the VCR, not the tape.

This was a tape of some shows I’d recorded off my TV, and I have watched the tape before, and it looked normal every other time.

Anyone have a clue why this would happen? Does it mean my VCR is about to die?

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**Author:** ![Patty\_O\_Furniture](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/96bed5/32.png) [@Patty\_O\_Furniture](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Patty_O_Furniture)\
**Post date:** [November 29, 2001, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vcr-showing-color-programs-as-b-w/95810/2 "2001-11-29T01:40:51Z")

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When I serviced consumer electronics my specialty was audio, but I was close enough to the VCR guys to hear them mention this problem a few times. Apparently the chrominance (color) signal is the hardest for the video heads to read, so in the event of dirty heads or a slightly mis-aligned tape, the C signal is the first to be lost. If your VCR has a manual tracking control you might be able to demonstrate this by mis-adjusting the tracking until the picture starts to suffer… the color should be the first thing to suffer.

It’s possible that the tape was slightly mis-aligned and ejecting it & reloading it allowed it to be better “seated” in the mechanism. Or you might have dirty video heads in which case it’s time for a cleaning. In the latter case, the problem will re-occur more & more often as the heads collect more crud.