Why does our bedroom destroy VCRs?

We own three VCRs. All three of them have been placed in our bedroom, and all three of them went haywire when placed in the bedroom, even though they worked perfectly well in other locations.

By went haywire I mean they lost the ability to play and record videocassettes. All you could get from the VCRs after they were in our bedroom was white noise.

Fortunately, the effects are reversible – if we take the VCRs out to the study or the living room and just let them play a tape for four or five hours, the VCR will slowly regain the ability to play and record tapes.

We’re utterly puzzled by this phenomenon. All we can figure is that something in our bedroom is emitting and electromagnetic field that interfere’s with the VCR’s ability to read and write to the VCR tape.

Whatever it is is having no effect on our DVD player, which makes sense, given that DVD’s aren’t reading a magnetic field.

The only other explanation I can come up with is that sinister agents of the Republican Party are doing it … wait a minute, no politics here, I meant the TRILATERAL COMMISSION. Yeah, the Trilateral Commission, that’s the ticket. Scheming bastards.

Anyway, anybody have any idea what the hell is going on in our bedroom? (Relevant to VCRs of course. I know you guys. Don’t even think about it.)

“Magnetic” interference is unlikely. The level of magnetic interference needed to affect a video read head or the tape would have to be very high. Depending on how the VCRs were hooked up RF interference is more likely to be the culprit if the phenomenon is not due simply to random chance.

How were the TVs hooked up. AV cables or channel 3 out to TV tuner input?

We just hook up the standard coaxial video output plug from the VCR to the coaxial video input plug from the TV.

Is there a significant temperature or humidity difference between the bedroom and the rest of the house? Condensation (dew) inside the machine could cause this sort of problem.

Not so’s you’d notice. It’s central air conditioned here and there’s a noticeable difference between the downstairs and the upstairs, but the study (where the VCRs work) and the bedroom (where they don’t) are both upstairs.

Try using good quality AV line cables from the VCR’s AV out directly to the TV’s AV input instead of coax and see if the problem persists.

Have you seen poltergeist? Might need a priest.

I wonder if there isn’t some kind of electrical noise in the AC circuit in the bedroom causing the erratic operation. This would be easy to check. Run an extension cord from the study to the bedroom to power the VCR, and see if the problem goes away.

My suggestion: Bring in an audio cassette tape player/recorder, and see if similar things happen. Plug it into the same wall outlet too. If you get similar or different symptoms, it may give you a clue.

Another idea: Try the VCR in the room or hallway right outside the bedroom, instead of all the way to the living room.

Dust. All the symptoms point to it.

When a VCR’s heads get dirty, all you get is noise (snow) on playback or record. Because the contamination is light, and not too gummy, it clears up relatively quickly when you move the unit to a cleaner environment.

I’m not commenting on your housekeeping skills (although if the bedroom is really filthy, a good clean wouldn’t hurt). It’s just that bedrooms are naturally the dustiest rooms in the house. Dust is mostly dead skin cells and hair and you spend more time in the bedroom than any other single room, so there’s more dust there. Especially if pets spend the night with you.

There’s another possibility: could a cat be sleeping on top of the VCR? That might really muck it up! Is there perhaps more room for a cat on top of the unit when it’s in the bedroom than when it’s in the living room?

DVD players are not susceptible to dust the way VCRs are.

If I’m right, Keeve’s audio recorder test won’t work (i.e. the audio recorder will work fine), because audio units are nowhere near as sensitive to dust as VCRs.

I don’t see an easy solution. DO NOT cover the vent holes on the top of the machine to try and keep the dust out: it could overheat. You may just want to get one of those head cleaning tapes and use it whenever necessary. But be careful. I remember that years ago some of them were too abrasive and could damage the heads. I assume that those problems have been fixed by now, but it wouldn’t be a bad idea to do a little research to be sure.

Good luck.

Thanks, these are some interesting ideas I hadn’t considered.

I don’t think it’s the cable, because the problem persists when the VCR is taken out of the bedroom. If it were a cabling problem, you’d think the problem with disappear as soon as the new cable was in place.

Something could have chewed on the electrical cabling in the walls in our bedroom, we’ve had problems of that nature in the past.

But dust sounds really plausible as an explanation. You see, we have rabbits. The rabbits don’t stay in the bedroom with us, but they are in a room directly across the hall from us, and their door and our door stays open, and since we provide the rabbits with hay to munch on and build nests in, it’s pretty durned dusty in there.

I particularly like the dust theory because that would explain why the VCRs need to be played for a few hours outside the room before they work properly – the tapes are cleaning dust off the heads.

I’ll definitely be checking out that dust theory, and getting a VCR head cleaner, give the place an extra-thorough vacuuming and look at an ionizer or some other dust-removing device.

How close is the VCR to your window air conditioner?

Maybe it’s your tv in the bedroom not the vcr?

I suspect the trouble is the underware drawer. Noone EVER suspects the underware drawer.

Hmmm… let’s see… I checked the silverware drawer, and I checked the plasticware drawer… The software is on the shelf, and the hardware is at Home Depot… Where the heck did all that underware go???

:eek: underwear :eek:

While dust is the most likely cause of the problem in this case, the most common cause of VCR problems due to location is heat. Don’t put it on top the TV, etc. Don’t block the vents, the bottom vents are easy to block if you put it on carpeting.

We don’t have a window air conditioner, we have central air. There is a return in its general vicinity, I think. However, the problem also manifested itself when we moved the VCR and TV to another location that didn’t have any returns nearby.

If that were so, why do I get perfectly fine cable reception and good images from our DVD player?

Well, we did once find indicatins that the Spanish Inquisition had been hiding in there. Probably from the cardinal that hangs out on the porch.

It’s on a plastic parson’s table, by itself, except for some tapes stacked up beside it. We had some heat problems with all of our VCRs when our AC went out in midsummer a couple of years ago. All the VCRs woudl record and play, but the image shimmied and wiggled so much you could barely make out what was going on.