Unstable picture on LD Player

[Marvin Moss]

Magnavox VB8005-CH01 Laserdisc Player dated Oct 1981.

I hear audio and see a picture but it is not stable. Banding is occuring
with about 6 or 8 horizontal bands jumping around. Sound is there but, of
course, it is garbled. There are 17 pots in the electronics and I have no
info (schematic or service manual) for this antique. I guess tweaking each
pot a little to see if the picture will lock in and then, if not, returning
the pot to where it was is the only choice I think that I have at this
point.

 

[LASERandDVDfan]

Don't bother attempting to repair.

This is an old player.

As a matter of fact, this model was essentially the first consumer LD player
model ever made! (The ABSOLUTE first mass-produced LD player was the
DiscoVision PR-7820, engineered and manufactured by Pioneer for
industrial/commercial applications.)
However, your player is the VH-8005 Magnavision. This means that your player
originally came with a remote control. The original model which came out in
1978, the VH-8000 Magnavision, did not come with a remote.

Now, there isn't any significant difference between the VH-8000 and the
VH-8005. Both are players of the same design with only one small difference.
This means they share one common attribute: they both were junk!

The VH-8000 and VH-8005 have a history of being tempermental and unreliable
LaserDisc players. As a matter of fact, many spent the majority of their time
sitting on a repair bench being cursed at by the repair tech. (Of course, the
fact that the majority of discs made at that time, especially those by
DiscoVision, were terrible did not help matters any.) Not many Magnavisions
were bought, especially in 1980 when Pioneer introduced its first consumer LD
player, the VP-1000. The Pioneer entry made the Magnavox VH-8000 and VH-8005
look like second-rate paperweights!

If you do have discs that are hanging around that you wish to play, look around
eBay for a modern Pioneer player, such as the excellent CLD-D704. If you also
want to be able to play DVDs, the DVL series of combo players are actually not
too bad. - Reinhart