La saga du magnétoscope (part 3)

Read part 1 or part 2.

The woman blanched when she saw me walk back into the Expert store with the VCR under my arm. But she was nice. I went armed with three video cassettes, and I told the woman that I needed her to hook the VCR up to a TV set so I could show her the problem. She was perfectly willing to act on that request. In a couple of minutes she saw what I was talking about.

Why did I take three video cassettes with me? Why not just one? Well, I took one that I had recorded here in Saint-Aignan a few years ago using our TV set, which is a PAL device. I took another that I had purchased in the United States and was recorded in NTSC format. And I took a third that I had purchased in France, which was recorded in SECAM format. I wanted her to see all three. All three produced the band of white static at the bottom of the TV screen.

The woman kept saying that it must be my tapes. But in all three formats? Including tapes purchased in France, not just in the U.S.? She said she would make sure the technician adjusted the height of the video head (la tête) so that it would read my (add the implied word "peculiar" here) tapes correctly. And she said if the adjustment could be made that afternoon she would telephone me and let me know. Otherwise, it would be Tuesday.

The telephone didn't ring. Not on Saturday. Not on Monday. Not on Tuesday. I got busy and kind of forgot about it. A good week went by. One day when I was going to get some groceries at SuperU, I remembered and stopped at the Expert store. It had been 10 days or even 2 weeks since my last visit.

The woman and an older male colleague (my age, I mean, not the boy young man from before) kind of scrambled when they saw me. The man went into the back room to look for my VCR and tapes. It took him a while. However, he came back out with everything I had left there — at least my cassettes haven't disappeared, I thought. He was puzzling over the work order attached to the machine.

"Nothing has been done to your magnétoscope," he said. "I'd prefer not to give it to you to take home now. I need to check with the technician to find out what the status is."

I kept wondering two things: why has nothing been done? And how much are they going to charge me on top of the 60 euros I've already paid? I smiled politely and asked the man if my phone number was on the work order. It was. "Just call me when it's ready," I said, and left.

Two more weeks went by. The next time I went to the store, it was the same story. First a scramble to locate the machine and cassettes. Then the news that nothing had yet been done. With an apology this time.

Finally, a week later (it was December already), the phone call came. The machine was ready for pick-up. I was not optimistic, of course. I kept telling myself that in France, you have to learn patience all over again. Everything seems to take much longer than it should. And I was proud of myself for being patient. But I was not optimistic.

I returned to the store the next day to get the VCR. The woman in charge was all smiles. She went and got the machine and cassettes and brought them out. There was a piece of paper attached, and she quickly touched it and said, "This is the work order from before..." In other words, there was to be no extra charge for the second session in the shop. Thank goodness.

I had a whole speech worked out in my mind in case she asked me for more money. I had been thinking about it for days. Would I feign innocent surprise? "Oh, you want me to pay more? Are you sure?" Or righteous indignation? "You can't be serious! I've waited nearly two months and now you want me to fork over more euros!" Or would I bargain with her? "If you can't repair the machine, I think you should give me my 60 euros back. You can't do that? Well then you should give me a store credit for a future purchase." I was thinking I would just buy a new VCR from Expert. But not without a 60 euro discount.

So I was relieved not to have to pay more or make my speech, and the woman was all smiles. She touched my arm several times and apologized for the botched repair and for taking so long to make it right. What could I do but smile back? She said for me to take the machine home and then to let her know if there was still a problem.

Well, there is not the same problem, but there is now an even bigger problem. The VCR seems to work more or less as it should. But I still can't copy my old U.S. video cassettes onto DVD.

The Dazzle DVD Recorder is a USB 2 device.
Plug in your video camera, VCR, TV, or other video source...

Why not? Because the transfer device I bought, the Pinnacle Dazzle DVD Recorder, won't read the NTSC signal produced by the Toshiba VCR, which is apparently the same as on nearly all VCRs sold in France. They didn't tell me that when I bought it, or in the user's guide. After much reading around on the Internet, I think I have figured out why.

Most of the VCRs sold in Europe that can read NTSC, i.e. American, tapes don't really send out an NTSC signal to the TV set or video capture device. They send out a PAL signal with an NTSC color signal layered over it. That's called PAL 60, and is a kind of workaround for NTSC compatibility. The normal PAL signal is called PAL 50.

...and you can record video onto your hard disk
or even directly onto a DVD in real time.

The Pinnacle video capture device can interpret true NTSC, along with PAL 50 and SECAM. But it can't really read PAL 60, the hybrid signal designed to fool a PAL TV set into reading NTSC tapes and DVDs. I've exchanged several e-mails with Pinnacle's technical support people and they assure me there is no patch or driver that I can download to make the device work properly with a European VCR playing an American video tape.

It's not really true that I can't transfer the NTSC tapes to DVD with the equipment I have. But they can only be transferred in black and white. No color. I guess that's better than nothing. But I want them in color, like the tapes.

I need an American VCR to get the true NTSC output, with color, from cassettes I recorded or purchased in the U.S. It's just as well that I didn't buy a new VCR, because I would still have had the same problem.

But at least I can make DVDs from tapes I recorded or bought in France, and I can make DVDs directly from the TV here, including programs I have on the hard disk in my satellite decoder. I've done a lot of that kind of recording and it works fine.

Do you ever wonder why you get involved in such projects? I've spent weeks, or a couple of months on this now, not to mention good money, and I've hit a wall.

Fin.