Hello Everyone . Here's a question/suggestion...Build a mod so I can play my 8-9 year old vhs tapes(rec in "EP" )in  a vhs player that I just bought which only has sp and lp playback.Maybe a dimmer switch to reduce power to the device?

EP/SLP is short for extended play. Extended play is similar to LP, but actually provides you even more recording time. EP was primarily used to document long, continuous events without the need to change video tapes every 2 hours. Due to the fact that the video is not of optimal quality, many times this setting was not used in order to preserve the quality of your footage. Tapes recorded at EP usually are the most problematic after years of storage, displaying a wide variety of tape damage symptoms including color loss, audio loss, frame skipping, and tracking issues.

Yes All this I know  but I had a addiction back in the day and I had to record everything on tv and when I finished waching what I rec. I would rec. over it, I usually recorded 5 times before throwing tape away because of the tape quallity.. I recorded series mostly and I can't watch ep 3 before watching ep 1 and 2 so I was constantly recording. Over the years I would rec a full tape,then watch the epesods of the series in order so I could follow the story.......trying to make this short lol! anyway I was recording more a week than I could watch and over the years my collection of 8 hour tapes is probably well over 300...maybe almost 400 ....never counted I got over my addiction of having to rec  (the last tape recorded was sometime in 2013)   but i can't seem to be able to get rid of all the tapes without watching them first. The thought of throwing them away before watching them makes me sick to the  stomach LOL!   By the way... The first 100 or so tapes I recorded in lp till I started recording close to 7 or 8 hours a day.....EP to the rescue LOL I am still watching the tapes, now with my new vhs/dvd player (FUNAI) in order....and am in the year 2007......Hello, my name is Robert, And I am a vhs-oholic  

Again putting it diffent words......the difernt sppeds is how fast the play back is right? so I ask again could you use in some way a dimmer switch to varry the speed  thus slowing down tape making it possable to watch ep play in sp mode

wouldn't it be easier to just get a vhs player from ebay that can play your tapes? I feel it's not just the speed the motors go but also likely to have something to do with the encoder/decoder hardware too? I might be wrong but simply slowing down the motors would just seem too easy a solution.

Definately my advice would be to find another player rather than spend time modding such a legacy device for a one off usage. Oh! that and maybe find some help with your cleptomania!

This kind of thing isn't too uncommon, I used to know somebody who had an obsession with collecting music, most of which he'd never listened to nor had any intentions of but he just became obsessed with it. If he had a single song by a particular band, he had a strange need to collect every single song that they ever did. I could never understand why, especially because it encapsulated music genres that he wasn't even into.

The internet brought this kind of behaviour out in a lot of people, not that i'm wanting to fuel your "addiction" but maybe your time would be better invested obtaining and watching your shows in a digital format that can be stored on a harddrive in a relatively small physical size and have the ability to arrange them in whichever manner you desire. I would also bank on there being communities out there dedicated to your favourite tv series that you could join and provide meaningful contributions to.

Lucie

Well lucie.....I did want to get a used player in the first place but they all were either the same price as a new player or ridiculously  more expensive. I figured buy a new player cause who knows how long the  used player would last....I figured better for the same price a new mashine than a used.....unfortunaly in my haste I forgot to see if the new mashine even played ep.....I since have found two friends who have a old mashine packed away........but as a last resort, I might have to buy a used one......we will  see......ps....I first time I used the internet was in 2008 and I got internet at my house first in 2009 ( In Germany and trying to catch up with the rest of world ) Anyway thanks for your sugestions......and for answering my post

If you are patient enough then people do sometime give away their old vhs players for free on sites like freecycle. If not a good search of local charity shops may come up with something. I like vhs as well. If you open up the tapes and remove the internal mechanisms and reels they can actually make quite nice improvised project boxes.