Overview

The Sanyo VTC5150 was essentially the same as the VTC5000, but there were more than just cosmetic improvements. Picture search and freeze frame were now in colour, and the front panel sported an extra button for reverse play. This would simply play the picture backwards while held down, with quite good results but not quite the stability of normal playback. This wasn't really a particularly vital feature but was fitted as a bit of one-upmanship over VHS, since only the Beta tape path would allow reverse playing without extra heads.

The other improvement in the VTC5150 over the VTC5000 was hidden. All models in this range could suffer real drive failure when the belts, idler wheel or motor wore out. But the syscon logic of the VTC5000 had a bug in it, causing the machine to lace up if it detected reel drive failure during rewind / fast forward. Most unfortunate, this, since a machine with reel drive failure could not get the tape back into the cassette and the result was a real mess. The VTC5150 did not have this bug, it would simply stop if the reel drive failed.

We believe that a VTC5100 also existed, which had the colour freeze frame and picture search of the VTC5150 but not the reverse play. If you can confirm this please e-mail PALsite.

Advertising flysheets

Following are some of the original Sanyo advertising flysheets for this model. Click on one of the images to enlarge it.

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Many thanks to Colin McCormick for providing the information, pictures and advertising material for this model

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