Panasonic NV-S85B SVHSC Camcorder?

I'm posting on behalf of my father, he has a panasonic NV-S85B camcorder and is having problems with playback. He has noise lines appearing on playback and has tried using the two tracking buttons but it's still not clearing. The lines appear intermittently and never clear completely, even though the tapes are relatively new. He's tried running the tapes backwards and forwards to take the slack out of the tapes but is still having the problem.

Any advice?

Try cleaning very carefully the heads of the machine with a cotton bud/soft cloth (they're on the biggish spinning circular metal thing inside where the tape goes), and alittle cleaning solution. I know on my camcorder and vcr it did the trick. Tell him to be patient, and wait about 20 minutes before he swiches it back on to use again. If cleaning doesn't solve it then perhaps it's the tracking system that's given up the ghost - I had this problem with a JVC SVHSC camcorder, shortly before it packed up completely (wouldn't power on at all!)

Time to transfer those tapes to DVD and make the switch to digital! You can use a VHS adapter cassette to play the small tapes back in a normal VHS player and transfer from there, or get a camera shop to do it (for a fee).

The analogue stuff was good but it doesn't last forever.