Jumpy Playback Through TV

First you should try a couple other tapes to make sure they all do it. It could be tape damage on the tape you are using. If you remove the tape from the unit and look at the part which gets inserted first you will see a small latch on the front side of the door. If you depress the latch you can open the cover over the tape. Be very careful and don't touch the tape! Look at the tape for damage. If it is perfectly smooth, like a mirror, it is OK and the camcorder has a problem. If the tape is OK you probably have a tape path problem or the unit could be dirty. Cleaning the heads would be the easiest solution to try but if you are not familiar with the process you could do more damage than good. If you know how to properly clean the heads, certainly do that first. If that does not solve your problem either a tape guide is not adjusted properly or the tape is not loading fully or properly in the tape path. Either way it isn't going to work until it is repaired. I'm guessing that repair would be beyond your skills. You stated that you bought it off Ebay. You should contact the person you purchased it from no matter what is wrong with it because if they presented it as a working unit they were less than truthful. Good luck.

but the problem sounds to be that the playback on the LCD is fine while the TV playback is problematic. I am currently having a similar problem using the three to three connection to the TV: audio is fine picture is completely distorted. I tried to adjust NTSC playback mode and changed it to NTSC and not to PAL TV, but nothing changed. Can you only use S-video lines with these cameras? sony dcr