How to tune a vcr

By tuning ,I take it you mean receive the tv stations. All tv stations now are digital and the majority of older vcrs will not tune to them. You will need a set top box connected to the av input to be able to receive , display and record the present Australian tv stations.

I assume you are talking about the tracking control. Older VCRs had a control that allowed you to make adjustments within a narrow range by turning a knob and newer machines have auto-tracking. The adjustment allows very limited adjustment of electronic centering of the read heads over the recorded video track on the tape. The mechanical and electronic alignment of tape head tracking is a precision process that requires specialized alignment tools and a "standard" pre-recorded test tape. These tapes are very expensive and not as precise as one would hope. In addition, like all magnetic tapes, they stretch and must be replaced. The theory is that if multiple VCRs are aligned on the these standard alignment tapes, all machines will then track and reproduce material alike. Unfortunately, there are so many standard tapes in the world with so much variation that things do not always work well. If you cannot get your machine to play a tape recorded on another machine to track correctly, you could take it to a repair man and have him align it, but it is no guarantee it will track all the time on all tapes. That is why the world has moved on to digital recording.