Cannot record or play

I had the same thing happen to my Sony DCR-TR7000 NTSC. I plugged in the AC power supply and it worked fine. So I fully recharged the battery, removed the Hi8MP cassette that was in it, put in a new one. The problem went away and when I reloaded the old cassette, the problem was gone. Don't know why, but this process seemed to fix it.

I had the same problem where I couldn't record or playback without it saying to reinsert the cassette. I even tried changing the tape...didn't work. So I took everyones advice: I took the tape out, blew into that space, attached the power cord, I also took the battery off and put it back on, I then put in a different tape and it worked. I put the original tape back in it and it also worked!!! I can't explain what was wrong with it, but I fixed it. Be very careful when blowing into it, right after I did that it gave me a new error code that said Condensation... LOL so I blew into it again very slowly and it worked right away. Thanks for your help!!!! The situation made me realize that these old video cameras are hard to find now a days. Everyone sells the DVD or memory card camcorders. So now I am afraid if it truely breaks one day, how will I watch my old tapes... A few years ago they used to make a cassette that you could pop the mini cassettes into, but I haven't seen one lately. If anyone knows where to find one, let me know... otherwise it will cost a fortune to have them all put on DVDs...

I just got this problem today and already fixed it. It was simple. I just blew into the casset area of the camer and reset it, and it was fine. I know you probably skeptical about this (at least some of you), but I do not know if it will work for you, but give it a try, and I dont know if resetting the camera is necessary.