Cannot view playback!!!!

You have a clogged video head. It happens. Do not use the chamois again. Instead, purchase an 8mm head cleaner and give that a try. Only use a brand name cleaner - no generics, and make sure it doesn't come from China!

It is my understanding that the camera won't playback those formats, timecode or not. There are VCR type units for the HI8 and other formats. They should be cheap on eBay now...

Have you try cleaning tape? Sometimes, it is just a dirty head. Try to clean it, see if it helps.

Hi, All sorted. I purchased a head cleaner and played it for 10 seconds. The camera now works as good a s new. Hope this will help others with a similar problem. John

I don't remember where I read it, but somewhere like this site.
Just as you start the play back, give your camera a bump with the heal of your hand. This has worked a couple times, and the issue seems to be with just the metal tapes. My husband was a bit appalled until it worked. It might not solve the issue long term, but I was wanting to recover baby footage so I wanted to just get it done.

Clean the tape heads and see if that makes a difference.  If that doesn't work, it could be the tape motor is going out.  Thats typical behavior when that happens.

Vista should be able to download this without any issues as it already includes the drivers. i was able to do this with my sony dcr-trv250 painlessly over the ieee-1394 (firewire) port using the DVD capturing bloat-ware (Ulead DVD creater) Toshiba had already installed for me. My toshiba satellite is running Vista Home Premium.

as regards analog hi8 playback, the product manual for the 250 says that this is NOT supported, i.e., it CANNOT play back analog hi8 tapes. Also, i wonder if PAL would be supported here in the US (assuming you're in the US, of course). I would expect only NTSC support. but it's a moot issue, since it doesn't play analog

Hi , video head are need to clean , try ask video store if they have video head cleaner .

In playback mode the lCD displays the battery time, hi8 symbol and the tape counter. all the functions work the tape will play, rewind, fast forward. The screen stays blank on playback and the tape counter stays at 0:00:00 eventhough I can see the tape turning. I also hooke the camera to my tv and I got no picture.

The head may be dirty, clean it with a cleaning cassete, playing using the cleaning cassete will clean the dirty head.