Gray horizontal lines in playback mode

please state the age of your devices. It can help a great lot in solving your problems. The lines that you get aren't continuous, are they? They appear to be going up and down, are different sizes and shift as the tape plays, yes? well, this is simple. You need to clean your recording head.

dear ,
i Jasdeep working in superb broadcast as an lengineer .and for this problem i can suggest u the following things :
1. Play back the cleaning tape for 10 sec. only then use it.

actually this problem occurs when the head get clogged (i.e, dirty ) it REC. only single band and shows the same in play back too.

Its symptoms of dirty / clogged video head. Please use Sony video head cleaning tape to clean video head.

Someone here recommended on another post to put the lense cap on & videotape the blackness in a quiet room for 5-10 mins. I tried this as a last resort & it worked. When I played back the tape, no more skipping or gray lines. I had 4-5 SOLID gray lines with skipping video & audio in between on every tape I put in. I think the person who helped me solve this said that it was a result of the tape alignment going off. My camera is a Canon zr80 digital camcorder. (Called Canon, they had me reset it & then recommended sending it in).

when you see gray bars that means that your drum is dirty use a soft head cleaning tape for 20 secs and with the posts they are visible by removing the cassette cover there is one for audio it looks like a minus sign on the post and the other is for video and it has a plus sign on top you would need to use a phillips head screw driver with the middle cut out or a pair of twezzers and when you adjust it you turn it a very very little bit to the right start with the one with the minus sign and when the problem goes away when viewing you turn it back just a hair. when you look at the posts you will see in the middle that there is a raised spot that why you would need the tool that i described.

tape path needs to be aligned.

Someone here recommended on another post to put the lense cap on & videotape the blackness in a quiet room for 5-10 mins. I tried this as a last resort & it worked. When I played back the tape, no more skipping or gray lines. I had 4-5 SOLID gray lines with skipping video & audio in between on every tape I put in. I think the person who helped me solve this said that it was a result of the tape alignment going off. My camera is a Canon zr80 digital camcorder. (Called Canon, they had me reset it & then recommended sending it in).

Someone here recommended on another post to put the lense cap on & videotape the blackness in a quiet room for 5-10 mins. I tried this as a last resort & it worked. When I played back the tape, no more skipping or gray lines. I had 4-5 SOLID gray lines with skipping video & audio in between on every tape I put in. I think the person who helped me solve this said that it was a result of the tape alignment going off. My camera is a Canon zr80 digital camcorder. (Called Canon, they had me reset it & then recommended sending it in).

Wide bands in the playback video indicate a clogged or defective video head assembly. If your cleaning tape appears to resolve the problem, the heads are getting contaminated. I would not use the same tape in this unit. Try cleaning the heads and then use a brand new tape to avoid clogging the drum assy again. If this does not resolve the problem, the drum assembly will have to be replaced. Hope this helps. Joe Weibel customelectronics.org

Sounds like you have either a problem with the CCD block or on the mainboard where the encode/decode section is. If it is the CCD block it is defective or you have a loose or dirty connection on the ribbon cable from the CCD block. In record mode you are seeing the video E/E, which means you are looking at the video from the CCD block which has passed through the mainboard. That would explain the lines on the viewfinder. When you playback a tape you are looking at the recorded signal, but it also passes through the mainboard. It is not clear whether the tapes you are talking about playing were pre-recorded previously (prior to this problem) and played previously, with no lines present. If they were recorde previously, played back previously with no lines, and not re-recorded. They should be OK provided the problem is not tape damage. Since you say that all tapes do it, I would think it is not tape damage. The best place to start, to sort out the problem, would be to locate a known good camcorder and try your tapes in it. If they play fine the problem is on the mainboard but after the record circuitry, ie. only in the playback circuitry. If they have the lines the problem could still be on the mainboard but also could be the CCD issue I talked about. This is a tough problem to isolate and will take a good repair tech. If you are not familiar with troubleshooting camcorders you will need to locate a reputable and experienced repair facility. First you should do the test I mentioned on a known good camcorder as this will help a repair tech make a diagnosis. If there are no repair shops in your area here are several which offer free estimates: http://www.camcorderrepair.com or http://www.videotech.com or http://www.videoonerepair.com Good luck.