b) Oxydisation of the aluminium platter :

Strangely, the upper part of the lower reel is made out of aluminium. With time, some kind of electrolytic reaction occurs between the aluminium parts and the tape components. This happens mostly with Chromium Dioxyde tapes and produces alumine dusts which deposits on the side of the tape stack and pollutes immediately the video heads and tape guides during playback.

There is a cure for this aluminium platter problem, but it doesn't guarantee a perfect playback of the tape.... We also master this process, which is invoiced 10.00 euros excluding VAT. However, since we process a large quantity of tapes in any format, this problem is rarely encourntered with Philips VCR tapes.