Hello All,

Brand new to the forum (but not to LD players and Home Theatre) and would really appreciate some assistance regarding the Sony MSC4000 Muse Decoder.

I've just acquired one of these for not a great deal of money off eBay sold with the disclaimer of powers up but unable to test Muse operation; anyway after unboxing and hooking with up the required interconnects and mains cord to stepdown transformer I soon realised there is no signal video or audio coming out of the unit, on initially hitting the power button the green status lamp above it shows steady green for a few seconds and then turns to a blinking state and remains this way, the VTR & Lock lamps also blink in the same fashion when selected. I've tried various configurations with the interconnects but without any success, it was tested with the Atlantis Hi-Vision LD which is B-Mode Stereo only, its currently the only Muse LD I possess, any help would be greatly appreciated,

Thankyou.

That's not good, the power LED should remain steady green.

Blinking might denotes motherboards unable to complete a boot sequence.

Caps on SONY MUSE decoders do not age well.
Have you inspected visually inside?

Julien

Many thanks for getting back Julien, I have to admit I wasn't hopeful for good news about this but considering it was obtained at a rather knock down price I thought I'd risk the purchase just on the off chance I'd picked up a real bargain which unfortunately doesn't appear to be the case here sadly. I note from what you posted previously that your experiences with this model (and Sony) were not too great either? Anyway rather than open it up I've now decided to sell it at a buy it now price in the hope that someone with the necessary expertise could perhaps get it up and running again or if not at least use it as a source of spares, in the meantime I'll keep looking out for another nice working example at the right price, a Panasonic or Pioneer decoder would be nice though the chances of finding one of those must be near zero sadly.

A quick update on the Sony. I decided to keep the decoder and contacted a local reputable repairer that I had used previously for a DVD player repair. I dropped the MSC 4000 with him a couple of weeks ago admittedly with not very high hopes of a successful outcome. Anyway I received a message the other day to say the problem had been traced and a repair was possible for what I thought was a really decent sum (£40/€45) for which I gave the go ahead. Julien you were spot on, the Sony has now been fully recapped plus a dry joint corrected and is now working beautifully in my set up, I can now join the ranks of the Hi-Vision Club

Nice one! Bet your stoked! Awesome

What I wanna know is, how did they test it at the shop!?

Thanks! Yes very much and I never thought in a million years this was going to be such a cheap and easy fix, but there you go and I only picked it up for a less than 3 figure sum in the first place, so with caps replaced it'll hopefully be good for a few years now. Next up is to collect a few more titles, the only one I have at present is Atlantis (Luc Besson) so now the search is on for some of the video based rather than film titles such as the documentaries and test discs etc.

Not a lot to go off but here's a screenshot of the opening to Atlantis below...

That is a very good question and one that crossed my mind when I first handed the Sony over to them, especially so when the guy said this was the first time he'd set eyes on a Muse Decoder let along work on one! I did intend to ask that question when I collected it the other day but was so keen to get it back home and connected up I totally forgot. He did advise though that Sony consumer gear from this era had a reputation not only for dried up capacitors but equally for dry joints on circuit boards.

Maybe they just recapped it and hoped for the best.

Yes I think you're most probably right, the work does come with a 6 month warranty included so they must be reasonably confident in the repair they performed, so will now have to see how it goes.