My Hitachi VM H710A plays just fine, and the picture looks fine. But when it playsback footage or records footage, five to ten seconds later, it stops abruptly, and flashes the word "TAPE".

First thing I must add, is that I was using a prerecorded videotape, and was testing it from the beginning of the cassette and the middle of the cassette. I thought maybe the heads were dirty, and so I cleaned them using a cotton swab and rubbing alcohol. I cleaned the head drum with a piece of paper soaked with rubbing alcohol so that I wouldn't get any fibres in the heads. I waited for it to dry and then I put a cleaning cassette inside. To which, it still stopped abruptly five to ten seconds in during playback. I then decided to look at the manual of the camcorder and see the symptom. It says that due to temperature changes that it might cause this symptom. I placed it in a cool room and left it there all day and checked on it, and the camcorder is still doing the same thing as before hand. Then another cause said that it might sense some moisture. I made sure that the camcorder was dry externally and internally, and yet still, same problem. Thats when I decided to take it apart and look inside to see if there was anything odd inside the camcorder causing it to function the way it does. The belt seemed to be working fine, and there was no missing parts. The tracking poles and path alignment was fine, and not loose. Everything simply seemed just fine. So I am unsure as to why my camcorder is operating like this.