My sony dcr-trv250 ntsc does not play videos that were recorded on my old samsung scx904 or alittle older sony that my father in law had let us borrow before we got ours...why? and is there some way to make it play them?

http://www.willingsoftware.com/help/howto.shtml#9

if ur handy cam supports it and that disc should not have been damaged then surely u can play it on ur new handy cam

Those signs means Record tab on tape is ON, eject tape and check record tab and make sure to set it on Record position.

You need to get ahold of a video format converter, there are several on the market. Convert the video from pal to ntsc and that will fix you.

Clean the head and try again

The older tapes were shot on a 8mm camcorder and the camcorder you have wil not play them becasue it doesn't have backwards compatability with the older format. The tapes you recorded are on a digital 8 camcorderr and it is different encoding than the one you recorded the other 60 tapes with. You will need to find either a dcr-trv 350 trv 530 trv 730 ect as these have the ability to play all the tapes.
Or find an older 8mm camcorder to play your tapes with.
Hope this helps
Cheers
Al

Download latest driver & software update for your Sony DCR-TRV250E handycam at Sony Support. Please check Hot News and Downloads on web page.
Hope this will helpful to resolve no sound problem.

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

make sure camera has this function first,Easy way to check is to see if top of camera has a record botton where play,ff,rew,stop are..Put camera in VTR mode then hok up cable to tv ..if no signal is comming thru,, check on camera menu for this function..LINE IN

There is no problem on your camera, DCR-HC19E is PAL system(European system) DCR-HC20 is NTSC(American system). Are you in US or Europe? I think your TV is NTSC, cause the tape recorded on DCR-HC19E you played has no color. To confirm, connect your HC20 to TV in camera mode, not recording yet, just look at the TV as your monitor, If its in color, no problem, just erase the old video recorded on the HC19E, but if its important to you, you can convert it to NTSC using a PC. thanks