Basic Beta model. I bought this one in a flea market in Toronto, Canada a few years ago. This is one of the many Sanyo models that suffers from the dreaded tape-chewing bug due to a design flaw in the syscon chip.
These machines follow the VHS approach and unthread the tape from the heads before rewind or fast forward. This reduces head wear, which is fine, but then the bug comes in. If a rewind or fast forward operation fails, the syscon tells the deck to start threading the tape again. If there is a problem with the rew. / ff. mechanism, the tape cannot be properly unthreaded and the result is often a tangled or broken tape.
The British model VTC-5000 is similar in appearance and in the presence of the tape-chewing bug. The functions missing on the British deck are the speed switch (BII/BIII) never implemented in PAL Beta, the TV/VCR switch (not necessary) and the Channel 3 / 4 switch on the RF modulator. Britain uses UHF only. The UHF modulator is adjustable by a small screw to Ch. 32-40 (default is ch. 36.)
The VTC-5000 has 8 channel presets instead of the Canadian model's 12. There were only 3 UHF TV channels available when the VTC-5000 was launched. Now there are 4 or 5 analogue TV channels (depending on where you live) in the UK . This fills all the UHF capacity for analogue TV so 8 channels have proved to be more than adequate.
Another small difference: British model uses 24-hour clock, i.e. 11.35pm is shown as 23:35 . The 24-hour clock is standard in mainland Europe but British TV stations NEVER use it (most don't even state "a.m." or "p.m." in their trailers when referring to forthcoming programs).