AKAI VHS recorder with remote - not working (Cutteslowe OX2)

I have had this recorder for many years. It was working fine when I last tried to play a VHS on it, but recently when I decided to get rid of it, I found that it would not play a VHS tape. No idea why not, but someone who knows these type of machines could probably repair it - it might be quite simple. It does seems to switch on and the remote communicates with it.