Do They Still Make New VCRs?
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- čas přidán 15. 06. 2024
- Have you ever wondered if new VCRs are still being made? Is there still a company somewhere out there who are still cranking them out? We know the VCR is pretty much dead here in North America, but is there a remote country in some far-flung region of the world where the VCR is still king?
In this video, I examine this question. I talk about a specific company, and their history making the wonderful video cassette recorder.
As I mention in the video, I still have a fondness for VCRs and VHS tape. There are still old and obscure movies out there that have never been released on any digital format. Sometimes your only hope of finding that forgotten gem is on VHS tape. And it is obvious any time you visit a thrift store, there are still many old VHS tapes out there to be found, often at very low prices.
I recall vividly the 80s, and how major VCRs were at that time. Everybody and their dog seemed to have one, and renting movies on the weekend seems to be a golden memory of many an 80s kid. It was certainly a huge part of my youth!
But is there still enough of a demand for new VCRs to be manufactured? Are there people out there actually still looking to buy new VCRs? And are they being sold anywhere in the world? Watch the video to find out!
I still own a VCR, but as I mentioned, I only use it very minimally. As I said above, sometimes I need it to watch one of those obscure finds. Or maybe I need to digitize an old tape from long ago.
Do you still own a VCR? What brand is it? Do you actually still use it? Do you collect VHS tapes? Is there a prized tape in your collection? Feel free to share a comment!
On this channel I post videos relating to retro and vintage technology. Things like cassettes, CDs, old cameras, laser disc, radios, TVs, DVDs, vinyl, VCRs, home recording gear, microphones, mixers, synthesizers, drum machines, video games, and so much more. If this is your thing, please subscribe!
People will never understand the good old times, how exciting and good it felt to rent a movie 😩
Until you had to rewind it.
And service it🤯
@@ntal5859 We rented a DVD and I joked with my wife and told her that we had to rewind it. She asked "Really?"
When you stream, you are at their mercy. When you own, it's there for the rest of your days.
@@Joe-ey7cu TubeMate if you don't know how to do it
I sit here surrounded by about 100 video cassette recorders. But that's what I do. Some people don't realise how many formats there are for home machines, camcorders and professional, including: SVHS Beta SuperBeta V2000 N1500 N1700 SVC CVC Video8 Hi8 Digital8 miniDV DV DVCAM HDV DVCPRO DVCPRO-50 DVCPRO-HD micromv U-matic U-maticSP Betacam BetacamSP Digital_Betacam HDCAM HDCAM-SR MII and more. I have working machines for all of these formats.
Good.
U da man! Congrats! I wish I had all the knowledge you have. I'm in love with analog broadcast formats.
I HATE tape.
Analogue media will always have a special place in my heart. Cassette and VHS tapes is what I grew up with and I used to have a good collection. I even have a few vinyl. Good times.
I have 2 digital 8 cameras a TRV255E and a higher end TRV730E that one being a megapixel one and also now a Super VHS-C Panasonic NV VS4EG with TBC, great cameras.
My autistic son (28) still wants to watch his favorite VHS tapes so I am always on the lookout for working VCRs. I have had poor luck at thrift stores, because the units never seem to work. I have recently purchased one through Facebook marketplace from a guy who refurbishes them. I would love to find a brand new one!
Hey i am autistic too 😢
you can repair one
Trust me you don’t want a new one. They are cheaply made junk.
@@Adithprakash-yx1huand me!
P-O-R-N😂😂😂😂
a few inaccuracies
1. Funai is pronounced like foon-EYE.
2. Their VCRs were rebadged as many different brands in the 2000s. Sanyo, Toshiba, Mitsubishi, Hitachi etc.
3. Sony discontinued Betamax much earlier than stated in the video. The format discontinued in 2015 was BetaCAM, a series of many different tape based formats used in the broadcast industry.
Very good! Funai bought the segment of Phillips, the Dutch company that invented so many technologies but didn't really understand how to market them properly...
Emerson, SV 2000, Magnavox, Sylvania, and Philips too. Also, the last VCRs in 2016 were DVD recorder combo units. Nothing like the image they showed.
Well I've got one
are you a homosexual?
A yank/Canadian pronouncing things wrong? Well colour me surprised. Give them any word and they'll set about drilling it's kneecaps.
Watching movies on vhs tapes just feels different and nostalgic. It reminds me of how I felt when I was a child watching "tremors" and "honey i shrunk my kids" for the first time. The smell and sound of the vcr player, the way the vhs tape enters and clicks, all are very nostalgic to me.
I still have my old Sharp VC-H982U VCR, 4-Head Hi-Fi Stereo from 1998, still in the living room and like you, I use it from time to time to copy old VHS tapes to DVD. The unit is still going strong after 26 years!
In 2021 I managed to find myself a CRT TV with a VCR built in for £3 at a car boot sale, and to this day I still use it and occasionally watch VHS tapes on it. I do sometimes buy VHS tapes, and I have quite a large collection, but it's not too often when I actually sit down and watch a VHS tape nowadays
Must be a small tv combo that fits in the trunk of a car. 13 inch?
@@jC-kc4si exactly that, yeah. Like the ones you'd see in a small bedroom in the late 90s, early 2000s
you don't use VHS and a CRT TV for high quality , but for nostalgia and good memories as a child
I have a bunch of old VHS and a couple of VCRs but I never use it because there's always something wrong with the tape: it's either video glitches, head tracking or audio problems.
VHS are too unreliable, back then we would put up with it because there was no alternative, but today there is.
@urracojalpa4481 mold on VHS tapes are also sadly a huge issue, and a big disadvantage (for me anyway) to continue collecting VHS tapes.
I think if some company out there started producing VCRs as a retro item -- even at $100, $120 -- there would be a small but strong boutique market for them. In the world of music, retro media players have made huge comebacks -- first vinyl, then more recently audio cassettes. Why there has been no similar revival for the VHS video format, which lasted considerably larger, had a bigger cultural impact, and whose movies are still relatively easy to come by -- is beyond me. VHS tapes are still all over the place. It's the working players and replacement parts that are getting scarce.
The issue with VCRs is that the magnetic tape isn't very well shielded, so a bunch of the tapes that are out there have been damaged over time by being too close to a TV. And, just like most of those other formats you're listing, they don't really add anything that is objectively positive, each use degrades them and over time they break.
Sure, some people do use them, but it's usually for nostalgia. CRT TVs though at least do have a legitimate use for retrogaming as some games depended upon the technology for effects like light guns and transparency.
I highly doubt the market would be large enough to make such an effort profitable in the slightest. No one manufactures the components for VCRs anymore, Tapes are harder to find in the wild and many have degraded beyond a watchable point by now. There will always be a small scene of hobbyists who are attracted to the nostalgic retro factor, but I don't see old video formats going through the same revival as audio has. If you're someone into analog film, there are already other higher quality options out there than VHS.
A friend recently gifted me a brand new AM/FM Cassette Recorder/player [ Walkman style].
Made by RETEKESS. Decent quality, too.
So why not VHS players.
I know that nostalgia isn't what it used to be, but VHS and cassettes have one thing in common: the quality is rubbish.
I think that quality of modern ones would be terrible and collector value of such newly made VCRs would be zero. LP players have advantage that it never completely died and continuity was not disconected.
Just about to watch one now!😂 sometimes the original movies on VHS are not censored so I still use my VHS today.
VHS is the only way to get the theatrical cut of Phantom Menace; DVD has an extra clip during the pod race scene that wasn't in the theatrical cut, Bluray has Yoda replaced with the CGI used in Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith along with the pod race clip. Because Phantom Menace is one of my favorite movies I have 10 copies I picked up at garage sales and thrift stores.
Facts sometimes the VHS version is the best version cuz of no censorship or changes.
i have star wars vhs's from like 87, it's the only version of the movies i'll watch.
Try to find one were c3po is all gold@yukithesnowman314
I started repairing and servicing VCR in 1984. I continued to service and repair them right through til about 2002. Over the years I have found or been given various machines including some very nice ones - Panasonic S-VHS with TBC, Panasonic multi-system and various others. I kept many models featuring the National/Panasonic D series mechanism, they were very good machines. Top of that line was the NV-870 - Hi-Fi stereo. I still have one of those.
I don't know how long I will be able to keep these machines working properly however. Parts are pretty much unobtainable now and Panasonic used a lot of proprietary and custom parts in their machines. Upper cylinder drums ("heads") are very hard to find. I really only keep these machines for nostalgia and for digitizing any VHS cassettes that are given to me.
I don't use VHS for general viewing of movies etc as the format isn't great when it comes to resolution. Even in its heyday it was really only good for time-shifting.
The interesting thing is that VHS machines are still being sold second-hand here, and people continue to buy them. There is a steady market for used machines.
Yes.
That's why I do wish someday that the VHS cassette itself would just be a way to store the magnetic tape, but at the same time have a machine where it takes the tape out of the VHS Cassette box and keeps it inside the machine and just runs the film like you would with a 35mm projector or 16mm tape/audio recorder...Now that would be more convenient, considering some VHS cassette tapes have one side of the tape stuck on one side and the player can't even reach the magnetic tape anymore, thus rendering the Cassette Tape completely useless....Only time will tell though.
One day, I was digging through my parent’s basement when I found a stack of 20 SEALED 8-hour VHS tapes! That was one of my coolest finds EVER!
Just remember, the slower you go in order to make a longer recording, the lower the picture quality. And since you're starting with a VHS, you're already way below DVDs, HD, 4K, Blue-ray, etc.
Several years ago I got a NOS 1985 model JC Penney VCR that I still use today. I still have a lot of home video on VHS tapes.
I still watch movies on VHS, and have gotten quite a collection of tapes. In fact, I watched a couple of VHS movies last weekend.
People are weird, I've just bought MC cassette deck made in 1989. 😀
VCRs and DVD players co-existed for a long time because you couldn’t record on a DVD player so still needed something that could record from TV. DVD Recorders didn’t really become all that common (at least in my region of the world); it was really the PVR that finally rendered VCRs obsolete. That’s my recollection of events anyway.
I remember my grandparents buying a what I think was a DVD-VR320 (which, considering that you could pick up DVD players and VCRs for 1/10 of the cost was pretty astonishing for me as a council estate kid) so that my grandma could record the odd show here and there onto DVD and then hardly 2 years later our cable provider were offering PVRs on their higher tier plans. I still remember the headache of setting up the VCR in my room at my grandparents to record the odd show here and there, cable PVRs where such a blessing.
as an AV tech, DVD / VCR combo decks were VERY popular in the early 2000's. We sold quite a few of them to install in larger multimedia systems, like installations in classrooms or auditoriums. was much more convenient for the end user than dealing with 2 individual components.
Pvr machines are a poor replacement as you don't own what you record.
@@summer20105707 They mostly filled the role of time-shifting, something that people used VCRs for, if poorly (timers and channel selection were hard for many people.)
Yeah, the recordable dvd´s came years after the dvd player and at first you couldnt even re-record the dvd´s and it was pretty expensive as well.
Obsolete Video Services has reported that both Sony and Panasonic are planning on introducing new VHS machines to the market in 2025, but I've not been able to find any reference to that anywhere else.
I would doubt either of them would bring out a new VHS machine. I could believe them bring out a vinyl player in 2025, but VHS seems way to complex for them to just bring back into production.
@@jamiecruickshank9697just saw a article where Sony will stop producing blank cds....glad I've got a few spindles of cds and dvds....
I would be curious to see a new VHS deck with modern connections like HDMI and a built-in upscaler. It could maybe have some sort of DVR function as well (plug in a USB drive and record tapes to MP4).
@@CJinMono The latter would have to have Macrovision detection built-in, making it essentially useless. Th last high-quality VCR's made did actually have HDMI and upscaling hardware built-in. I'd be happy to have one with a really solid transport, good servos, and line-based time base correction, with the aforementioned HDMI output. But I doubt any more VHS machines will actually be made.
There are vhs models made by somy that have hdmi and upscale built in! And it's a comob dvd and vhs player @CJinMono
Still have my old vcr and never planning on getting rid of it. Its a piece of history to me.
I still use my VCR, I have 3, one day we had a storm and the internet was out for almost a week. I was able to watch movies and old TV shows I recorded many years ago on the VCR. I have a Memorex, Sony and Sharp brand VCR. The Sharp is a DVD/ VCR combo I bought in 2001. Still works great.
I miss VHS for the same reason I miss audio cassettes: instant on, no lag or delay from booting up. If I were filthy rich? I'd buy 5-10 "new old stock" machines and as many tapes as possible, and try to buy out old collections of tapes. VHS wasn't just film, it was Hi-Fi Stereo. Back in the 1990s, before sound cards and larger hard drives, I recorded radio stations on VHS. The sound was excellent, and it was possible to put six hours of music on a tape.
@@guessundheit6494 Just as you said about recording radio stations on VHS tapes, I did the same thing except I used an audio cassette recorders to record the TV shows I was watching. This was before I was able to buy a VCR. I may not have seen the show after I recorded it but I did like listening to it especially when they played the show's theme song. By 1984 I finally stopped using audio cassette tape recorders and just stuck with recording VHS tapes on my VCR. I too also missed the VCRs and the VHS tapes. Hopefully the VCRs will make a comeback by 2025.
@@lee120458 You're probably not from Canada, but late night on CBC in the 1990s were Brave New Waves and Nightlines, two all-night shows that played WAY out there stuff (i.e. it made John Zorn and Negativland look mainstream). I would record then listen back and copy what I liked to cassette. My deck had fader dials, to cut out before and after.
Still have my Sanyo VCR player purchased as an used item in 1998 and a few "rare" VHS tapes to watch it on. But what makes this player that little bit special is that it has the ability to decode Closed Captions (or Subtitles here at the UK) signals off tape and display them on screen (have to look for the "Q" symbol on the sleeve cover). Gave the player a test run the other week and it all still worked fine with remarkably decent picture quality for what it is.
I love VCRs, I am still soo happy that I managed to get a Panasonic NV-180. Its actually the electronic device that I am most proud of. I found the service manual and did all the repairs/service myself. I love connecting the camera and taking videos outside. Most people in my generation have never seen or used a working VCR, so this is always a super interesting novelty to them!
Who else misses going to Blockbuster video?
👇
Be kind, please rewind!
There is only one Blockbuster video in the US, in Bend, OR. That one is privately owned.
🥹💖
We are too over exposed and prosperous for our own good.
I hate digital media.
I never paid my late fees. 😢😂😂
I bought a TV/VCR combo at an estate sale in 2021. There was a tape inside when I got it home. Rewinding and watching it to see if it was home movies the family might want back, it was just soap operas. I waited for a commercial and saw an ad for Black Friday for a big box store. The date on the ad was 2013. That set was still being used up to at least that point. I found it in a closet, so I wonder when it was unplugged and imprisoned there...
Got one in my bedroom, a nice DVD recorder combo with component output for VHS and DVD, and a built in digital tuner. I’ve had so many the last few years but have sold all except this one.
I still use vcr's of Vhs, Betamax, V2000 and Video8. It is pure hobby, and i collect old movies. Its a very nice hobby! Greets from Marcel The Netherlands in Europe 👍🙂👍
VCR was a part of my youth, i watched many movies on this format. At that time you had to rent a machine at the videostore with a couple of tapes. Out of my first salary i bought a tv and a VCR, i was living with my parents and it was a luxury for me to be able to watch movies and record tv in my own room!
VHS Hi-Fi can be used as a standalone high quality audio recorder - better than any open-reel or audio cassette recorder.
It depends how you define 'better'. Open reel could be used for editing, had various track options and other advantages. The audio quality of a 15ips Revox or Studer is outstanding.
@@RebeccaTurner-ny1xxNo doubt, but any pro level Revox/Studer, Teac/Tascam, or Ampex, MCI is going to be 40+ years old in need of expensive service, then there's the issue of finding new high quality tapes so it's really a no-contest when compared to a $10 Goodwill (or curb side) Hi-Fi VCR - even better are Sony MiniDisc that are cheap. reliable, and plentiful with excellent performance.
@@MichaelAChang I agree. Far better, of course, to stick with digital recording to an SSD or hard drive. I was merely comparing two obsolete formats. I suspect that a pro-level open reel, if bought used today, might indeed require an expensive repair or service but would go on to provide far more years of high quality recording than any domestic video recorder. Personally, as someone who ran a small analogue 8-track studio in the 1980s, I was desperate even then to move to digital formats and I've no interest in returning to tape-based recording of any kind.
Well in my years of experience both as a musician , musical director, and operator of my own studio as well as recording sessions at various BBC studios and the reknowned Sony Whitfield St Studios, I would go with the Studer option. (I have two such here at home). Yes, they will require some servicing but show me any machine which will never ever need any attention, even your hifi VHS is not infallible! Whitfield St - back in my time there - recorded AAD and the A was a Studer 24 track. And, it's certainly the better bet when you need to perform drop-ins. Parts for Studers are still quite easily available too, perhaps less so with VHS machines. There was a studio in Birmingham, Zel-la, which for a time used the VHS format but they gave it up.
I still have my 1999 Sony VCR, which works flawlessly. I use it on occasion. I just picked up a pile of VHS tapes at a flea market a few weeks back that I need to watch.
I have two VCR's setup in my games room. One is a Sony from around 2003 and the other a Philips from around the early to mid 1990's. In my storage I also have another Philips mid 1990's and a Samsung VCR/DVD combo.
I still have two Sony VCR's - and lots of classic Disney movies on VHS. Some of those tapes never made it to DVD, like Song of the South.
I have a working Sony VCR as well, plus a VHS/DVD combo. Disney movies only on tape sounds about right. Unfortunately some of those "classics" are (in today's world) considered racist!! - which might be a reason why they remained only on tape.
I don't blame Disney for keeping that one in the vault, but like Warner Brothers once said when re-releasing some of their undeniably racist cartoons; "These cartoons are being presented as they were originally created, because to do so otherwise would be the same as claiming these prejudices never existed.". Then again censorship has been a very common practice for Disney, it's almost like that they're the kind of company being made as an example in that quote
I have JVC SR-V30 Mini DV & Super VHS combo which I use for digitizing tapes. Great machine from 2002.
I still have some VCRs lying around. I just bought one from the 90's earlier this year to replace my grandma's Magnavox VCR from 2006. My grandma is unaware that it is not normal for people to still have VCRs these days.
There are so many classics, some like The Minds Eye that are REALLY important and relevant to cinematic history, that never got a release on DVD or Blu-Ray, and while I understand the frustration and lack of parts and sales from manufacturers, it’s very important that the hardware doesn’t go extinct. There were TV pilots that didn’t get off the ground, whole TV show seasons, movies and all sorts of things tied up in rights that the rights holders just never thought would be worthwhile to clean up for a release on more recent formats. To those who keep them, and those who continue to maintain and service them, thank you.
I've got a Philips stereo VCR from 1989 as well as a Sony one from around 1997. I don't really use either of them nowadays, but it's good knowing that I'd still have a way of playing all my old VHS tapes.
I purchased a stereo HiFi VCR in the early 90's when I got my first job. I then bought music and concert video tapes. The audio quality off of those tapes is VERY awesome. it's CD quality if it has the VHS-HiFI logo on it. There was a time I was buying these tapes, instead of CD's or cassettes. If I wanted to play the music in the car, I'd just record the audio portion to an audio cassette tape.
I still have 2 working in good order VHS machines, a Panasonic and JVC which I use quite regularly. There's nothing better then loading a cassette into these machines and listening to them load and run. You don't get that pleasure from modern day technology. I also have a Sony Betamax but needs attention.
for real enjoyment, remove the cover from the VCR, and watch the mechanism while inserting a tape, and pressing play. They are mechanical marvels!
The best and loveliest part is when the mech plays up and your tape spews our of the cassete and ... well... Oh and also when the leader join breaks and all the tape ends up inside the cassette... oh joy.
I recently purchased 4 HiFi VCR's. The have not been hooked up yet, but will be shortly. the reason being I wanted to convert one of them to a music recording device, whicch is far superior to Cassette or 1/4' open reel tape. Plus, i do own many obscure VHS tapes.
The entire VCR process is amazing and tapes can actually be played back crudely with a simple electromagnet. If technology regresses in the future, one could actually see or hear a VHS tape with some primitive setup. The case is not the same for a DVD or Bluray, which have too many digital parts to decode. However, a DVD could be used to emboss an acoustic record.
When I was converting old home movies to DVD many years ago for my parents, I needed to buy one. Luckily, my local Goodwill store had one for $7 and it was in new condition and it worked great for the task. One reason VCRs hung on so long is that you could easily record with them as opposed to DVD players. Recordable ones existed of course, but some people didn't care that much about perfect quality or didn't have easy access to recordable DVDs (-R/RW or +R/RW) so they just stuck to VCRs.
I remember using Panasonic VTR's in high school in the 70’s. Yes VTR, video tape recorder. Basically a room to reel helical scan video recorder. At that time the feed and take up reels were on two different levels allowing each pass of the head to scan an angle of the tape which provided greater storage of data on the tapes. With the advent of video cassettes which relied on a straight feed of the tape across the heads of the recorder they angled the heads at around 30° so as to scan across the tape to obtain the same high data storage on the tape. On both systems they used a timing reference placed on the tape itself by the record head so as to synchronize the tape speed to allow alignment of the video read heads to read each diagonal track written on the tape.
it was surprising how many of the early VHS VCR's still had tracking adjustments on them, despite the tapes all having the sync signal recorded on them....they just lacked the circuitry to read it!
I have a combo vhs/dvd recorder from Walmart from before 2010. It was already unusual back then but rare now. Used it to transfer tapes to DVDs, then from the disks to PC. It had to be repaired a few years ago even after not being used for a long time, and there happens to be a shop down the street that still works on these things.
I do tech support for a school district, the great majority of our Kindergarten classroom teachers have VHS collections that would rival Blockbuster. They get used on a on going basis.
You should digitize to backup the VHS tapes into hard drives.
@@iMadrid11I wish I had all my childhood VHS tapes digitised, I used to record everything and anything the Spice Girls were on! Live in the UK so by the time they were finished I had a LOT of tapes!
I still have dozens of VHS tapes from recording movies from TV, most of them still play with good quality and many are so rare they are hard to find or were never available on DVD. I purchased a new DVD/VHS combo player in 2008. It was brilliant, when I wore it out I purchased another on eBay. Since then I have bought another half a dozen of the same model for amounts from $60 to $100
Of course these gadgets last maybe only 5 years at most with so much use and nowhere to get them fixed but I'm still amazed that I have some of these with VHS working perfectly after 15 years
I have two working VCRs, both of which I thrifted. One was a 30 dollar Sharp one, and the other was a 20 dollar General Electric one, both VHS Hi-Fi. I’ve found all you have to do to test them in a thrift store is plug them in and see if you can play, stop, rewind, fast forward, and eject. If you can’t do any of those functions, then it’s safe to say they’re not in working order. Through trial and error I’ve found ones that do still work well. The most common issues with VCRs have to do with the mechanical components, so you usually don’t even need a screen to tell if they’re working. In my opinion, this is a safer bet than buying one used online. Places like Value Village have them in droves
What do you do if your video cassette gets stuck in the vcr player at the thrift shop?
@@jessesan2003 you have to eject it manually by the gears
If the vcr does not work thoroughly it's usually the control drive you usually you get lucky sorting ot out with a dust spray can
@@shorty5346 Compressed air/air dusters can definitely free up loose debris. The real issues come from when the rubber parts have eroded
@@jessesan2003 I always test the VCRs at thrift stores with their own tapes. If they haven’t gone to the effort of testing them themselves, then at least people will know that tapes will get stuck. You can also try to pull the tape out, at the risk of damaging the internal components.
We still watch VHS tapes when we don’t have the DVD or we don’t want to search for the content on a streaming service.
I still use VCRs occasionally because I have a library of VHS tapes. Also, I have some camcorder tapes that I never copied to DVD or flash storage.
There were tons of unsold vcr's In storage when people stopped buying them. Some people now use them to record music on.
I still own multiple VCRs, and have got into buying boxes of VHS tapes from eBay. People's old, unwanted TV recordings - I like to go through them looking for continuity, old commercials, breakdowns and closedowns. Not only that, but for PAL recordings I also extract the Teletext data that was broadcast with the TV signal back in the day. It's like the forerunner of the Web we know today.
I have a 2012 Toshiba VHS DVD combo player what makes it special is it has a HDMI port for modern TVs which is something that was only put on the very last combo players along with the very obscure VHS blu ray combo players sold in the late 00s
I am in my back room and looking at more than 50 VCRs stacked on a workbench. Yes, we collect and use. Love physical media
My granddad used VCR's until he passed away in 2013. He used to record sport to tapes to watch back later when he got time for it. The funny thing is he had 3 recorders but also 3 HD TV's so he had 6 remote's laying on the table with labels on them. Only a few year before he passed he started using a DVD recorder but still used his tapes more frequent.
Imaging 3 HD TV's next to each other, each having it's own VCR recorder, loads of tapes on the shelf which had been reused about a hundredth time or so.
I bought my VCR at the end of last year as well as my dvd player and two CRTs. I like to watch fullscreen standard definition. I use a coaxial splitter to send my VCRs signal to both CRTs as well as my modern flat screen so I can watch any vhs on all screens at once but I think they look best on the CRT.
I’m fortunate enough to own a late model VCR/DVD combo unit that has HDMI and component out. It’s very unusual in that the VHS has output from the component jacks, though that’s a bit overkill considering the format’s color resolution.
I still have my 1300$ JVC S-VHS player which were the best VHS player 3 years in a row.
You could record indexes on VHS even on playback, record 3 different audio tracks etc. Features missing on the competitor Panasonic at the time which cost the same.
I still use my Vcr and watch my vhs.
My friend recently had his VCR break down, so he went to Goodwill to buy a used one. He had to go through 3 of them to find one that worked.
@@tiki_trash Wow! That is amazingly stubborn! People say I'm stubborn for sticking with blu-rays instead of going streaming. But the picture and sound quality difference between VHS and blu-ray is mind blowing on a quality home stereo system but I still like to own my movies.
@@GrnXnham He has a lot of VHS cassettes, limited income and needs help after a minor stroke recently. He does have a Blu-ray player. He's already paying for cable. It's hard to teach old dogs new tricks and I'm falling into that camp day by day. I have about 400 LPs and at least that many in cassette tapes and CDs. I don't listen to them very often. We all get old some time.
@@GrnXnham Kids these days, when I was young having a high-fidelity stereo system was a must-have for social gatherings.
yeah i hope mine doesn't break down. though i hardly use it, what few tapes i have left would be completely worthless. and i apparently have one of the last ones made by funai. 😄
I got a VCR/Encoding bundle from ebay, i was really pleased I could still get one as my wedding video is on VHS !:D
..was "later that night, after the wedding" also caught on video and seemingly lost forever?
Springfield, MO is home to National Audio Company which, last I checked, was the only company in the USA still manufacturing *audio* cassettes. Out of curiosity, I called them and asked if they still make VHS tapes. They said no - but they do have a backlog of new/old stock. I bought a used VHS/DVD combo from someone on CL about 10-ish years ago. It's been months since I used it, and that was to dub some old VHS content onto DVD using a video-to-computer capture device I got on Temu. Oddly enough, my son and DIL bought my grandson a TV/VHR combo at a yard sale and he became so enamored with it that he wore it out watching his yard sale collection of tapes.
the real reason i believe Funai stopped making VCR's is because the quality of the VCR's got cheaper and cheaper to the point there were being sold for under 19 dollars, most of the later VCR's had a DVD player built into to it, usually the DVD side would die but the VCR would work, from my knowledge starting in March of 2007 Funai Removed the Tuners in them because the government mandated the use of digital tuners, and Funai didn't want to invest in doing that so they removed the tuners all together. I do remember buying the Very last VCR i with the DVD combo I believe that was in 2010, Walmart had an Endcap full of them that there trying to get rid of Their marked down to 30 dollars and I used that VCR for 6 months and then it ate my tape so it hit the trash can really quick.
yea, there's just no way you can make a reliable tape mechanism for $30! I can't believe VCR's ever got under $100 with the mechanical complexity they are!
Funai actually did make a DVD VCR combo with both analog and digital tuners. I bought one at Walmart under the Magnavox label when my local stations were first starting to broadcast digital signals.
I still have two working VCR's and a rack of VHS tapes. I don't collect tapes since moving to DVD. Both my VCR's are Sanyo, one made in 2000 the other in 2003. They look different on the outside, but they are virtually identical on the inside.
Today, we have the RetroTink 4K scaler that has a profile specific to upscaling the VHS format.
I'm hoping to get one of those at least this year or next year, considering that the price point is nearly 2x more expensive than the RetroTink 5X-Pro one that was made 4 years prior to RetroTink 4K Analog To Digital Upscaler.
One thing I miss was how easy it was to record something with a VCR.
Sure, you can record via DVR (if your cable set top box supports it). But without paying additional fees, I can only record about a dozen hours of content. Also, no way to share that recording, keep it forever, and various other benefits of recording it like the 'good ol days'.
You can record anything onto VHS using an HDMI to RCA converter Its great for those times when you don't want to boot your PC up
Funai was one of the biggest ODMs of VHS VCRs and as far as I know the last company standing. In the last few years they were still made, pretty much all VHS VCRs were made by Funai regardless of brand.
I actually enjoyed driving to the video store and spending about 30 minutes walking around trying to decide what to watch.
After narrowing it down to 2 videos, I would watch them both and at time again the next day.
Today with Netflix and hundreds and thousands of stuff to watch, I can't decide and often just wind up going to youtube and view content like this.
Ever hear of "The Paradox of too Many Choices?" It states the more choices we have, the less happy we will be with the choice we made.
I still have two VHS machines under my TV, along with a DVD recorder and a hard drive recorder! Still have a few films on VHS and a few dozen tapes of off-air recordings.
Was there ever a VCR made that had HDMI capabilities? Be interesting to see if any units upscaled footage to HD.
Probably not. If D-VHS units didnt support it i dont think anything would.
Some of the later D-Theatre VCRs apparently had HDMI out.
There were VCR/DVD Recorder combo decks that had HDMI output and were popular in the LaserDisc world for the upconverting capabilities since the separate converter boxes were very expensive at the time.
Panasonic and Toshiba had VHS/Blu Ray Combo units with HDMI out. I just use RF Out and my TV seems to pick up the upscaling and widescreen fix automatically so it looks great.
@@BradOlsonBemidjiyeah but to be honest you'd be better off getting a DVD release of a film (if possible), laserdisc at least has the potential of looking close to DVD through the right scaler.
My kids are watching the same vhs videos i watched as a boy. Thank you Grandma for keeping the box of tapes! We play them in an old tv+vhs+dvd unit. It's better than streaming on iPads and risking it on platforms.
My local propane dealer still rent's VHS movie's mostly to old timers that want to watch older movies and westerns that either that aren't on DVD or because of fixed income can't afford a streaming service. The kids movies are still are still popular because the grandparents can play the kids movie's when internet is out or in low signal area's, I live in rural Missouri and cellular dead zones are a real thing here plus Tapes are still alot tougher than DVD's and the grandbabies can just grab a tape, pop it in and it starts playing without having to through prompt's or commands.
Interesting video 👍
When you said you bought your first DVD player (in 2002?) and wondered why VCRs were still being made years later… one of the reasons might be because you could record tv with a VCR.
Now.. that’s where the “DVD Recorder” comes in. These were excellent machines (I’ve currently got 3! Although not all working as they should) but these are also rare nowadays. I guess nobody records tv anymore, but instead uses catchup & streaming services.
Cheers, Steve
I watch VHS tapes occasionally on a Sony DVD/VCR recorder/player. It's hooked up to my Amazon Fire TV using an HDMI cable. The quality is noticeably inferior to DVD or Blu-ray, but it's fun to revisit TV shows that I've recorded. I also watch the original Star Wars movies on VHS, along with some other ones I don't have on DVD or are unavailable on streaming.
I'm the last person in my circle with a VCR, and I have 6 of them because I digitize people's tapes for them (I found a tape of my 6th birthday, I need someone who can digitize it for me). I also like to buy 6 hour unlabeld tapes and other unusual looking releases to see if there's any lost media on them. I haven't found any yet that I know of but I still hold hope (I did find TBS's 5th anniversary of being on the air, might be some lost bumbpers on that).
I still own a VCR and it works beautifully! It belonged to my grandmother and was given to me when she went into a nursing home. I have my entire movie collection dating back to the 1980s, too. 🙂
I still use my Philips VR20D once a week to keep it in good condition😅 love the tech I grew up with
Yes, you must run them periodically.
I have four, two of them work perfectly and two do not.
I have about 200 tapes of home recordings which are too much to digitise, as they need to be edited along the way and I do not have the time.
In 1976, my very first vcr was a second hand philips n1500, pre dating vhs and v2000.
When I got vhs I copied the stuff over and then stored the philips in the loft.
15 years later I fetched it down for a nostalgia trip and it didn't work. Belts and rubbers had all perished.
So if you run a tape through them about once a month and store them in normal conditions they should be fine.
I hastily threw away the philips, but I wish I still had it now as it is worth serious money in good condition.
I own both a VHS and Beta machine but as you said rarely use them. However since I have an extensive library of both types of tapes I hope to be able to view them for years to come. I even recently purchased an old working Beta machine since my old one tended to try to eat the tape when I ejected Beta tapes from the machine. As noted unless you can find someone who works on old equipment you cannot get them repaired.
Proud to say I still used a VCR to record cable in 2019, before I cut the cord. Now, if I want my own copy of something, I make an mp4. Modern stuff is great, but VCRs did have an advantage or two. If an mp4 recording runs long accidentally, I have to go through the lengthy process of trimming. With a VCR, I could just tape over the extra part in seconds or minutes. I still love the new stuff, though.
Lots of old security systems rely on slow record on VHS tapes. I wonder where they source the replacements?
Yeah I've got an VCR player lying around. Got loads of tape, no point in getting rid of them just to get DVD's of the same films and the like.
i mostly watch dvds, but i have a huge vhs collection so i still watch vhs too. i have 2 vcr's, one is a vhs to dvd converter and it sometimes will eat the tape, so i stopped using it, but the other is a late 90's sony vcr that has been working perfect for over 20 years and still works great even today.
VHS tapes are still produced by one seller on Alibaba, however you need to purchase a huge bulk quantity.
literally who
lol, before this video started I was thinking 'Japan, you gotta look in Japan' , probably is the best place to score a NOS VCR.
I have 4x VCRs in my household along with 7x Blu-Ray/DVD Recorders. One VCR is a JVC SuperVHS/miniDV Combo unit, the rest are 6-head Panasonic HiFi units from early 2000s!
They still make VCRs for the security market, the only issue is that they are actually 2001 DVD/VCR combo units and have the 1983 VCR price.
Really? Can theybd used for reco4ding tv shows?
This is awesome, especially for nostalgic purposes.
Still need to convert several family home videos to digital. Hopefully alway will have a vcr for the conversion.
While the US stopped releasing new movies on VHS in 2005, some countries (mostly in south-east Asia, I believe) continued to released new movies on VHS for several more years.
I was still time shifting on a VCR with a DTV converter box up until around 2015. My VCR's have become indifferent from lack of use, I still have 2 operating units here, but almost doubtful I'll ever use them.
I still have my old one, now connected to my PC for digitizing, works great.
Yes, I still have one. Haven't used it in years though. Don't know if it even still works after all these years. I kind of miss it, but then I remember how a VCR going bad can destroy tapes, how rewinding tapes took time and caused extra mechanical wear on the inner mechanisms, and how hard it was to set the clock on many of them and then I don't miss it as much.
It was great for its time and I have fond memories of the movies I watched on the old CRT TVs, and of renting movies, and of recording shows, etc. when I was a kid in the 80s and a teen in the 90s, but it was the content that lived on for me, not the format it's stored in. I'm glad for people who have digitized movies and TV shows that never got an official release on DVD or newer so it never gets lost to time. 🙂
I still have two VCRs and tons of movies on VHS but I have to admit I rarely watch these tapes.
They were still manufactured for cctv use until recently, where 576 line tv in black and white was still in use.
People still use VCR's for security severance. And modern systems have data on digital hard drives. DVD's are more up to date and you can run them on PC's
DVD's get scratched easily, arent as fun, more boring
@@Warp3326 The DVD has a menu so you can search chapters. There is often a behind the scenes footage to allow you how stunts and filming is done with audio and lighting ect. There is also a directors commentary of how they came up with movie. VHS can warp up tape and it is hard to search for a specific part with Fast Forward. I had a pink goop solution that fixed scratches. I used it once a year and it was messy but it fixed scratches. Now i have all music CD's on MP3 format, though i prefer to listen to the radio. I have thrown out all the old DVD's as they are hard to sell and you get little money for them due to deterioration. I have one movie but no player. I can get a portable DVD player to plug into PC for that movie or i can throw it away.
I still own a Funai VCR. Used to record late online streams to watch them at a more appropriate time. I own a PVR and it records TV channels unencrypted to an external HDD so I can copy them over to my PC and keep them forever, but it can't record anything other than DVB-T or C broadcasts so I used the VCR for other sources. Until the online broadcaster made the streams available on-demand.
I have to wonder the same thing about DVD/VHS Combo units. I remember those in the 2012s still widely in use.
6 Head Stereo Hi Fi, that was the machine you wanted if you were a collector.
I have a VCR I bought in 2004. Still have it and have used it a few times in the last few years, mainly for digitising old home movies for friends and family. It is a Bush brand VCR. My dad bought a Sony Beta Max VCR and camera setup way back in 1981. We then had a Sanyo Betamax player for a few years, before we got our first VHS in 1987 due to the lack of availability of Betamax rental tapes in the UK. We got our first DVD player around 1999.
I occasionally tinker with them nowadays but I used them quite regularly back in the 2010's to record stuff before I had a capture card
I have about 500 movies on VHS, but I'm slowly replacing them. My problem is that I have many VHS tapes with such things as my wedding, and vacations.
I have a combo VHS/DVD player, but the DVD portion conked out. So I bought a DVD player, and now the VHS is no longer hooked up.
Il VHS dopo breve tempo dalla sua nascita si impose con una ascesa veloce e repentina come standard mondiale,sistema che non morira mai,sistema video oggetto di grande passione e collezionismo ovunque,io per primo!
I'm planning to get a VCR from eBay this week. I thought this was dead, but I was wrong.
I think the important question is anybody making spare parts nowadays. The basic pinch rollers are getting scarce nowadays, then you've got the upper video heads then the necessary back tension belts. At the moment nothings happening except for buying a spare model just to keep your own going and there's only so far 3D printing can go and if you're skilled enough to fabricate basic metal parts.
agreed! Those are very hard parts to find. Studio Sound Electronics is still keeping an inventory of belts and rollers, but head drums are getting scarce. My shop used to have piles of them back in the day! The hardest one for me is tension bands and clutches, to hold drag on the supply reel to hold the proper tension on the tape, and so the take-up reel can "slip" while being turned.
Speaking for video heads, what equipment is used to construct them? If we learn about the equipment, we can try to make our own heads. Just a thought.
When I got my first apartment in 2007 my dad bought me a Panasonic VCR. I have no idea if it even still works, but I keep it all set up for nostalgia sake. All of my VHS tapes are in a box, and probably still functional because I don't have them near anything that produces a magnetic field.
My GoldStar VHS player purchased in 1998 and still going strong
Had one and they were good, long lasting and the picture was sharp.
Ha...GoldStar....along with Emerson, the cheap beers of electronics
YOU ARE AWESOME MAN!