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The Last VCR Manufacturer to end production at the end of July 2016

Started by bing101, July 21, 2016, 01:15:15 PM

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bing101

http://fortune.com/2016/07/21/last-video-cassette-recorder-maker/

Wow I thought this was a joke at first though. But amazing how they managed to keep VHS productions a decade after the VHS was beat by DVD sales and the rise of Apple TV and Roku carrying various apps for Movies and TV shows.


kphoger

Interesting.  I still have plenty of VHS tapes and audio cassette tapes.  I'm disappointed that our new (2007) car doesn't have a tape deck, but I can live with that.  However, having to do without all our VHS tapes would totally stink, especially since we use a lot of them for children.  My wife operates a home daycare and home-schools our own, so both cartoons and educational videos are important to us.  Eventually the VCR built into our TV will go out (it's already not working the best), so I guess we'll have to go to eBay to find a replacement.
Keep right except to pass.  Yes.  You.
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Male pronouns, please.

Quote from: Philip K. DickIf you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use them.

7/8

My friend lent me a DVD copy of Zootopia last weekend, and my brother and I laughed because we just assumed they stopped releasing new movies in regular DVD format. So that fact that VHS only stopped being produced now is a real surprise to me!

I might have a VHS player somewhere in the house, but we still have lots of VHS movies from when I was a kid :)

kphoger

Quote from: 7/8 on July 21, 2016, 01:26:09 PM
we still have lots of VHS movies from when I was a kid

So do a LOT of people.  And movies that we bought on tape and won't be able to play anymore.  I guess it's all eBay from here on out to replace the players.
Keep right except to pass.  Yes.  You.
Visit scenic Orleans County, NY!
Male pronouns, please.

Quote from: Philip K. DickIf you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use them.

Stephane Dumas


kphoger

Keep right except to pass.  Yes.  You.
Visit scenic Orleans County, NY!
Male pronouns, please.

Quote from: Philip K. DickIf you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use them.

briantroutman

I think more startling in that article was the revelation that Sony just stopped shipping Betamax tapes last year.

If you have anything irreplaceable on VHS tapes–or really tapes of any kind–you absolutely need to digitize them and keep the files backed up safely. Even if production of VHS players went on forever, your tapes won't live that long. I've experienced enough problems with degraded, worn, and unplayable tapes to have learned that lesson.

But about the last VCRs–I'll bet they're real pieces of junk. It's been my experience that the laggard manufacturers who still plod along selling obsolete tech "de-content"  it to bring production costs down to rock bottom so they can sell at throwaway prices and still walk away with a profit.

My grandmother went through a series of cordless home phones and answering machines a few years ago; all of them were complete garbage and stopped working within months. Another relative was in the market for a small CRT television around the time that LCDs really took off–all options were very poor quality, cheap-looking, cheap-feeling trash. Compare that with a 4" Sony CRT television I had from about 15 years earlier; it was like a Swiss watch in comparison

noelbotevera

My family used to use floppy disks for our computer from 1994-2003, and we still have a ton of VHS tapes and our VHS player. If I dig I might be able to find floppy disks and VHS tapes in my house.

I think the next thing to return would be tape drives, and MS DOS stuff.

kphoger

Quote from: briantroutman on July 21, 2016, 02:28:27 PM
If you have anything irreplaceable on VHS tapes–or really tapes of any kind–you absolutely need to digitize them and keep the files backed up safely. Even if production of VHS players went on forever, your tapes won't live that long. I've experienced enough problems with degraded, worn, and unplayable tapes to have learned that lesson.

The key phrase in that statement is "keep the files backed up."  I've had VHS and cassette tapes last for ten or twenty years before wearing out, but CDs and DVDs get scratched far too easily.
Keep right except to pass.  Yes.  You.
Visit scenic Orleans County, NY!
Male pronouns, please.

Quote from: Philip K. DickIf you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use them.

briantroutman

Quote from: kphoger on July 21, 2016, 02:42:56 PM
The key phrase in that statement is "keep the files backed up."  I've had VHS and cassette tapes last for ten or twenty years before wearing out, but CDs and DVDs get scratched far too easily.

I didn't say specifically although I should have: I'm talking about having multiple, redundant copies saved across hard drives, flash drives, cloud drives, etc. Optical discs–particularly the low-quality ones sold as CD-Rs–are just as bad as tape if not worse.

8.Lug

Quote from: kphoger on July 21, 2016, 02:12:31 PM
Betamax was good technology.  Let's bring that back.
I really don't understand why people always say that. I never saw any discernible difference, except for when you paused a Beta player the screen went blue or black, unlike a VHS where you could still see the image.
Contrary to popular belief, things are exactly as they seem.

SP Cook

There are several youtube presenters, the best being a kid that runs a site called "Oddity Archive" that deal with old time entertainment systems.     Including lots of material on the Beta-VHS deal. 

If you look closely at the product in the article it is only technically a recorder.  Mainly designed to play pre-recorded tapes, or record from the DVD player to the VHS although it does have a set of RCA input plugs so you could plug the output of something like a cable box into it.  It does not have a tuner or a timer which were nearly universal when the technology was current.

If a person had a properly maintained VHS, or for that matter Beta, system and could put up with it limitations, it could still function as a crude "time shifting" TV recorder via a cable box or a ATSC downconverter, and it could still play old tapes.  Yes, tapes degrade over time, but really if you keep the player clean and the tapes in a good environment and run them through the machine now and then, many will be playable for many years to come.


mgk920

IIRC, the last CRT was made about 10 years or so ago.  The change from them to LCD (and other format) flatscreens in TVs and desktop computer monitors is one of the *fastest* examples of consumer technology obsolescence that I have ever seen.  CRTs went from nearly 100% of the video market to GONE in, maybe, 5 years or so.

Vacuum tubes held out much longer in the face of transistors.

Mike

kphoger

Tangentially related...

I've never bought a TV set brand-new.  The one we currently own was a hand-me-down from a friend of the family who used to use it at church, and it's one of those big CRT sets with a built-in VCR, the kind you used to see strapped to a metal cart to be wheeled around school.  Anyway, a few years ago, I won a raffle at my company's Christmas party and ended up with a free Blu-ray player.  Talk about a serious technology gap between the devices!  The only inputs on the TV are 3-patch composite (red-white-yellow), but the only output on the Blu-ray player is HDMI.  In order to watch movies on our FREE device, we had to go online and purchase a converter to downgrade the signal into a usable format our TV could use.  Offhand, I seem to remember it being about 20 bucks.
Keep right except to pass.  Yes.  You.
Visit scenic Orleans County, NY!
Male pronouns, please.

Quote from: Philip K. DickIf you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use them.

NJRoadfan

CRTs went away quickly because of their girth. They were BIG AND HEAVY, you never wanted to move one. Flat panels could easily fit in many areas and be made in much larger sizes.

VHS did get a 21st century upgrade. Digital VHS allowed direct bitstream recording of MPEG2 HD video and for a while it was the only home HD video system available. It allowed time shifting from cable boxes (ever wonder why your CATV box still has firewire ports?) and pre-recorded movies were available for it.



They also made great playback devices since JVC usually equipped their units with SVHS playback and picture enhancement circuits. Those crappy Funai decks couldn't hold a candle to playback quality of late SVHS/DVHS decks though.

Both VHS and Betamax live on in this house (along with CRT TVs for vintage gaming):

KEVIN_224

I'm presently looking at an LG DVD recorder/VCR combo from about 2008 or so. Thankfully, it did have a digital tuner included. Oddly. some DVD recorders I sold in my last days with Walmart did NOT!

ET21

Keep the relics alive! I have a ton of VHS, most are my childhood Disney movies.
The local weatherman, trust me I can be 99.9% right!
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sparker

Betamax produced a much better quality of recording/playback because of one thing:  3 times the tape-to-head contact.  Unfortunately, that came with a much more complicated tape-threading mechanism that actually bent the tape in a C-shape around the head.  VHS simply pushed the tape up against the rotating head; only about a 1 1/4-inch section of tape contacted the head at any point.  The Betamax format was a consumer-grade derivative of the industry-standard Sony "U-Matic" commercial video tape system, while VHS was strictly a consumer-grade concept from the get-go.  Eventually VHS won the format "war" when most of the major recorder vendors signed on (RCA, Samsung, Philips, Matsushita/Panasonic); by 1983 or so Beta ceased to be a viable format, and production ceased for pre-recorded Beta tapes -- although, as has been stated earlier in this thread, blank tape production from Sony, the format originator, continued through mid-2015.   

Desert Man

1980s and 90s "old" tech is trending again, like Vaporwave music on Youtube, we seek the recent past for things we remember and loved to do or use at the time. I never even thought the VHS or VCR was still produced for current use. 5 years from now, CDs and DVDs will be finally abandoned.
Get your kicks...on Route 99! Like to turn 66 upside down. The other historic Main street of America.

Scott5114

CDs are a terrible storage medium. They're too large to comfortably fit in a pocket and they're fragile as hell and one-time-use. If there had been a feasible way to make 800 MB floppies, CDs never would have taken off. I'm glad that 1 GB+ flash drives are cheap enough now.
uncontrollable freak sardine salad chef

cl94

Quote from: sparker on July 26, 2016, 05:21:28 AM
Betamax produced a much better quality of recording/playback because of one thing:  3 times the tape-to-head contact.  Unfortunately, that came with a much more complicated tape-threading mechanism that actually bent the tape in a C-shape around the head.  VHS simply pushed the tape up against the rotating head; only about a 1 1/4-inch section of tape contacted the head at any point.  The Betamax format was a consumer-grade derivative of the industry-standard Sony "U-Matic" commercial video tape system, while VHS was strictly a consumer-grade concept from the get-go.  Eventually VHS won the format "war" when most of the major recorder vendors signed on (RCA, Samsung, Philips, Matsushita/Panasonic); by 1983 or so Beta ceased to be a viable format, and production ceased for pre-recorded Beta tapes -- although, as has been stated earlier in this thread, blank tape production from Sony, the format originator, continued through mid-2015.   

Of course, VHS won the format war for another reason: adult entertainment. Studios used VHS tapes because they and VCRs were a hell of a lot cheaper while being able to record for longer.
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sparker

Right -- Beta maxed out at 4 hours (at the slower and "grainier" speed); the faster, 2 hr. max, speed was what most early prerecorded tapes utilized.  VHS machines recorded at three speeds; the fastest VHS was equivalent to the slower Beta in quality.  But the maximum available with standard VHS tapes was 6 hours; thinner tapes allowing 8 hours' recording time at the slowest speed started popping up about 1990 or so.  But the mechanism in the VHS cassette was much simpler, so the per-unit cost was considerably less than Beta -- that, coupled with the reduced production cost of VHS machines, spelled doom for the viability of the Beta format.  What got the adult industry into VHS -- although the visual definition, a selling point for porn producers, was decidedly less than Beta, was the advent of multi-head VHS machines.  Most entry-level VHS machines had one recording head on each side of the rotating head drum (2 total); some higher-end machines featured 4 total heads, spread out over the drum in quadrants for greater tape sampling rates.  That produced higher definition recording -- a real selling point for adult entertainment.  Some later portable VHS machines, designed to be used with external cameras (mid-80's and pre-camcorder) featured as many as 6 heads on the drum.  At that point, the quality of VHS -- at the fastest speed with the greatest number of recording heads -- was very close to Betamax.

SteveG1988

Quote from: sparker on July 28, 2016, 01:32:13 AM
Right -- Beta maxed out at 4 hours (at the slower and "grainier" speed); the faster, 2 hr. max, speed was what most early prerecorded tapes utilized.  VHS machines recorded at three speeds; the fastest VHS was equivalent to the slower Beta in quality.  But the maximum available with standard VHS tapes was 6 hours; thinner tapes allowing 8 hours' recording time at the slowest speed started popping up about 1990 or so.  But the mechanism in the VHS cassette was much simpler, so the per-unit cost was considerably less than Beta -- that, coupled with the reduced production cost of VHS machines, spelled doom for the viability of the Beta format.  What got the adult industry into VHS -- although the visual definition, a selling point for porn producers, was decidedly less than Beta, was the advent of multi-head VHS machines.  Most entry-level VHS machines had one recording head on each side of the rotating head drum (2 total); some higher-end machines featured 4 total heads, spread out over the drum in quadrants for greater tape sampling rates.  That produced higher definition recording -- a real selling point for adult entertainment.  Some later portable VHS machines, designed to be used with external cameras (mid-80's and pre-camcorder) featured as many as 6 heads on the drum.  At that point, the quality of VHS -- at the fastest speed with the greatest number of recording heads -- was very close to Betamax.

It's still 240/250i, so the beta vs VHS arguement was moot even then. NTSC was 480i. If you wanted really high quality video back then you had the laserdisc, which was 425i. Or if you wanted total crap, you got the RCA Selectavision, all the drawbacks of VHS, with none of the recording. 240i video at most, a lot faster wearing down of the media, a stylus that had to be replaced, and RCA going bankrupt after the failure of their 20ish year project.
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cl94

Quote from: SteveG1988 on July 28, 2016, 12:40:20 PM
Quote from: sparker on July 28, 2016, 01:32:13 AM
Right -- Beta maxed out at 4 hours (at the slower and "grainier" speed); the faster, 2 hr. max, speed was what most early prerecorded tapes utilized.  VHS machines recorded at three speeds; the fastest VHS was equivalent to the slower Beta in quality.  But the maximum available with standard VHS tapes was 6 hours; thinner tapes allowing 8 hours' recording time at the slowest speed started popping up about 1990 or so.  But the mechanism in the VHS cassette was much simpler, so the per-unit cost was considerably less than Beta -- that, coupled with the reduced production cost of VHS machines, spelled doom for the viability of the Beta format.  What got the adult industry into VHS -- although the visual definition, a selling point for porn producers, was decidedly less than Beta, was the advent of multi-head VHS machines.  Most entry-level VHS machines had one recording head on each side of the rotating head drum (2 total); some higher-end machines featured 4 total heads, spread out over the drum in quadrants for greater tape sampling rates.  That produced higher definition recording -- a real selling point for adult entertainment.  Some later portable VHS machines, designed to be used with external cameras (mid-80's and pre-camcorder) featured as many as 6 heads on the drum.  At that point, the quality of VHS -- at the fastest speed with the greatest number of recording heads -- was very close to Betamax.

It's still 240/250i, so the beta vs VHS arguement was moot even then. NTSC was 480i. If you wanted really high quality video back then you had the laserdisc, which was 425i. Or if you wanted total crap, you got the RCA Selectavision, all the drawbacks of VHS, with none of the recording. 240i video at most, a lot faster wearing down of the media, a stylus that had to be replaced, and RCA going bankrupt after the failure of their 20ish year project.

I'm just old enough to remember LaserDisc. Every once in a while, I saw a video on one in elementary school.
Please note: All posts represent my personal opinions and do not represent those of my employer or any of its partner agencies.

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Rothman

Quote from: cl94 on July 28, 2016, 12:43:42 PM
Quote from: SteveG1988 on July 28, 2016, 12:40:20 PM
Quote from: sparker on July 28, 2016, 01:32:13 AM
Right -- Beta maxed out at 4 hours (at the slower and "grainier" speed); the faster, 2 hr. max, speed was what most early prerecorded tapes utilized.  VHS machines recorded at three speeds; the fastest VHS was equivalent to the slower Beta in quality.  But the maximum available with standard VHS tapes was 6 hours; thinner tapes allowing 8 hours' recording time at the slowest speed started popping up about 1990 or so.  But the mechanism in the VHS cassette was much simpler, so the per-unit cost was considerably less than Beta -- that, coupled with the reduced production cost of VHS machines, spelled doom for the viability of the Beta format.  What got the adult industry into VHS -- although the visual definition, a selling point for porn producers, was decidedly less than Beta, was the advent of multi-head VHS machines.  Most entry-level VHS machines had one recording head on each side of the rotating head drum (2 total); some higher-end machines featured 4 total heads, spread out over the drum in quadrants for greater tape sampling rates.  That produced higher definition recording -- a real selling point for adult entertainment.  Some later portable VHS machines, designed to be used with external cameras (mid-80's and pre-camcorder) featured as many as 6 heads on the drum.  At that point, the quality of VHS -- at the fastest speed with the greatest number of recording heads -- was very close to Betamax.

It's still 240/250i, so the beta vs VHS arguement was moot even then. NTSC was 480i. If you wanted really high quality video back then you had the laserdisc, which was 425i. Or if you wanted total crap, you got the RCA Selectavision, all the drawbacks of VHS, with none of the recording. 240i video at most, a lot faster wearing down of the media, a stylus that had to be replaced, and RCA going bankrupt after the failure of their 20ish year project.

I'm just old enough to remember LaserDisc. Every once in a while, I saw a video on one in elementary school.

Friend of mine has the original Star Wars on LaserDisc.
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