R.I.P.: The world's last VCR will be manufactured this month
 

Man this makes me feel OLD! Am I the only one where every VCR I ever had sucked & eventually ate my tapes?

I'm glad technology has pushed forward and we can all watch any move ever made in our phones and transmit them wirelessly to our HD TV's, farewell VCR's.

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Japan's Funai Electric, which claims to be the world's last VCR manufacturer, says it will cease production of the machines this month.

Funai started manufacturing video-cassette recorders in 1983, and at one point was selling 15 million units a year. Alas, the clunky VCR has since been replaced by an array of new technologies: DVDs, Blu-ray, and now, streaming video services.

Last year, Funai sold 750,000 units, and found it was getting harder to find the parts to make VCRs.

A Funai spokesperson said that customers have been the company and asking where they can find the last few products.

VCRs for home use were introduced in the 1960s, gaining traction after Sony brought lower-priced models to market. Other Japanese manufacturers, including Panasonic, RCA, JVC and Toshiba, were also instrumental in developing the VCR.

The electromechanical device records, stores, and plays back television programs using a magnetic tape cassette.

In 1984, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that home use of VCRs to record television didn't constitute a violation of copyright law, paving the way for an explosion of the technology in American homes.

For a time, a battle ensued between Sony's Betamax and JVC's VHS -- both VCR tape formats -- but VHS eventually won out. FULL STORY

Damn. I do feel old. I remember having to rent a VCR from the video store to watch the movies. Remember the first remotes had cords.

I don't remember remotes with cords on anything other than toys but I do remember being the remote as a child and having to change the dial in the BW tv to one of the 6 available stations we got that my parents told me to switch it to :1orglaugh:1orglaugh

Just in time for hipsters to make wooden ones which are operated by penny farthings. I'm over these bearded wankers now.

Can you imagine how many Beta and VHS video cassette recorders must be occupying space in landfills around the world ? The same of Cathode Ray Tube televisions.

I remember the move from film to videos and the impact it had on porn. Suddenly anyone could buy a video cassette, hide it, and watch movies when the wife was out. Knowing if she came home unexpectedly all that was required was to eject the video. Rather than pack up a film projector. Which needed a good excuse to buy one.

750,000 units sold last year? Still a good number.

Exactly what I thought :1orglaugh:thumbsup

VCR was revolutionary, of course nowhere near the impact as the Internet but until the Internet the VCR was the coolest invention in my lifetime. Being able to go to the neighborhood video store and rent the newest movies not long after they were in theaters was mind blowing - before that if you missed a movie in the theater it was years before they came on TV and when they did you better be home because that was your only chance for another long period of time. There were thousands of small mom and pop video rental stores that made great livings for about 5 years until the big boys with their supermarket style video stores made them extinct.

It also created a boom for the porn industry, which up until then only had adult movie theaters and stag films sold by mail through ads in skin magazines. I'd never seen hardcore porn before other than one old black and white this Italian guy I worked with had and brought a projector and the film to work LOL The first VHS porn tape I got my hands on was a 6 or 8 hours tape with 3 or 4 videos on it, by the incredibly shitty quality of the video it must have gone through many generations of duplication but it was still amazing. I remember one of the videos was an erotic sci fi movie The Satisfiers of Alpha Blue, then a movie with Christy Canyon and Traci Lords where they were kidnapped by a sex club of wealthy perverts - watched their scenes an ungodly number of times.

Sad day, soon nobody will be able to watch Paul Markham videos.

another page has turned... :(

waiting for crowdfunding campaign for relaunching vcr business so hipsters can watch vhs again...

Yeah who the hell is buying those? Museums?

the top loading panasonic was the shit :1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

i had AKAi VCP

My parents refuse to get rid of their vcrs and 100s of tapes they have. My mom buys these dvd vcr combo machines as that is all she can find these days. I still have my vcr and some tapes but they are just boxed up.

Yeah my mom has tons of VCR tapes she won't get rid of but she never watches them.

We didn't have cable tv when I was a kid - we lived in the middle of no where - and the only music videos we had access to when I was younger was a TV program called "Friday Night Videos". It was only half an hour and once a week, so we would record all of them and watch them over and over again. They didn't run the good stuff, but the stuff no one ever heard of - for example, Ian Hunter's "All Of The Good Ones Are Taken" was one. I think very few people have ever heard of this song but this very day it's one of my favorites.

James Bond movies too. We recorded all of the James Bond movies, the old classics, and I still love them today.

Dating back to when we began shootin' stuff in the mid 80s - collectin' dust in our attic...


https://gfy.com/members/silentknight/...655-oldvhs.jpg

Whoa, I remember doing that with my father totally forgot about it until you mentioned it.

I bought a used JVC one from a goodwill store last year cause I have an old tape of a theater production where I operated the lightboard/soundboard and wanted to peep it years later. Only time I been in a goodwill store just to check it out. Personally not a guy to buy used clothes but the electronics, tools and luggage section kept me busy for a few minutes. A year later still haven't watched the tape and VCR is in my living room closet. :1orglaugh

Pretty sure my parents still have hundreds of tapes from the 80's as think they recorded every movie to ever play on cable. :1orglaugh

Still have a JVC S-VHS we bought a few years ago strictly for transfering old VHS to DVD. Used it once...now it's a dust collector.

Big ambitions...lacking motivation.

Pristine condition, tho.