Remembering The VCR…RIP, The End Is Near
The last VCR will be manufactured this month
R.I.P., VCR. Funai Electric, the world’s last known VCR manufacturer, will cease production of video-cassette recorders this month.
A Follow Up….The First Teleprompters Today’s earlier post on the Jess Oppenheimer through-the-lens prompter took me here. These photos show the first ever teleprompters in television. The large CBS photo is from December of 1950 and the show is ‘The First Hundred Years’. It was the first ongoing TV soap opera in the US that […]
Four pages of Operations Sheets from NBC Television’s early days. This is the best ever guide to see which studios were being used at a time when radio and TV were sharing space at 30 Rock, and looking for studio space around the city. Here are some keys to the Abbreviations here, so you can […]
Video Rarity #4…Inside ABC Studio TV 2, November 7, 1952 This show-within-a-show depicts a live telecast of ‘Tales of Tomorrow’, an actual ABC dramatic series, which keeps being broken into by a phantom broadcast. It’s far fetched, but it gives us a rare look at the early years of ABC’s TV 2. My guess is […]
Back Stage on “The Price Is Right” Now this is interesting…we have Noreclo PC70s at Television City in 1982. I think the next cameras there were Ikegami HK312s. This piece is from a local morning show somewhere called ‘2 On The Town’. Enjoy. Source
Only a matter of time till you can’t get tape anymore 🙁
Still have some tapes. You can’t trade them in anymore, you might get a nickel a tape. What an important innovation the VCR was. My mother worked for GE in the early 60s and she talked about how they demonstrated a device that could ‘tape’ Johnny Carson and they played it back. It was mind blowing to think that the home TV didn’t have to be a passive instrument.
Wait, they still make VCR’s?
I have repaired several 1000’s of them.
The last one should go into a museum. That invention really did change the world
Some VHS tapes are highly collectible
Soon we will be forced to finally buy the updated Star Wars were Han did not shoot first.
It does represent the end of an era. The concept of analog magnetic tape storage of video as well as audio has been well documented here. It was a revelation to have it first come to the consumer level, at all, then the camcorder replacing film etc. VHS was always barely adequate to it’s task, but I hate to see such a highly developed technology with moving heads etc just be forgotten. A lot of engineering from the first Ampex machines to the ultra miniature analog and then digital tapes.
What we have now with 4K on phones is just science fiction of just a decade or two ago.
On the other hand, analog audio reel to reel has hit a slight renaissance.
Tape is still being made and you can buy restored/refurbished machines and there are some rumors of actual new production of recorders.
Doubt I will ever be able to transfer all my important VHS tapes to digital. Still own several Panasonic VHS var machines.
I have 4 Sony units from the early 90’s that work perfectly.
I followed here the story of the videotape and learn to respect this machine after learned about all the efforts to achive it in early 50’s
Mine is still on use
Pretty much evicted VHS from the closed-circuit operation I run several months ago. Granted, I got moved into a smaller office and didn’t have room for the tapes….had to digitize them! Won’t miss it too much……
Awwwww!
VHS can look fairly good if the Y/C output video is time-base corrected to remove jitter.
Star transferring all you tapes to DVD’s now.