End of The VCR

The last known VCR manufacturer goes out of business this month. The Japanese based company is still boasting VCR sales of 750,000 units in 2015. Who's still buying these junkhunks?? Besides VHS Head he's gotta be cut up.

dippy article - http://www.pcworld.com/article/3098334/hardware/rip-vhs-players-the-last-vcrs-ever-will-be-made-this-month.html

R.I.P. VCR. Luckily, this guy can probably spare a few:

ShowView®, oh god. We still had to enter the digits manually even after we eventually got a ShowView compatible VCR, but I remember that fancy VCRs had a scanner on the remote so you could scan the codes straight from the tv guide and it seemed like the most futuristic shit ever at the time. Nowadays we don't even have a paper tv guide in the house anymore, lol.

  On 7/25/2016 at 3:41 PM, manmower said:

ShowView®, oh god. We still had to enter the digits manually even after we eventually got a ShowView compatible VCR, but I remember that fancy VCRs had a scanner on the remote so you could scan the codes straight from the tv guide and it seemed like the most futuristic shit ever at the time. Nowadays we don't even have a paper tv guide in the house anymore, lol.

Was called VideoPlus over here - Never got it to work properly, always would manually set the timer with 10 minutes either side just to be safe ...

^ lol. It seems so ridiculous now...

we did not have a showview vcr, had to program it manually..

 

fondest vcr memories:

 

a) waiting a year for Jurassic Park to be released on tape, then binge watching it a lot. Once wanted to watch it, but had forgot to rewind, so I watched it in reverse. And then in non-reverse.

 

b) renting starship troopers from blockbuster, but didn't want to return it. Swapped the paper cassette label with some random casette, returned some recorded tv show instead.

We had a pirate copy of Jurassic park on tape.

 

It was such a bad copy - back of cinema view with people coughing and standing up and shit.

 

But we loved it - pure naughty owning it but brilliant.

 

Also back when my sister was a baby our VCR suddenly stopped working so dad took it to the repairs shop and they found a set of keys and a load of Lego in there. Cheers sister!

 

Bonus: VCR gets automatically capitalised by this phone.

Edited July 25, 2016 by fletcher

One of my earliest VHS memories is a rented copy of Willy Wonka that'd always eject on the scene when this guy appeared saying this:

 

 

It was like my VCR telling me: "Pete - you're too young for this, it's scary. I'll stop it before you get to the tunnel scene when the chicken gets its head chopped off.

First time I rented a DVD as a kid I rewound it back to the beginning after watching it, did so for a while til someone told me I didnt need to

I, for one am glad to see the death of this inferior technology.

 

My worst memory of VCRs were trying to record Doctor Who on my PBS station, and right when I hit record during the station bumper, the VCR would inevitably mess up, causing me to go into a panic and try and sort it out.

 

That, and recording something, only to find out later when trying to watch it, it didn't record.

  On 7/25/2016 at 4:32 PM, ThatSpanishGuy said:

First time I rented a DVD as a kid I rewound it back to the beginning after watching it, did so for a while til someone told me I didnt need to

  On 7/25/2016 at 4:32 PM, ThatSpanishGuy said:

First time I rented a DVD as a kid I rewound it back to the beginning after watching it, did so for a while til someone told me I didnt need to

 

Hahaha!

I still have one brand new in a box.

II wish i could convert all of my VHS tapes to digital but it would be too much. television, home movies, bootleg concerts (i was big in the tape trading scene in highschool).

I remember i bought a 2nd hand VCR for £3 to play my old skateboarding videos, it was weird that when i plugged the aerial in the back i picked up channel 5...ohh the days i was the king in my house.

yeah whats the best way to get a digi-rip of a tape? I have a nice and semi-rare orb video that I want to see and maybe post on the tubes

  On 7/25/2016 at 4:34 PM, Joyrex said:

I, for one am glad to see the death of this inferior technology.

 

My worst memory of VCRs were trying to record Doctor Who on my PBS station, and right when I hit record during the station bumper, the VCR would inevitably mess up, causing me to go into a panic and try and sort it out.

 

That, and recording something, only to find out later when trying to watch it, it didn't record.

 

Ha! My family's first vcr was top-loading and had a corded remote.

 

Some years later (newer VCR I presume) I remember going bananas trying to program it to record SNL, all the fucking cool kids in 6th grade were riffing hans and franz, and I could never stay up that late. Anyway I never got it to work and thus went another fork in the road of life.

 

lopez you probably need some outboard USB dealie that can accept whatever the vcr can output

  On 7/25/2016 at 7:26 PM, dr lopez said:

yeah whats the best way to get a digi-rip of a tape? I have a nice and semi-rare orb video that I want to see and maybe post on the tubes

 

This works well if you can find one:

 

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/349146-REG/Grass_Valley_602029_ADVC_110_Bidirectional_Media_Converter.html

There are tons of analogue video to digital video converters out there; most run off USB and can cost as little as 10 bucks.

... VCR?

  On 7/25/2016 at 7:54 PM, StephenG said:

... VCR?

*shakes cane angrily*

 

Get out of here, you whipper-snapper!

lol! I jest. I remember having a vcr as a kid, had a decent collection of movies too. Good times.

It's not the end of the VCR. Urban Outfitters will be selling bespoke craft VCRs next month

so this will be the next trend in so many years

  On 7/25/2016 at 7:26 PM, dr lopez said:

yeah whats the best way to get a digi-rip of a tape? I have a nice and semi-rare orb video that I want to see and maybe post on the tubes

I've got one of these thingies (Easy VHS to DVD 3) and it's worked an absolute charm to far:

 

 

Not used it to actually burn to DVD directly but to rip VHSs and camcoder tapes as mpeg files in decent quality with very little fuss

Problem is you still need the player, which is quite hard to get a decent one for not mega bucks. Car boot sales are a good bet, or charity shops, just don't expect the thing to actually work when you get it home.

Ah they're quite hardy little buggers - If you can get hold of a cleaning tape you should be fine getting one from a second hand shop/thrift store ....