Japan to stop making VCR machines.

Japan to stop making VCR machines.

According to Japanese Newspaper “The Nikei”  the end of July will see the last videocassette recorder (VCR) being produced.

To be honest I though that production had already halted, but amazingly last year Funai Electri (which has been producing machines for the last 33 years) sold 750,000 units, down from a peak of 15 million a year, and has been finding it difficult to source the necessary parts.

If you’re old and can remember back to the introduction of videocassette recorders in the 1970’s, the machines were massive, weighed a ton, hummed like a refrigerator and cost over £1000. Everyone still wanted one, and thus the old battle of VHS versus Betamax began. An amazing fact I found out was Sony only stopped selling Betamax tapes last year !

Eventually DVD’s superceded the VHS platform, and it was 12 years ago that UK high street retailer Dixons decided to phase out the sale of VCRs due to the popularity of DVD players.

Gah, this post is making me feel really old I’ll be mentioning Rumbelows, Radio Rentals and Tandy next .  

I wonder if VHS will be like vinyl and have a revival? It is the end of a era as they say, goodbye old friend. We had some grainy tracking which needed adjusting … great times.