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Last VHS machine made this month

by on21 July 2016


End of an error

While most of the world gave up on VHS years ago, after the arrival of the DVD, there had been a small number of VHS machines still being made.

An outfit called Funai Electric was the last remaining Japanese company to make the units. However, this month it has decided it will cease production on its VCR units, due to declining sales and difficulty acquiring parts.

Funai Electric’s VCRs are made in China and are sold in North America, under brand names like Sanyo. Last year’s figures were 750,000 worldwide.

Part of this was due to collector sales of VHS tapes and some rare editions are worth $2,000 a pop. The idea is that VHS was to be the vinyl of analogue video recording. The difference between them and vinyl is that at least a vinyl disk sounds nice, whereas a VHS recording is terrible.

Still these are the sorts of people who like their images blurred because they were never meant to look that good.  Goodness knows what these types will do next. It looks like repair shops will do their best to keep the old machines going.

VHS was never that great a standard anyway. It only succeeded over Betamax because it was slightly cheaper and backed by the porn industry.

Last modified on 21 July 2016
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