Items tagged with VHS
It was a darn good run for VCRs, but if they weren't considered obsolete before, they soon will be. Funai Electronics, the last manufacturer of VCR hardware, announced that it's ceasing production of video tape recorders at the end of the month, as parts are increasingly difficult to come by for a machine that no longer is in strong demand.Of course, that wasn't always the case. Though Funai only sold around 750,000 VCRs in 2015, during the technology's heyday Funai was selling up to 15 million units. While not ancient history, VCRs once were commonplace in households (your parents might still own one), supplanting Sony's Betamax as the format of choice among home consumers.JVC introduced the...
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In honor of the 57th anniversary of the invention of the first commercial video cassette recorder, YouTube added a “VHS mode” button on some of its videos that makes the clip that you’re watching appear to be VHS cassette playback. The feature includes adding black and white fuzz at the beginning of the clip, distortion at the bottom of the screen, squiggly lines, and more. One commenter on YouTube’s Google+ announcement page linked to this apt video that got the VHS treatment: This VHS mode thing also reminds us that nostalgia isn’t always as pretty as we remember. (Woof, that’s some ugly video.) And it’s almost bizarre that many of us still owned owned...
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Just the mention of a VHS tape today is sure to bring back memories. Now, the once-popular home video format that brought us hours of entertainment is all but dead. In fact, the last major supplier of tapes, a warehouse run by Ryan Kugler, shipped its last truckload of VHS tapes sometime in October. According to Kugler, "It's dead, this is it, this is the last Christmas, without a doubt. I was the last one buying VHS and the last one selling it, and I'm done. Anything left in warehouse we'll just give away or throw away." Although VHS tapes largely led to new businesses such as Blockbuster, you won’t find VHS relics at very many video stores around the country anymore. And while chains such as...
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Variety has a mildly amusing obituary for the Vertical Helical Scan format. After a long illness, the groundbreaking home-entertainment format VHS has died of natural causes in the United States. The format was 30 years old. No services are planned. The format had been expected to survive until January, but high-def formats and next-generation vidgame consoles hastened its final decline. "It's pretty much over," concurred Buena Vista Home Entertainment general manager North America Lori MacPherson on Tuesday. VHS is survived by a child, DVD, and by Tivo, VOD and DirecTV. It was preceded in death by Betamax, Divx, mini-discs and laserdiscs....
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They're right, VHS is just about dead. Sometimes it's hard to even find them in stores. If you've got some home movies though, or anything on a VHS tape you wish to preserve, copying the content over to a DVD is the way to go. The folks at Hardware Secrets can start you off with the hardware you'll need in the first part of their two part article. "With a PC with a DVD burner, a video capture card (or a video card with VIVO function) and a VCR you can convert all your VHS tapes in DVDs. You may even start working with this and make some money - there is a huge market for this kind of conversion out there for people that don't want to go thru the hassle of converting the tapes...
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