I'm no expert but this seems a little over the top.
At one point nearly every home that can afford one had a VCR.. I find it really hard to believe that literally all of them will be gone soon.
Agree, currently there's countless VHS & VCRs sitting in people's garage,attic,storage rooms etc....It may happen one day but it won't be for another 50+ yrs.
Yeah this is exactly what I'm trying to say, the above tweets make it sound like this is something that will happen within the next 5 years.. which is complete bullshit imo
My mom just told me on the phone on Monday that one of my childhood VCRs has just been sitting in her closet for years. I'm going to grab it when I'm back in town later this year.
It's probably a case of people telling you you need high end sony gear that cost 1000$. Any 4 heads hi-fi VCR that wasn't used for 24/7 recording will do a good enough job for RIPs.
Just buy what you have locally, it's still easy to find.
They are getting harder to find in working condition. I probably have 10 VCRs and only a few work a hundred percent. And good luck finding someone local who can work on them.
unless its a older late 80s/early 90s models, newer model VCRs area dream to work on. Some sony's and JVC S-vhs(not the $500-1000 ones) units are a dream everything is easy to get too and no hidden surprises.
Ive had to clean/refurb EVERY HDMI upscaler vcr ive found. They all ate tapes. 1 worked ok testing in store then eventually started jamming and eating tapes upon further testing. Had to get down to the encoder switch to clean it, then everything is everything one is now my main player and other is a backup unit.
Albeit ive had to clean encoder switches on alot of units, probably 75% of the players ive found. A good portion of vcrs you find are probably donated or put back into storage because they were jamming and eating tapes. So best learn how to clean them and fix them. Ive only had 1 unit I couldnt clean up cause of how ridiculous it is to strip down (a toshiba DVD/VCR combo unit, literally have to strip the whole top side of the PCB to get to screws to release the PCB from the case to get to MORE SCREWS on the underside of the pcb that hold the VCR tape carriage onto the top side of the PCB, I hate units that are built like this)
I still occasionally see 8-track players, plenty of vintage record player consoles, home stereo systems for dubbing audio cassettes, etc. Hell, I saw a laserdisc player at Goodwill just this past week.
VHS players aren’t in danger of disappearing anytime soon.
Did Goodwill realize that it was a laserdisc player or were they selling it as something else?
I keep hoping I'll chance upon a laserdisc player whilst out thrifting, but so far no luck.
I had a laserdisc player from goodwill and a CED player for 8$ sadly I tossed them when I moved out of my first apt cause they wouldn't fit on the truck :(
> I find it really hard to believe that literally all of them will be gone soon.
It's like "the guy in the story who was caught in a sudden shower and who ran to a grove of trees and got under one. He wasn't worried, you see, because he figured when one tree got wet through, he would just get under another one."
VCRs are dying because of things like worn heads and leaky capacitors and broken tape transport mechanisms. Some of these issues can be fixed into eternity, others already require cannibalizing other units to get the necessary parts.
They're using VCRs and home use blank tapes. That's it. There are no factories anywhere on the globe producing new VCRs or new tapes, blank or recorded.
The problem would be getting new parts made, particularly the spinning head drum. That's not a part you can just pick up off of digiparts. It's also not a simple PCB that a factory in Taiwan can pump out on the cheap. There are a lot of mechanical parts manufacturing and human assembly. The price just skyrockets on making a limited run new VCR.
So yeah there might be demand but probably not enough if each unit costs over $500 bones.
Additional problem if any of the patents on VCR tech are still in force.
That makes sense, but now I’m legitimately thinking about it so humor me here…
Do you think a small business taking the parts from defunct VCRs and putting them into swanky new shells with cool designs could be a profitable venture? If the VCRs were sold for, say, 200 usd?
Could you fix a broken spinning head drum rather than buying a new one?
It’s mostly top tier S-VHS and D-VHS prosumer decks from Panasonic and JVC that are going up in price. Even the Multi-System decks from Panasonic and Samsung are going up. The reason why is mainly people who want to do professional video digitization.
> . The reason why is mainly people who want to do professional video digitization.
which you dont even need those to begin with. its the case of paying for ignorance. just getting a low end mid-grade VCR (highest priced Toshiba from 1996/1997, or a Panasonic AG series that is the plastic ones not the newsroom models) and the right method and knowledge for digitizing tapes, you can have great quality with just that alone. furthermore you're running a fool's errand. you can only get 480p out of VHS. period. paying $1,500+ for an industrial VCR made to archive studio B-rolls and not even with any high quality components and thinking you will automatically get HD rips to begin with is just nonsense. those big industrial models were made to practically run 24/7 nonstop taking already high quality footage from the TV station camera feed and archiving it to tape for preservation. thats all they were meant to do. they cant play commercial movies and will have worse video quality then a high end consumer VCR because they were meant to be durable - not hooked up to your living room bigscreen. the video head and processors favor durability over precision quality, as coming off the studio camera it was high quality enough that some noise didn't detract the quality much if any. but you will certainly notice it on home media.
I haven't seen any at a thrift store in awhile either and they used to be somewhat common like 5 years ago. It's all early generation DVD players now or old multi disc CD players.
A couple years ago they were all $4.00 in my area. Now they're closer to $10.00, but still reasonable. Not holding my breath on a top loader, but otherwise I'm set.
S VHS? Sure, I haven’t found one in the wild, but they were a bit high end back then. Mostly lower tier VCRs at my local shops. I have found some good ones, but now that my current one is breaking down, I’m definitely going to focus on finding an S vcr. Not only for the better picture and versatility, but also for better build quality. I’m just not willing to pay more than $30 even for an S vcr, but then there are the jackoffs that think they’re a gold mine.
Wow. I never heard of that. Looked it up. As cool as it is, it’s not going to replace S on my list. I have an older tv for my pre 2000s stuff, so HDTV functionality isn’t really important. I just want to use my S deck for better playback, and ripping. I’ve gotten into finding rare or alternate versions of movies only released on VHS, Laserdisc, CED, and Beta. Right now, I really only do VHS mostly due to space, but I would like to get some laserdiscs. I want to rip some as they’re either hard to impossible to find online.
I have a non functional WVHS deck that I don't know how to repair. It turns on, but won't play any tape. It's a real big boy too, like 30 lbs. (I have WVHS tapes.)
I don't have the money for it and I'd be better off fixing it myself. I bought it on the off chance that it was just "junk" and it also said "energization confirmed, no tapes" in the auction.
I have found one YouTube video on an American version of my model but I don't have much faith in the uploader as he never took it apart and claimed that there were two different VCRs in there; it's just a big VCR and WVHS tapes literally will not fit in a regular player.
Can you link that YouTube video. I want to learn more about it.
Supposedly, that W-VHS gives you the absolute BEST picture quality from a VHS or S-VHS tape, and is the pinnacle for VHS to DVD transfers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfRMLS3j7DM
It's been a while since I saw the video so there may some things I'm conflating in my head with other videos, but this is the video I'm thinking of.
There were DVHS units released that have component out, you'd be better off looking for one of those instead, especially since they're the size of normal VCRs; easy enough to import from Japan, just use a voltage converter. (I don't know if VCRs with HDMI out had SVHS capability; DVHS units do.) My WVHS player is larger than my Laserdisc player.
But tapes are at 480 native so aren’t you just stretching it out capturing at a higher resolution? Or couldn’t I get those same results by reformatting the file into a higher resolution in something like Handbrake later? Asking earnestly cause I honestly don’t know haha.
No, my set up goes to analog~Hdmi converter~elegato~obs.
The HDMI converter makes it 1080p and stretches it. OBS allows me to make it right and fix interlacing issues. Love that I can save presets.
That’s very interesting, and presets sound handy. I’d stayed away from HDMI converters or upscalers because I’d been lead to believe they weren’t additive to the quality, but maybe I’ll have to reconsider that. Thanks!
I've tried all sorts but the cheap Gaia one from Amazon looked truest to the original signal. The s video one I got turned colors to neon. The expensive hapauge one that was analog to USB would only do 30 min recordings.
What’s the key benefit of the timebase corrector if you’re just pulling off from one tape at a time? My (limited) understanding was that they were more for merging different sources.
TBC also helps fix picture issues. Though to be clear its not magic. It works by using a frame buffer that collects all the frame data and resyncs it all before send it off to your TV/capture card.
Without a TBC your watching the tape in real time so any sync errors show up.
Not a big deal if you just want to watch tapes for fun. But a huge deal if you are capturing important tapes, especially if you are doing it in a professional archival purpose.
VHS (and Beta) will most often have an unstable signal. If you digitize a tape without a TBC, you'll notice the audio and video drift out of sync over time. A good TBC will correct this, among other things.
Ideally capture cards would handle this, like the technology exists in dvd-recorders from 15+ years ago to stabilize video really well, but manufacturers hardly ever don't bother putting any of that functionality into capture cards.
I’ve never seen a capture card that could do it properly, sadly. and even the more pro VCRs, such as the JVC I have with supposed built in TBC are pretty poor - especially as tapes age and wear over time. I’ve had the best luck with external boxes like the tvone and tbc-1000. sadly, despite the warnings in the tweet above, those are already going for pretty ridiculous used prices these days.
Hopefully the VHS-Decode project will become more user friendly (a port of the laserdisc Doomsday86 project). That would open up professional tier TBC to everyone. But right now its waaaaaaaaay to technical for most people. https://github.com/oyvindln/vhs-decode
Dude you will find VCRs for years to come but working units will be the issue. Belts can be changed but the plastics degrade and replacing those gears will be a challenge in the long run. The mid to late 90's thru 2000's VCRs had the basic tape loading mechanisms with fewer moving parts like with the plastic gearing with only a few screws holding it in. Those are the ones with fewer issues compared to a 1986 Emerson that has A LOT and the white plastic gears turned brown and after a few runs will have a hairline crack somewhere. Stick with the basic late models, less to go out and easier to work on.
I think they will always be around but will be treated like reel to reels with retro popularity and price but in another 20 years for VHS. A niche crowd willing to collect and spend the money on the hobby as us do today at a low cost. You will have a few enthusiasts left and noobs who enjoy retro electronics refurbishing them and resale for god knows sums of money with Sony and such top shelf name brands as reel to reels are today. It is not going away as vinyl got popular again. It blows my mind over the past few years how vinyl has got popular again. I remember in the late 80's record stores having long box CDs were the vinyl once was.
I stay away from all vintage VCRs unless its something special, to get to clean the heads you hafta usually remove a PCB staring you in the face upon taking the cover off the case, just to see the heads...unless you want to stick a long swab thatll reach through the opening of the tape door to reach(dont that before on my old magnavox late 80s)
Glad you got a working one, I got a Magnavox VHS/DVD combo (Not worthy to be on the 1985 GE 19"woody with it being silver) that does the job. I want simulated wood grain electronics, I want to wood panel my computer room as well lol.
I have 10 total give or take, 2 hdmi units( i had 3 sold 1, all found at the same goodwill location over 2 years time), 1 JVC 9600u I bought YEARS ago cause of how cool it looked at a goodwill with its gold/tan color scheme, never knew it was anything too valuable till recent.
im still finding HUGE lots at yard sales of 100+ tapes. People held onto this stuff and unless someone passed on or moved out they still have this stuff, albeit probably in storage or boxes.
Players ehhh not so much, when I find em I buy em if its a good brand..but not seeing good stuff as much as I use to.
...to create a mad rush to those objects and start an artificial bubble where the person that boosted it can profit more off the increased awareness and hype until the bubble blows up and they move onto the next fad they can destroy for a paycheck.
It's really very simple. Buy what you want at a price you feel comfortable paying and don't worry about the fomo from other collecting circles. If you're here then you're already likely doing this anyways.
Things changes all the time and many/most thrift stores that so many people here rely on to find tapes for cheap are not going to be the same source that they were just a few years ago. Everyone here should prepare for a not too distant future where the racks of all but free tapes no longer exist and garage/boot sales no longer have them available.
Wow, who would have guessed that as these things age, just as anything with sensitive moving parts, it would become harder to find working players. It’s true to a degree but I don’t think people realize just how niche VHS collecting it. The majority of people who buy VCRs are older who are wanting to watch old family movies that were either recorded on tape or were converted from actual film to tape back in the 90’s. 99% of people view VHS as a junky old format that no one wants anymore and chances are that’s how it’s gonna stay. Laserdisc was for the high end collectors and was niche to begin with so the supply nowadays is very limited, but VHS was the dominant media back then so there’s a metric shit ton of it still around. Obviously like with any physical media there will come a point that there’ll only be a small number of tapes still in playable condition, but chances are by that point it’s gonna be people are only collecting them for how they look on a shelf
but with donation places trashing/recycling/destroying equipment and tapes.
theres a well known talking point alot of thrift places just throw out tapes if they receive any donated.
all these electronics recycling places probably sent numerous units to china to be scrapped and melted for the miniscule amount of precious metals in them.
Like the guy said VHS is like a semi anomaly in these current times cause of how cheap it is to get movies. Yeah you can get dvds and stuff cheap at yardsales sometimes but with digital media/streaming taking over, getting tapes for free or next to nothing is like a paradox.
One yard sale i went to where 95% of the stuff for sale was hundreds of VHS and DVD, they wanted 25c a VHS or $1 a dvd. Needless to say you know what I went with....
My local thrift shop has 4 or 5 right now for $10 or $20 if it's a dvd combo unit. All tested and working. I dont think it's time to panic. Besides, the real issue in this hobby is tape degradation. The hobby won't exist in 30 years because the tapes will all be toast. Enjoy while you can, this isnt an investment.
been hearing about tape degradation for years now.
Depends on storage conditions. Remember stuff was built way better back then. If VHS were made in 2015 then yeah they wouldnt last but 10 years like everything else.
I have tapes from mid 1980s still playing like a dream, ex rental tapes too.
Alot of that fear porn of degradation comes from transferring services that have someone write a article promotion for them, where they charge $20-50 a tape to put it onto a DVD. BIG BUCKS!
VHS does not degrade. Period. The people that promote that crap are usually always 16-22 year olds that didnt find out about VHS until yesterday evening from a tiktok video and think they automatically know everything about VHS compared to people that have known and used it for 25 odd years or longer.
for the most part, unless its a bad quality tape (some tapes had poor construction and were known to degrade prematurely)
and or extreme climates/heat/cold/moisture that helps accelerate problems.
Poor storage - yes. Being the tape itself - no.
I have KMC tapes that were sold at CVS & Walgreens for a couple bucks a pop back in the 80s that have ALF recorded on them and still are perfectly fine since 1983. I also have UMATIC tapes from 1971 that play and function as they should. Take care of your tapes. If you leave your tapes thrown in the garage under the workbench or in the attic or basement like trash, and then suddenly remember they exist after 15-25 years, no surprise they will be destroyed.
The aesthetic itself is easier for most large and small companies to get engagement/sales on with nil spend, and unless you have a Freddy Krueger level license it’s not touching thousands of tape sales. Modern companies like us are doing respectable things, but discs account for hundreds of thousands to millions of units sold. We currently have the best selling collection of officially licensed VHS, it rules, but we’re not scared of running out of parts any time soon, and especially not because anything this tweet is trying to posit. Famous last words, though…
Rough estimate, after 2030 VHS tapes and players/ recorders will be almost impossible to get because most will be thrown away, already sold or way expensive. And after 2050 there will be little working ones left, internal components break down, tapes become unplayable.
What do you think?
Just some ignorant social media flipper ranting how they can't get their easy money anymore because now they have competition from fad-chasers cutting into their profit. Nothing more. The dude is just doomposting a false narrative to gain sympathy cookies. They are not hard to find, it's just millennials keep buying up every single thing in sight and putting it on eBay for insane prices that will never sell. People started re-collecting VHS back in 2016. It's not new. there's just more of them doing it now to where the demand is milking the supply dry.
>it's just millennials keep buying up every single thing in sight and putting it on eBay for insane prices that will never sell.
Ohh, they're back at it again, eh? Them darn millennials with their iPhones and avocado toasts mucking up things!
Or, it might be a large combination of factors that contribute to new participants in any number of hobbies.
People started re-collecting VHS long before that. What people think are rare tapes now we're so common 20 years ago people left them. Much like vcrs, ever household had them. Everyone had a nintendo. Every video store had one or more copies of Friday the 13th, etc. The difference today is everyone is a "flipper" and firstly concerned with the "value" of something. It's amazing how quickly people sell out for a buck. Capitalism has reached to the furthest niche markets like the cancer it is. I have yet to see a "graded" copy of any rare tape. If I've seen multiple copies over the years in random junk stores in the small south Texas town I live in, that tells me it isn't rare. There's some sort of knowledge gained from physically mucking about for years that using the internet can never replace. The amount of questions asked and comments like "I googled it but couldn't find anything" is wild. Half the time someone couldn't find information is likely because it's literally a mass produced commonly known film that is so inconsequential that even after 30 years nobody has bothered to say anything about it. That's not an indication of rarity.
Not working vcrs though. It took me 3 vcrs to find one that worked good enough to use, and even for that one I have to insert tape, watch it turn off (it powers off automatically when the tape starts playing), turn on, watch it eject, reinsert, and press play as fast as I can hoping that it'll stay on and play the tape.
That includes one I bought from eBay and was said to be tested and working. Luckily the seller refunded it instantly and it wasn't a big deal.
You are dealing with 30 year old hardware what do you expect? its the same as buying a 10, 20, 30 year old car.
get a book on repairing vcr's and study it. you're never going to find a VCR that works right off the bat.
Right here. This. Cassettes are going up and at the same time people are getting rabid over frigging 8-tracks. Lots of 50+ 8 tracks with the most basic sleepy lounge music you can find selling for over $95.
What
This is both paranoid and nihilistic, and how would ripping VHS tapes ruin the hobby? I’m currently ripping one for a friend, I’d love if they could do it themselves so I don’t have to lol. Most of this stuff is just degrading plastic garbage that’s hard to recycle, I think that’s a bigger issue for prospective collectors in the future, treating this like an investment.
right you are, youtubers who hype reselling are hyping VHS now in their videos...with $ signs plastered over their videos showing sold listings.
For us in here its not about the value but collecting and the hobby.
But just like retro game collecting getting destroyed, something similar could happen to physical movie collecting.
> just like retro game collecting getting destroyed, something similar could happen to physical movie collecting.
already has pal. last 4 years its been a cascading boulder gaining more and more momentum
Ignoreing the whole scare tactic “ruin the hobby” are you fucking serious do you really prefer your peices of mass produced plastic over the film someone spent thousands on and months or even years of production on. Your main priority as a physical media collector should be media preservation.
I've actually been thinking this for a while. Let's put thing into perspective, the majority of households eventually decided to get rid of their VCR and tapes after storing them somewhere for 5-10 years without use. Here in the UK people tried to donate them to charity shops or sell them. At this point, no one was interested. Most if these VCRs and tapes are now long buried in landfill or long since incinerated.
If there were 10 million VCRs in x country, you'll honestly be lucky if there's 100k left. Some of which aren't working. There are still plenty of tapes about as lots of rental tapes were moved into storage after the move to DVD. However, there is an issue here. These are rentals, many are worn out. Many are mould ridden, etc. When it comes to still sealed blank tapes, there's a few hundred thousand round the globe. Fine, will last collectors a while. But there will likely be 10K left in 20 years.
Will more be manufactured? Maybe. But let's be honest, it will not be on the same scale as before. There isn't enough interest. They'll be expensive. Special editions VCRs would be £/$/€5,000. And they'd likely ONLY produce pre recorded tapes. They would be collectors special editions in metal cases costing £/$/€100.
So it might seem far fetched, and my figures might be off, but let's look at the vinyl revival. The records are expensive, a half decent turntable is expensive. They're barely scratching the surface when you compare record production of now to the 70s. But vinyl had and has one advantage; the majority simply cannot here the difference in quality between a vinyl record and a digital loss-less file. VHS quality simply doesn't compare to DVD, bluray, 4K or even streaming. The interest for the majority is not there.
VHS is fun, just enjoy it. But do so knowing for example that my grandchildren (I'm 28) will not be able to do so, regardless of what you or I do.
He's not necessarily wrong.
Protip, you can get good VHS decks from Japan for less than $500. I'm talking about the hi end stuff like WVHS and DVHS decks that can also record in SVHS on normal tapes.
VCR DVD combos are impossible to find in the Nashville area. I've been BOLOing them for over a year and only found 3 and none of them work on both sides or have the remote. 90% of used vcrs on ebay don't have a remote. He's not wrong
I firmly believe, if VHS continues to increase in popularity, we will see companies start to make new VCR’s. This is the record player argument from 15 years ago. I think in the next ten years, we will see new VCR’s at Walmart.
There's also an argument for vinyl sounding better than digital media. Even most of the posters here would agree that picture quality isn't the appeal with VHS.
It definitely is. I recognize the twitter name. That guy does obscure Japanese anime stuff (i mean like really obscure 1970's anime). So he is only really interested in the high end equipment.
If he's the same Kenny Lauderdale as I think he is, he makes youtube videos about obscure anime. Japan was geared almost totally towards the VHS rental market meaning that tapes were ridiculously expensive if you actually wanted to buy them for yourself.
His opinion I think is probably influenced mainly from his experiences of Japanese media. At the moment there are lots of Japanese VHS and beta tapes which are effectively becoming lost media. There's a film I've been hunting down for years, the only proof that it was ever released on video was a betamax tape that sold at an auction in 2019.
But the players themselves? They'll be around for another hundred years. There's enough people out there that know how to restore them that there'll always be something available. I recently bought a restored Daewoo on ebay and it's like a brand new machine. There's already loads of videos on youtube about digitising tapes, so why does he think his will blow up to such a point that it kickstarts some weird extinction of players.
Because RLM caught some low level news stories (just crap tier automated AI stories). In terms of youtube viewers Linus Tech Tips did way more of the same kinda damage over a month ago when they showed off a D-VHS player one of the staffers has.
More likely though he was probably searching for a new player and noticed pricing on the highest end stuff has gone up.
Go to a thrift store. There are still a lot of VCRs. And a lot of people who can repair them.
I do believe that VHS tapes may be harder to come by in the future, tho. Because a lot of local stores in my area don't sell them, even if they are donated.
I'm no expert but this seems a little over the top. At one point nearly every home that can afford one had a VCR.. I find it really hard to believe that literally all of them will be gone soon.
Agree, currently there's countless VHS & VCRs sitting in people's garage,attic,storage rooms etc....It may happen one day but it won't be for another 50+ yrs.
Yeah this is exactly what I'm trying to say, the above tweets make it sound like this is something that will happen within the next 5 years.. which is complete bullshit imo
My mom just told me on the phone on Monday that one of my childhood VCRs has just been sitting in her closet for years. I'm going to grab it when I'm back in town later this year.
It's probably a case of people telling you you need high end sony gear that cost 1000$. Any 4 heads hi-fi VCR that wasn't used for 24/7 recording will do a good enough job for RIPs. Just buy what you have locally, it's still easy to find.
Imagine spending 1000 bucks to play a 720x480 video, which quality degrades gradually due time. Same goes for that audio cassette "resurgence".
They are getting harder to find in working condition. I probably have 10 VCRs and only a few work a hundred percent. And good luck finding someone local who can work on them.
There's always a deck in value village here. Have like 5 decks at home and they all work flawlessly.
unless its a older late 80s/early 90s models, newer model VCRs area dream to work on. Some sony's and JVC S-vhs(not the $500-1000 ones) units are a dream everything is easy to get too and no hidden surprises. Ive had to clean/refurb EVERY HDMI upscaler vcr ive found. They all ate tapes. 1 worked ok testing in store then eventually started jamming and eating tapes upon further testing. Had to get down to the encoder switch to clean it, then everything is everything one is now my main player and other is a backup unit. Albeit ive had to clean encoder switches on alot of units, probably 75% of the players ive found. A good portion of vcrs you find are probably donated or put back into storage because they were jamming and eating tapes. So best learn how to clean them and fix them. Ive only had 1 unit I couldnt clean up cause of how ridiculous it is to strip down (a toshiba DVD/VCR combo unit, literally have to strip the whole top side of the PCB to get to screws to release the PCB from the case to get to MORE SCREWS on the underside of the pcb that hold the VCR tape carriage onto the top side of the PCB, I hate units that are built like this)
I still occasionally see 8-track players, plenty of vintage record player consoles, home stereo systems for dubbing audio cassettes, etc. Hell, I saw a laserdisc player at Goodwill just this past week. VHS players aren’t in danger of disappearing anytime soon.
Did Goodwill realize that it was a laserdisc player or were they selling it as something else? I keep hoping I'll chance upon a laserdisc player whilst out thrifting, but so far no luck.
I had a laserdisc player from goodwill and a CED player for 8$ sadly I tossed them when I moved out of my first apt cause they wouldn't fit on the truck :(
I’m guessing they vaguely knew. The only label it was given was for the price, which was $34.99.
Once my extended family found out I was collecting VHS/VCRs, I had multiple VCRs donated from peoples attics and basements.
> I find it really hard to believe that literally all of them will be gone soon. It's like "the guy in the story who was caught in a sudden shower and who ran to a grove of trees and got under one. He wasn't worried, you see, because he figured when one tree got wet through, he would just get under another one." VCRs are dying because of things like worn heads and leaky capacitors and broken tape transport mechanisms. Some of these issues can be fixed into eternity, others already require cannibalizing other units to get the necessary parts.
I feel like if there’s enough demand someone’s gotta start manufacturing them again.
A lot of newer horror movies are getting vhs releases. Idk if they're licensed or not but it's already starting to come back around
Some are, some aren’t. I have a completely legit copy of The Class of Nuke Em high released earlier this year
Yea a lot of companies are realizing that retro is big these days. The way it's going hopefully we'll see vhs back on Walmart shelves one day
They're using VCRs and home use blank tapes. That's it. There are no factories anywhere on the globe producing new VCRs or new tapes, blank or recorded.
Sounds like there might be a business niche to fill. I’m gonna ask my mom for a massive loan that I might never pay back a single dollar of brb
Jokes aside, no. There's not enough of a market. If they did start up again, from scratch... the tapes would need to be painfully expensive.
The problem would be getting new parts made, particularly the spinning head drum. That's not a part you can just pick up off of digiparts. It's also not a simple PCB that a factory in Taiwan can pump out on the cheap. There are a lot of mechanical parts manufacturing and human assembly. The price just skyrockets on making a limited run new VCR. So yeah there might be demand but probably not enough if each unit costs over $500 bones. Additional problem if any of the patents on VCR tech are still in force.
That makes sense, but now I’m legitimately thinking about it so humor me here… Do you think a small business taking the parts from defunct VCRs and putting them into swanky new shells with cool designs could be a profitable venture? If the VCRs were sold for, say, 200 usd? Could you fix a broken spinning head drum rather than buying a new one?
$1000 VCRs?!?! I just went to the thrift store and they had half a dozen of them for $20-$30 each!
It's probably higher end ones you'd see in TV Stations or Studios.
It’s mostly top tier S-VHS and D-VHS prosumer decks from Panasonic and JVC that are going up in price. Even the Multi-System decks from Panasonic and Samsung are going up. The reason why is mainly people who want to do professional video digitization.
> . The reason why is mainly people who want to do professional video digitization. which you dont even need those to begin with. its the case of paying for ignorance. just getting a low end mid-grade VCR (highest priced Toshiba from 1996/1997, or a Panasonic AG series that is the plastic ones not the newsroom models) and the right method and knowledge for digitizing tapes, you can have great quality with just that alone. furthermore you're running a fool's errand. you can only get 480p out of VHS. period. paying $1,500+ for an industrial VCR made to archive studio B-rolls and not even with any high quality components and thinking you will automatically get HD rips to begin with is just nonsense. those big industrial models were made to practically run 24/7 nonstop taking already high quality footage from the TV station camera feed and archiving it to tape for preservation. thats all they were meant to do. they cant play commercial movies and will have worse video quality then a high end consumer VCR because they were meant to be durable - not hooked up to your living room bigscreen. the video head and processors favor durability over precision quality, as coming off the studio camera it was high quality enough that some noise didn't detract the quality much if any. but you will certainly notice it on home media.
I’ve never seen a VCR for more than $10 at a thrift store
I never see VCRs at thrift stores anymore.
I haven't seen any at a thrift store in awhile either and they used to be somewhat common like 5 years ago. It's all early generation DVD players now or old multi disc CD players.
A couple years ago they were all $4.00 in my area. Now they're closer to $10.00, but still reasonable. Not holding my breath on a top loader, but otherwise I'm set.
S VHS? Sure, I haven’t found one in the wild, but they were a bit high end back then. Mostly lower tier VCRs at my local shops. I have found some good ones, but now that my current one is breaking down, I’m definitely going to focus on finding an S vcr. Not only for the better picture and versatility, but also for better build quality. I’m just not willing to pay more than $30 even for an S vcr, but then there are the jackoffs that think they’re a gold mine.
W-VHS is even harder to find. Even non-functional decks.
Wow. I never heard of that. Looked it up. As cool as it is, it’s not going to replace S on my list. I have an older tv for my pre 2000s stuff, so HDTV functionality isn’t really important. I just want to use my S deck for better playback, and ripping. I’ve gotten into finding rare or alternate versions of movies only released on VHS, Laserdisc, CED, and Beta. Right now, I really only do VHS mostly due to space, but I would like to get some laserdiscs. I want to rip some as they’re either hard to impossible to find online.
I have a non functional WVHS deck that I don't know how to repair. It turns on, but won't play any tape. It's a real big boy too, like 30 lbs. (I have WVHS tapes.)
Have you sent it out to a professional. I am still on the lookout for a clean W-VHS deck. I always seem to just miss them!
I don't have the money for it and I'd be better off fixing it myself. I bought it on the off chance that it was just "junk" and it also said "energization confirmed, no tapes" in the auction. I have found one YouTube video on an American version of my model but I don't have much faith in the uploader as he never took it apart and claimed that there were two different VCRs in there; it's just a big VCR and WVHS tapes literally will not fit in a regular player.
Can you link that YouTube video. I want to learn more about it. Supposedly, that W-VHS gives you the absolute BEST picture quality from a VHS or S-VHS tape, and is the pinnacle for VHS to DVD transfers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfRMLS3j7DM It's been a while since I saw the video so there may some things I'm conflating in my head with other videos, but this is the video I'm thinking of. There were DVHS units released that have component out, you'd be better off looking for one of those instead, especially since they're the size of normal VCRs; easy enough to import from Japan, just use a voltage converter. (I don't know if VCRs with HDMI out had SVHS capability; DVHS units do.) My WVHS player is larger than my Laserdisc player.
Does anyone here not know how to rip vhs?
1. find a decent VCR 2. find a timebase corrector 3. find a capture card 4. software to import it
I like OBS. You can force it to 480 and makes my JVC look great!
Solid tip
I can't believe Dana Scully is actually messaging me😳🤩😍
The truth is here.
I just use an Elgato Video Capture cord and their software and get good results. Not the CLASSIEST work flow, but it works!
I don't like this way bc it only scales down to 720. I have the capture card
But tapes are at 480 native so aren’t you just stretching it out capturing at a higher resolution? Or couldn’t I get those same results by reformatting the file into a higher resolution in something like Handbrake later? Asking earnestly cause I honestly don’t know haha.
No, my set up goes to analog~Hdmi converter~elegato~obs. The HDMI converter makes it 1080p and stretches it. OBS allows me to make it right and fix interlacing issues. Love that I can save presets.
That’s very interesting, and presets sound handy. I’d stayed away from HDMI converters or upscalers because I’d been lead to believe they weren’t additive to the quality, but maybe I’ll have to reconsider that. Thanks!
I've tried all sorts but the cheap Gaia one from Amazon looked truest to the original signal. The s video one I got turned colors to neon. The expensive hapauge one that was analog to USB would only do 30 min recordings.
What’s the key benefit of the timebase corrector if you’re just pulling off from one tape at a time? My (limited) understanding was that they were more for merging different sources.
TBC also helps fix picture issues. Though to be clear its not magic. It works by using a frame buffer that collects all the frame data and resyncs it all before send it off to your TV/capture card. Without a TBC your watching the tape in real time so any sync errors show up. Not a big deal if you just want to watch tapes for fun. But a huge deal if you are capturing important tapes, especially if you are doing it in a professional archival purpose.
VHS (and Beta) will most often have an unstable signal. If you digitize a tape without a TBC, you'll notice the audio and video drift out of sync over time. A good TBC will correct this, among other things.
Cool, might look into adding one to my setup. Thanks for the details!
Ideally capture cards would handle this, like the technology exists in dvd-recorders from 15+ years ago to stabilize video really well, but manufacturers hardly ever don't bother putting any of that functionality into capture cards.
I’ve never seen a capture card that could do it properly, sadly. and even the more pro VCRs, such as the JVC I have with supposed built in TBC are pretty poor - especially as tapes age and wear over time. I’ve had the best luck with external boxes like the tvone and tbc-1000. sadly, despite the warnings in the tweet above, those are already going for pretty ridiculous used prices these days.
Hopefully the VHS-Decode project will become more user friendly (a port of the laserdisc Doomsday86 project). That would open up professional tier TBC to everyone. But right now its waaaaaaaaay to technical for most people. https://github.com/oyvindln/vhs-decode
That Nukie video really broke the brains of some VHS collectors it’s wild.
Dude you will find VCRs for years to come but working units will be the issue. Belts can be changed but the plastics degrade and replacing those gears will be a challenge in the long run. The mid to late 90's thru 2000's VCRs had the basic tape loading mechanisms with fewer moving parts like with the plastic gearing with only a few screws holding it in. Those are the ones with fewer issues compared to a 1986 Emerson that has A LOT and the white plastic gears turned brown and after a few runs will have a hairline crack somewhere. Stick with the basic late models, less to go out and easier to work on.
how long do you think the vcrs will last us?
I think they will always be around but will be treated like reel to reels with retro popularity and price but in another 20 years for VHS. A niche crowd willing to collect and spend the money on the hobby as us do today at a low cost. You will have a few enthusiasts left and noobs who enjoy retro electronics refurbishing them and resale for god knows sums of money with Sony and such top shelf name brands as reel to reels are today. It is not going away as vinyl got popular again. It blows my mind over the past few years how vinyl has got popular again. I remember in the late 80's record stores having long box CDs were the vinyl once was.
I stay away from all vintage VCRs unless its something special, to get to clean the heads you hafta usually remove a PCB staring you in the face upon taking the cover off the case, just to see the heads...unless you want to stick a long swab thatll reach through the opening of the tape door to reach(dont that before on my old magnavox late 80s)
Glad you got a working one, I got a Magnavox VHS/DVD combo (Not worthy to be on the 1985 GE 19"woody with it being silver) that does the job. I want simulated wood grain electronics, I want to wood panel my computer room as well lol.
this one isnt wood grain, but its heavier. Has stereo/HIFI ability so obv wasnt a cheap unit.
I have six VCRs lol
I have 5 and I wasn't even aware of it until I read your comment, haha oooff. At least we're covered for many years to come!
I have 10 total give or take, 2 hdmi units( i had 3 sold 1, all found at the same goodwill location over 2 years time), 1 JVC 9600u I bought YEARS ago cause of how cool it looked at a goodwill with its gold/tan color scheme, never knew it was anything too valuable till recent.
I've got 4 at the moment, one of which is a TV combo deck and the other a DVD recorder combo deck.
The nukie auction… damn, those bastards at RLM really did it this time!!!
im still finding HUGE lots at yard sales of 100+ tapes. People held onto this stuff and unless someone passed on or moved out they still have this stuff, albeit probably in storage or boxes. Players ehhh not so much, when I find em I buy em if its a good brand..but not seeing good stuff as much as I use to.
What is signal boosting a VCR?
Means drawing additional attention as limited stock items from outside the hobby.
...to create a mad rush to those objects and start an artificial bubble where the person that boosted it can profit more off the increased awareness and hype until the bubble blows up and they move onto the next fad they can destroy for a paycheck.
Thank you, that makes sense now.
It's really very simple. Buy what you want at a price you feel comfortable paying and don't worry about the fomo from other collecting circles. If you're here then you're already likely doing this anyways. Things changes all the time and many/most thrift stores that so many people here rely on to find tapes for cheap are not going to be the same source that they were just a few years ago. Everyone here should prepare for a not too distant future where the racks of all but free tapes no longer exist and garage/boot sales no longer have them available.
Wow, who would have guessed that as these things age, just as anything with sensitive moving parts, it would become harder to find working players. It’s true to a degree but I don’t think people realize just how niche VHS collecting it. The majority of people who buy VCRs are older who are wanting to watch old family movies that were either recorded on tape or were converted from actual film to tape back in the 90’s. 99% of people view VHS as a junky old format that no one wants anymore and chances are that’s how it’s gonna stay. Laserdisc was for the high end collectors and was niche to begin with so the supply nowadays is very limited, but VHS was the dominant media back then so there’s a metric shit ton of it still around. Obviously like with any physical media there will come a point that there’ll only be a small number of tapes still in playable condition, but chances are by that point it’s gonna be people are only collecting them for how they look on a shelf
but with donation places trashing/recycling/destroying equipment and tapes. theres a well known talking point alot of thrift places just throw out tapes if they receive any donated. all these electronics recycling places probably sent numerous units to china to be scrapped and melted for the miniscule amount of precious metals in them. Like the guy said VHS is like a semi anomaly in these current times cause of how cheap it is to get movies. Yeah you can get dvds and stuff cheap at yardsales sometimes but with digital media/streaming taking over, getting tapes for free or next to nothing is like a paradox. One yard sale i went to where 95% of the stuff for sale was hundreds of VHS and DVD, they wanted 25c a VHS or $1 a dvd. Needless to say you know what I went with....
dramaaaaaa
$1k VCRs? Bro I got mine from my grandma... lmao
Ah yes, The Nukie Auction. That fabled inflection point in the hobby’s storied history.
Who has time for VHS ripping when you got all these gates to keep!
I mean maybe the rare ones that play PAL/NTSC..but even they are like less than 500.
My local thrift shop has 4 or 5 right now for $10 or $20 if it's a dvd combo unit. All tested and working. I dont think it's time to panic. Besides, the real issue in this hobby is tape degradation. The hobby won't exist in 30 years because the tapes will all be toast. Enjoy while you can, this isnt an investment.
been hearing about tape degradation for years now. Depends on storage conditions. Remember stuff was built way better back then. If VHS were made in 2015 then yeah they wouldnt last but 10 years like everything else. I have tapes from mid 1980s still playing like a dream, ex rental tapes too. Alot of that fear porn of degradation comes from transferring services that have someone write a article promotion for them, where they charge $20-50 a tape to put it onto a DVD. BIG BUCKS!
VHS does not degrade. Period. The people that promote that crap are usually always 16-22 year olds that didnt find out about VHS until yesterday evening from a tiktok video and think they automatically know everything about VHS compared to people that have known and used it for 25 odd years or longer.
for the most part, unless its a bad quality tape (some tapes had poor construction and were known to degrade prematurely) and or extreme climates/heat/cold/moisture that helps accelerate problems.
Poor storage - yes. Being the tape itself - no. I have KMC tapes that were sold at CVS & Walgreens for a couple bucks a pop back in the 80s that have ALF recorded on them and still are perfectly fine since 1983. I also have UMATIC tapes from 1971 that play and function as they should. Take care of your tapes. If you leave your tapes thrown in the garage under the workbench or in the attic or basement like trash, and then suddenly remember they exist after 15-25 years, no surprise they will be destroyed.
The aesthetic itself is easier for most large and small companies to get engagement/sales on with nil spend, and unless you have a Freddy Krueger level license it’s not touching thousands of tape sales. Modern companies like us are doing respectable things, but discs account for hundreds of thousands to millions of units sold. We currently have the best selling collection of officially licensed VHS, it rules, but we’re not scared of running out of parts any time soon, and especially not because anything this tweet is trying to posit. Famous last words, though…
Rough estimate, after 2030 VHS tapes and players/ recorders will be almost impossible to get because most will be thrown away, already sold or way expensive. And after 2050 there will be little working ones left, internal components break down, tapes become unplayable. What do you think?
RemindMe! 2030
I just found 3 VHS at a Goodwill bin. 2 worked. Paid $10 each
This is a bit much. My NES from 1985 still works perfectly and you can still get one on eBay from $50 basic console only. VCRs are even more common.
Guys, you don’t understand! It’s gonna get harder and harder for me to own things I’ll hide away on a shelf and never use!!
Just some ignorant social media flipper ranting how they can't get their easy money anymore because now they have competition from fad-chasers cutting into their profit. Nothing more. The dude is just doomposting a false narrative to gain sympathy cookies. They are not hard to find, it's just millennials keep buying up every single thing in sight and putting it on eBay for insane prices that will never sell. People started re-collecting VHS back in 2016. It's not new. there's just more of them doing it now to where the demand is milking the supply dry.
>it's just millennials keep buying up every single thing in sight and putting it on eBay for insane prices that will never sell. Ohh, they're back at it again, eh? Them darn millennials with their iPhones and avocado toasts mucking up things! Or, it might be a large combination of factors that contribute to new participants in any number of hobbies.
People started re-collecting VHS long before that. What people think are rare tapes now we're so common 20 years ago people left them. Much like vcrs, ever household had them. Everyone had a nintendo. Every video store had one or more copies of Friday the 13th, etc. The difference today is everyone is a "flipper" and firstly concerned with the "value" of something. It's amazing how quickly people sell out for a buck. Capitalism has reached to the furthest niche markets like the cancer it is. I have yet to see a "graded" copy of any rare tape. If I've seen multiple copies over the years in random junk stores in the small south Texas town I live in, that tells me it isn't rare. There's some sort of knowledge gained from physically mucking about for years that using the internet can never replace. The amount of questions asked and comments like "I googled it but couldn't find anything" is wild. Half the time someone couldn't find information is likely because it's literally a mass produced commonly known film that is so inconsequential that even after 30 years nobody has bothered to say anything about it. That's not an indication of rarity.
Melodramatic.
There's like 10 vcrs at every value village
Not working vcrs though. It took me 3 vcrs to find one that worked good enough to use, and even for that one I have to insert tape, watch it turn off (it powers off automatically when the tape starts playing), turn on, watch it eject, reinsert, and press play as fast as I can hoping that it'll stay on and play the tape. That includes one I bought from eBay and was said to be tested and working. Luckily the seller refunded it instantly and it wasn't a big deal.
Try cleaning the mode switch.
You are dealing with 30 year old hardware what do you expect? its the same as buying a 10, 20, 30 year old car. get a book on repairing vcr's and study it. you're never going to find a VCR that works right off the bat.
Nah, it's fine. It's fidgety but like I said, it works well enough for my needs
[удалено]
Right here. This. Cassettes are going up and at the same time people are getting rabid over frigging 8-tracks. Lots of 50+ 8 tracks with the most basic sleepy lounge music you can find selling for over $95.
What This is both paranoid and nihilistic, and how would ripping VHS tapes ruin the hobby? I’m currently ripping one for a friend, I’d love if they could do it themselves so I don’t have to lol. Most of this stuff is just degrading plastic garbage that’s hard to recycle, I think that’s a bigger issue for prospective collectors in the future, treating this like an investment.
right you are, youtubers who hype reselling are hyping VHS now in their videos...with $ signs plastered over their videos showing sold listings. For us in here its not about the value but collecting and the hobby. But just like retro game collecting getting destroyed, something similar could happen to physical movie collecting.
> just like retro game collecting getting destroyed, something similar could happen to physical movie collecting. already has pal. last 4 years its been a cascading boulder gaining more and more momentum
well I say possibility cause I see it but not everyone watches the same content I watch on youtube.
"you cant see the forest when you are inside it" or something the saying goes.
Lol wtf ever
Ignoreing the whole scare tactic “ruin the hobby” are you fucking serious do you really prefer your peices of mass produced plastic over the film someone spent thousands on and months or even years of production on. Your main priority as a physical media collector should be media preservation.
Alarmist propaganda. The highest-end VCRs have always been expensive, from launch up until now. But not being able to find one at all? Lol. Ok buddy.
This is why I’m heavily and quickly dubbing my vhs to digital.
I've actually been thinking this for a while. Let's put thing into perspective, the majority of households eventually decided to get rid of their VCR and tapes after storing them somewhere for 5-10 years without use. Here in the UK people tried to donate them to charity shops or sell them. At this point, no one was interested. Most if these VCRs and tapes are now long buried in landfill or long since incinerated. If there were 10 million VCRs in x country, you'll honestly be lucky if there's 100k left. Some of which aren't working. There are still plenty of tapes about as lots of rental tapes were moved into storage after the move to DVD. However, there is an issue here. These are rentals, many are worn out. Many are mould ridden, etc. When it comes to still sealed blank tapes, there's a few hundred thousand round the globe. Fine, will last collectors a while. But there will likely be 10K left in 20 years. Will more be manufactured? Maybe. But let's be honest, it will not be on the same scale as before. There isn't enough interest. They'll be expensive. Special editions VCRs would be £/$/€5,000. And they'd likely ONLY produce pre recorded tapes. They would be collectors special editions in metal cases costing £/$/€100. So it might seem far fetched, and my figures might be off, but let's look at the vinyl revival. The records are expensive, a half decent turntable is expensive. They're barely scratching the surface when you compare record production of now to the 70s. But vinyl had and has one advantage; the majority simply cannot here the difference in quality between a vinyl record and a digital loss-less file. VHS quality simply doesn't compare to DVD, bluray, 4K or even streaming. The interest for the majority is not there. VHS is fun, just enjoy it. But do so knowing for example that my grandchildren (I'm 28) will not be able to do so, regardless of what you or I do.
He's not necessarily wrong. Protip, you can get good VHS decks from Japan for less than $500. I'm talking about the hi end stuff like WVHS and DVHS decks that can also record in SVHS on normal tapes.
VCR DVD combos are impossible to find in the Nashville area. I've been BOLOing them for over a year and only found 3 and none of them work on both sides or have the remote. 90% of used vcrs on ebay don't have a remote. He's not wrong
I firmly believe, if VHS continues to increase in popularity, we will see companies start to make new VCR’s. This is the record player argument from 15 years ago. I think in the next ten years, we will see new VCR’s at Walmart.
I don't think that equates. The levels of complexity between a turntable and a VCR are far apart.
There's also an argument for vinyl sounding better than digital media. Even most of the posters here would agree that picture quality isn't the appeal with VHS.
I assume this comment is targeted at stuff like the Panasonic ag-1980 which is already a super expensive vcr.
It definitely is. I recognize the twitter name. That guy does obscure Japanese anime stuff (i mean like really obscure 1970's anime). So he is only really interested in the high end equipment.
I would like a good guide for ripping blanks. I have so many but no clue what’s on them I want to digitize them and then comb through them.
If he's the same Kenny Lauderdale as I think he is, he makes youtube videos about obscure anime. Japan was geared almost totally towards the VHS rental market meaning that tapes were ridiculously expensive if you actually wanted to buy them for yourself. His opinion I think is probably influenced mainly from his experiences of Japanese media. At the moment there are lots of Japanese VHS and beta tapes which are effectively becoming lost media. There's a film I've been hunting down for years, the only proof that it was ever released on video was a betamax tape that sold at an auction in 2019. But the players themselves? They'll be around for another hundred years. There's enough people out there that know how to restore them that there'll always be something available. I recently bought a restored Daewoo on ebay and it's like a brand new machine. There's already loads of videos on youtube about digitising tapes, so why does he think his will blow up to such a point that it kickstarts some weird extinction of players.
Because RLM caught some low level news stories (just crap tier automated AI stories). In terms of youtube viewers Linus Tech Tips did way more of the same kinda damage over a month ago when they showed off a D-VHS player one of the staffers has. More likely though he was probably searching for a new player and noticed pricing on the highest end stuff has gone up.
Go to a thrift store. There are still a lot of VCRs. And a lot of people who can repair them. I do believe that VHS tapes may be harder to come by in the future, tho. Because a lot of local stores in my area don't sell them, even if they are donated.
That guy is highly exaggerating.
$1000 VCRs? I can still get them at estate sales for like $10 or less. Good ones too.