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Who has the oldest working VCR?

C

ccmfan

Guest
With the thread below about old TVs that still work, I got to thinking about who has the oldest working VCR? My oldest one is an Emerson TV/video cassette player combo from 1989 that I found at a Goodwill store for $25.00 about 5 years ago. We still use it in my daughter's playroom.

I know that there has to be something older than mine out there. Anyone else?
 
> With the thread below about old TVs that still work, I got
> to thinking about who has the oldest working VCR? My oldest
> one is an Emerson TV/video cassette player combo from 1989
> that I found at a Goodwill store for $25.00 about 5 years
> ago. We still use it in my daughter's playroom.
>
> I know that there has to be something older than mine out
> there. Anyone else?
>
A friend of mine has an early 80's model 2 head (yes 2 head, not 4 head) vcr. Big, and Bulky.(also very heavy). The Eject button is metal.
You have to press it in and hold, then this big door pops open on the top of the vcr to stick a tape in.
It still works! The screen goes to snow when fast forwarding or rewinding though.<P ID="signature">______________
"If you never say NO, How much is your YES worth?"
</P>
 
> > With the thread below about old TVs that still work, I got
>
> > to thinking about who has the oldest working VCR? My
> oldest
> > one is an Emerson TV/video cassette player combo from 1989
>
> > that I found at a Goodwill store for $25.00 about 5 years
> > ago. We still use it in my daughter's playroom.
> >
> > I know that there has to be something older than mine out
> > there. Anyone else?
> >
> A friend of mine has an early 80's model 2 head (yes 2 head,
> not 4 head) vcr. Big, and Bulky.(also very heavy). The Eject
> button is metal.
> You have to press it in and hold, then this big door pops
> open on the top of the vcr to stick a tape in.
> It still works! The screen goes to snow when fast forwarding
> or rewinding though.
>

We had one of those in the late 90s. It died like all of the rest of the VCRs that this dude who ran a ripoff electronics store sold to us. The electronics store is gone as well. But out of all the VCRs we had from that guy, the early 80s one lasted the longest and worked the best.
<P ID="signature">______________
</P>
 
> With the thread below about old TVs that still work, I got
> to thinking about who has the oldest working VCR? My oldest
> one is an Emerson TV/video cassette player combo from 1989
> that I found at a Goodwill store for $25.00 about 5 years
> ago. We still use it in my daughter's playroom.
>
> I know that there has to be something older than mine out
> there. Anyone else?
>

The one I have dates back to 1991. One a similar note, I have heard that until last year ( they may still be using it ) but one of the local school systems around here were still using one of those old VTR machines where one had to actually thread the tape. That would have to be from the early to mid 70's.

I just finished reading Vicki Lawrence's bio. In her book she says that she went to a party at Joe Hamilton/Carol Burnett's house to watch some awards show that Hamilton had taped at his house ( he and Carol actually made a party out of this ) and this was BEFORE she had her hit 1972 "The Night the Lights Went out in Georgia" !! I wonder exactly what kind of machine they had back then?
 
I still have a working 1985 Beta Hi-Fi VCR, probably with over 100 tapes of programing. It is in storage right now but now that i have seen this thread i just might have to pull it out and watch some old tapes<P ID="signature">______________
http://wmph.org</P>
 
> I still have a working 1985 Beta Hi-Fi VCR, probably with
> over 100 tapes of programing. It is in storage right now but
> now that i have seen this thread i just might have to pull
> it out and watch some old tapes
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

I too have a Beta Hi-Fi.

I tried it out a few weeks ago...still works!

Beta Forever!!!


<P ID="signature">______________
"Be seeing you..."</P>
 
Was/is there a real advantage for Beta over VHS? I think some TV news crews use them but I never see the tapes sold anywhere.

The oldest VCR in my house is a 4-head HI-FI Stereo RCA (from 1994) and isn't presently hooked up (used only once in the last two years for dubbing purposes). I'm presently transferring a lot of old VHS tapes onto DVD and some of the tapes will not play correctly. I've had tracking headaches and colors bouncing in and out with the picture moving in waves making the dub unuseable. (Could excessinve humidity be causing that?) Two of my numbered tapes are 17 years old (including most of Super Bowl XXI).
 
My family keeps the VCR Manufaturers in Business

Before my parents got divorced in 2003, we had an old Beta VCR. Big old clunky thing that we rarely used. It still worked too when we got rid of it in 2002. You had to set every channel you wanted to watch or tape from. Only 12 channels. You had to flip a switch, turn a fine tuning dial to pick up whatever channel you wanted. Then you'd pull a thing out and stick the numbers in for the corresponding setting. We bought the thing used around 1987.

All our other VCRS = R.I.P.

Our first VHS Machine was a grey Mitsubichi. In order to fast forward or rewind you'd have to push and hold the button. I inherited it after my father bought a Radio Shack affiliated Floor Model 4 head Hi-Fi from 1990. Towards the end of its life The Mitsubichi would make a knocking sound whenever you put in a tape and press play or press stop. And finally when we put it out to the pasture it was eating tapes.

I got a brand new Synphonic VCR in 1995. Mysteriously after only 2 years it began eating tapes. Then I took it apart to see why. After that it wouldn't work anymore. Then I went with-out for a while. Then in 1998 my parents and I went half on a GE Model from Circuit City. That lasted until we moved in 2003. We threw it out becuase it started acting up. My dad bought me a refurbished VCR from Big Lots and it mysteriously died.

In 2000 or 2001 my dad bought a fancy Sharp from HSN for the TV room. He rearely used it. In 2003 he bought a refurbished Emerson VCR-DVD combo from Big Lots. And I after some persuasion I got the Sharp. Unfortuantly for me the Sharp is more or less D.O.A. because my mom dropped it twice when going through the shed when we were getting ready to move in the beginning of 2005. Now all we have is a rarely used Sanyo my mom won as a prize at a Christmas Party a few years ago.

Now I'm saving up to buy a VCR/DVD Recorder from the Shop@Home Network. I'm ready to move into the 21st Century.
 
I was watching a demonstration of a VCR/DVD Recorder on the Shop@Home Network a couple months ago. It can be use to dub from VHS to DVD. They said VHS tapes start really getting worn out when they're more than 10 years old and if they're almost 20 years old you're lucky to be able to use them at all. It also came with a thing that was supposed to automatically fix all the problems with old tapes including jumping, poor tracing, poor colors, etc.
 
> They said VHS tapes start really getting
> worn out when they're more than 10 years old and if they're
> almost 20 years old you're lucky to be able to use them at
> all. It also came with a thing that was supposed to
> automatically fix all the problems with old tapes including
> jumping, poor tracing, poor colors, etc.


They're just saying that to sell DVD recorders... I have some tapes from when I was a kid that play just fine. Also, DVDs supposidely don't last more than 10 years unless "properly stored" (iow: not how most people store their DVDs or tapes).

Also, most tapes can be restored, DVDs/Digital tapes can't.

-A<P ID="signature">______________

</P>
 
> The one I have dates back to 1991. One a similar note, I
> have heard that until last year ( they may still be using it
> ) but one of the local school systems around here were still
> using one of those old VTR machines where one had to
> actually thread the tape. That would have to be from the
> early to mid 70's.

1" Machine? The TV station I work at just put the last 1" machine out to pasture in January. We still have 1 3/4" machine in the building which is in Master Control. It's half-dead, can't be sent to air through the automation system (you'd have to manually put it on-air), but is useful for dubbing old archive tapes. Though, most of those are on Beta SP.

> I just finished reading Vicki Lawrence's bio. In her book
> she says that she went to a party at Joe Hamilton/Carol
> Burnett's house to watch some awards show that Hamilton had
> taped at his house ( he and Carol actually made a party out
> of this ) and this was BEFORE she had her hit 1972 "The
> Night the Lights Went out in Georgia" !! I wonder exactly
> what kind of machine they had back then?

I'm thinking possibly 3/4" "UMATIC" tape or possibly 1" reel-to-reel tape.

-A<P ID="signature">______________

</P>
 
> I have
> some tapes from when I was a kid that play just fine. Also,
> DVDs supposidely don't last more than 10 years unless
> "properly stored" (iow: not how most people store their DVDs
> or tapes).

I recently converted some "station anniversary" specials from VHS to DVD and had no problem at all. Of course, I had those tapes stored played-out, not rewound, and in an area where it never got too hot or humid. (Notice that no one runs station anniversary specials anymore ... these were from the late-80s.)

As for the history of my family's VCRs:

First one was a Sharp 12-channel (1982) which required manual tuning of each channel and required presetting the channel to be recorded, although it was able to tune all 36 of the then-available cable channels.

It was supplemented with an all-electronic GoldStar around 1986; that machine stayed in service through 1991 with me, although my mother got another Sharp (a stereo VCR) in 1989 and the original Sharp became my second machine which was finally retired in 1992.

I replaced the GoldStar with a Zenith, which was refurbished a few years ago and now resides at a friend's house. (He was very low on cash when his machine quit working, and I had been using the Zenith very little anyway, as a second machine.)

The Zenith was originally replaced by a Magnavox, then by a Sanyo, then by a Panasonic, and finally another Philips. All of those came and went within a span of about six years, although the Philips only needed its heads cleaned and belts replaced, and replaced my mother's Sharp last year (after more than 15 years, although she uses her machine very, very little).

I just had that Sharp reconditioned (again, just needed head cleaning and belt replacement) and am using it as my second machine now.

The Philips was replaced by a Panasonic two years ago and is still great.


<P ID="signature">______________


</P>
 
> I recently converted some "station anniversary" specials
> from VHS to DVD and had no problem at all. Of course, I had
> those tapes stored played-out, not rewound, and in an area
> where it never got too hot or humid. (Notice that no one
> runs station anniversary specials anymore ... these were
> from the late-80s.)

TV or Radio station anniversary tapes? I remember WGN-TV doing a 50th anniversary show in '98 and I believe that the station I'm at did one in 2003 (only heard about it, never seen it). On the radio side, haven't WGN/WBBM/WLS/WABC/etc done them for their big anniversarys? Also, on a smaller, but related note, I know that MUTV, Marquette's Campus Cable Station, is running one for their 30th anniversary this year. Talk through the channels is they're trying to get a bunch of us alums up there for a weekend. Should be interesting to see who they can track down and get to come! (I believe there are a few big names out there.. Including some in the Chicago market)

-A<P ID="signature">______________

</P>
 
> > I recently converted some "station anniversary" specials
> > from VHS to DVD and had no problem at all. Of course, I
> had
> > those tapes stored played-out, not rewound, and in an area
>
> > where it never got too hot or humid. (Notice that no one
> > runs station anniversary specials anymore ... these were
> > from the late-80s.)
>
> TV or Radio station anniversary tapes?

TV. 40th anniversaries of KCBS/2 and KTLA/5, Los Angeles. Neither have done an anniversary show since, and the other stations in town never could be bothered to do one in the first place.
<P ID="signature">______________


</P>
 
Getting back to the subject at hand...anybody remember VCRs made by Akai and Funai? I've had them before (Akai from Christmas 1986 to 1987 and Funai from 1988 to 1990).
 
> With the thread below about old TVs that still work, I got
> to thinking about who has the oldest working VCR? My oldest
> one is an Emerson TV/video cassette player combo from 1989
> that I found at a Goodwill store for $25.00 about 5 years
> ago. We still use it in my daughter's playroom.

My Goldstar VCR circa 1985 is still around here somewhere... no hi-fi there, and the thing had to weigh close to 20lbs. My grandparents had (and that's also around here somewhere) a Panasonic VCR from 1983 or 1984 with a row of buttons for selecting channels you wanted to record (you had thumbwheels to turn to scan through the stations until you found them). I think there were 10 or 12. It was a top loading VHS and had a wireless remote that could manage to skip through the 10-12 channels you could program the thing with.

Mine got a lot of use recording WPIX "11 Alive" overnight when they used to run sci-fi shows and such pre-infomercials. Beautiful Mount Airy Lodge indeed.
 
> > With the thread below about old TVs that still work, I got
>
> > to thinking about who has the oldest working VCR? My
> oldest
> > one is an Emerson TV/video cassette player combo from 1989
>
> > that I found at a Goodwill store for $25.00 about 5 years
> > ago. We still use it in my daughter's playroom.
> >
> > I know that there has to be something older than mine out
> > there. Anyone else?
> >
>
> The one I have dates back to 1991. One a similar note, I
> have heard that until last year ( they may still be using it
> ) but one of the local school systems around here were still
> using one of those old VTR machines where one had to
> actually thread the tape. That would have to be from the
> early to mid 70's.
>

I have one of those, it's a friggen boatanchor! (to ue a ham radio term for big hunk of antiquated equipment)

It's a SONY and I believe it's Black & White only! I've never used it though as it is missing it's RF Module.

Wait a minute, I forget if I actually tossed the beast out or not recently, maybe I just moved it to the attic, I'll have to double check when I get home, it used to be next to an old Tascam 10" RTR machine. (I KNOW I still have that)
 
KTLA ran a two-hour 50th anniversary special in 1997...

>
> TV. 40th anniversaries of KCBS/2 and KTLA/5, Los Angeles.
> Neither have done an anniversary show since, and the other
> stations in town never could be bothered to do one in the
> first place.
>
 
Sorry, but I aggree with what they said on the Shop@Home Network about tapes getting worn out after 10 years. I know from personal experience. Quite a few of my tapes that were older than ten years old either snapped or got eaten.
 
Re: My family keeps the VCR Manufaturers in Business

I still have one Sanyo Beta left. I used to have several Beta machines. The one I still have is model #3900 -circa 1982. Just a bare basics machine, no remote (wasn't built with one), one event in three days program and the twelve channel push buttons. It still works!
 
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