Japan Will Manufacture Its Last VCR This Month
As a movie format, VHS surrendered its market to DVD around the turn of the century. As an archive format, VHS slowly lost ground to DVD-R, and then DVR, and then the widespread use of high-definition made it completely obsolete. Despite all this, you might be surprised to know new VCRs are still being made. Just….not for long.
Funai Electric, the sole remaining Japanese company that makes VHS players, has announced it will cease production on all its tape-playing machines later this month. The public may not notice as a whole, but given that this is a format that lasted from 1977 until now, you have to give it some respect.
These VCRs have been available in America under various brand names that used to be separate companies but are now licensed by Funai. Magnavox is one; Sanyo is another. Unfortunately a Funai VHS player is typically a malfunctioning piece of junk, and I speak from experience. If anybody anywhere else in the world makes a VHS player, I wouldn’t know — usually, the only units you find in supermarkets and Best Buys these days are Funai.
But now that Funai will quit making them, is this really and truly the end of VHS? Most of you may not care, but odds are good you have wrinkly old relatives who never stopped using VHS and are keeping the blank tape market alive solely by themselves. If you’re a digital archivist (like me) the problem is worse, as reliable machines will only get harder to find.