I'd agree,,, the charley decks were pretty nasty at the best of times, the later versions may have been more refined and reliable but they still sounded like someone had spilt loads of dried peas into the mechanism. We sent the first few back as faulty due to the excessive grinding noises

I think the Panasonic G deck was my favourite, disliked by many engineers but once mastered it was a relative piece of cake to repair most mechanical faults and their reasonably priced repair kit of parts made it a profitable repair when one went wrong and the entire deck could be removed, manually turned to put it through the entire loading process to check alignment before putting it back in and powering up.

I remember somethiing like that at our school, I think it was a Philips, big machine with those huge great cassettes. This must have been the mid-late '70s.

How strange, because all of the ones i've encountered from after about 1990 have been fairly reliable. Sometimes I feel it's the engineers who get pissed off with them that's the problem because they didn't know how to service the later ones properly, treating it like a conventional video recorder instead of one that needs to be treated differently. Though I will agree with you, the earlier ones were bags of crap.


Again, you must be mis-remembering things. My VR6923 from about 1989 has metal runners - the original service documentation for this one and others after 1989 confirm these metal runners are originals and not replacements.

To me, that's one of the enjoyable bits of them. Even on the later ones, you get the sense that they're about to fall apart when the mechanism is moving

Quite what posessed them to make a mechanism out of plastic at the beginning of its life, or, like Grundig did at one point, to make a mechanism lace yup in the Betamax style though is beyond me!


In my experience I found them overcomplicated (what the hell is with the pinch roller mechanism? Totally unnecassary!) pieces of junk that also had capacitors in the PSU that would not last as long as ones from other brands at the same time. Even Logik made (branded VCRs with) more reliable PSUs than the ones included in the G decks.

G2 and K decks were much better!

I would agree - how could you possibly design a video mech so badly and overcomplicated? - somewhat like the Philips Charley decks as well.

While with plenty of practice and experience they could be repaired 'reasonably' easily - better designed mechs were more reliable to begin with, and vastly easier and faster to repair if they did go wrong.

Anyone remember the Mitsubishi VCR's that wouldn't rewind? - serious design flaw that they were never able to correct - and pretty well initiated the beginning of the end for Mitsubishi.

I was given a Sony U-matic recorder some years ago. It records on to a large cassette with a maximum time of 1 hour. I only have a low-band version which gives good pictures but not as good as the high-band which was used in broadcasting.
I think the format dates from about 1970 which is early for a cassette machine.

Have a read here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U-matic

Well all a matter of opinion I guess, the G decks' could have a pinch roller changed in a few seconds once the lid was off and never really had many PSU faults. Anyway, all rather academic now

Thanks Nigel for the information.
The U-matic was used in the hospital where I work to record operations.
It is built like a tank, the mechanics are great to watch in action and it looks like a large version of a Betamax VCR I once owned.

As Betamax was based on U-Matic that's not surprising

Had a Phillips N 1500 i think, £400 refurbished from the then Phillips shop in Carshalton, (about 2 months wages at that time) 1980. Tapes were about £20 i think. hopeless tape chewer repaired once under Gtee., then sold for spares.

Well the Philips were the ONLY home VCR's for a considerable period, they had 100% of the home market - then just let VHS/Betamax take it away from them.

Mind you, they were horrible things

We sold a small number of Grundig 'Philips type' VCR's just before VHS/Beta came out - I can't say they impressed me very much.

Philips then brought out the V2000 with reversible tape cassette, it died a death as well.

It was a joint Philips/Grundig - and really was considerably better than either VHS or Betamax (for example all Grundig models, and some Philips ones, gave perfect freeze frame, slow motion, search etc.)

What killed it off was a combination of lack of films (same as killed Betamax) and unreliability - VHSBeta were almost entirely mechanical faults - V200 had mechanical faults plus considerable electronic failures as well.

Incidentally, I binned the extension PCB adaptors for Grundig V200 VCR's last week

I got my Grundig V2000 after they'd been around for a while I think. They were selling off the last of em and while they still cost £600 in a shop in town centre I got got mine for less than £300 IIRC.

Never had any problems with it. The only reason I got a VHS was that I wanted a stereo soundtrack (mainly to record simultaneous broadcasts with radio 3). I think I preferred the Grundig picture to VHS.

I think it is still in the attic.

My first VCR was a VHS machine from the 1980s - Ferguson Videostar 3V32. My parents owned that for years and I eventually inherited it. Went in for repair several times over the years (was heavily used) and finally kicked the bucket around 1994/1995. As a kid, I used to love that it could record Long Play, whilst nobody else I knew had a VCR that could.

Was nostalgic and so recently bought the exact same model from eBay. Needs some work though, the tapes don't load without assistance & there is some noise on the video playback (static/white lines, haven't tested recording yet), but as the parts are still readily available, I'll have to try and get this up and running properly someday.

My first was a (rented) Philips Video 2000 machine in the early 1980's. No remote, no freeze frame or visual search facility but excellent picture quality and double-sided tapes. I then upgraded to a Grundig that had all the whistles and bells (but curiously, you needed to press 3 buttons to record anything). Again, super picture quality and a rock solid freeze frame. But blank tapes were difficult to find and expensive and pre-recorded tapes almost non-existent so I capitulated and switched to VHS about a year later.

My first DVD player was a basic Hitachi multi-region player. I had to travel around 150 miles (round trip) to find a store that sold such a thing and I remember it costing me £400. In contrast, my latest Panasonic 3D Blu Ray player cost me less than £100. Times sure have changed!!!

The Panasonic G deck came along a couple of years before I left the trade. They were good performers but God I hated the cam gear setup. In fact I could rarely get it right, unlike may mate on the next bench who could do them with his eyes closed!

Good old vcrs still have one great advantage over any modern equipment.

start watching a tape and stop part way through and eject disk. The next time you put disk in, it will play from where you left off.

I know this is emulated on modern systems, but it does not work 100% of the time.

That's an advantage sometimes, but it's also a disadvantage at other times - probably more disadvantage than advantage? (a pain in the bum having to rewind tapes).

It does on all my pvrs, and has done so on all the previous ones I owned.


Add to this near instantaneous access to any part of a recording. How long does it take you to skip forward 2 hrs on a tape ?

By the way you are supposed to rewind a vcr tape for safer storage.

I think he was referring to DVD recorders? - as you say PVR's are pretty well spot on at this.

The episode you refer to with William Shatner in was made in 1976 and both VHS and Betamax were available in the US by then .
The machine does like one of those although it might not be.
Didn't get my Ferguson until 1981

my dad had sony B+W tape video recorder in the late 60s

when i lived in the us

http://www.labguysworld.com/Sony_CV-2000D.htm

I remember that episode well, it was a far older recorder than VHS/Beta.

VHS wasn't available in the US until later than that: