It has been roughly 40 years since the first videocassette recorders (VCRs) hit the consumer market, and while they more or less vanished after the arrival of DVDs in the late 1990s, there were still a few stubborn manufacturers who continued making new VCRs even today. Now it looks like the last of those manufacturers, Funai Electric, will be halting production of new VCRs, finally bringing an end to the format’s long history.

Funai Electric is located in Japan, which has something of an obsession with obsolete technology, and the company has been producing VCRs for more than 30 years. At its peak, Funai sold over 15 million VCRs per year, but last year, the company sold only 750,000. According to Japanese newspaper Nikkei, Funai will manufacture its last batch of VCRs by July 30.

In the 1980s, VCRs were part of one of the first media format battles, pitting the cheaper, more widely available VHS tapes against the higher quality yet more expensive Betamax format. VHS ultimately won the fight, though Betamax continued to have its supporters for many years.

Will VCRs ever be cool again?

There will always be people who prefer older media formats over their modern equivalents. After all, there are still photographers and filmmakers who prefer to shoot with film, music fans who prefer to listen to vinyl records, and internet users who still search with Yahoo.

Even VCRs still have their diehard fans, who argue that the tracking lines and grainy images are part of the experience. There are even a number of rare and valuable VHS tapes that are highly sought after by collectors, some of whom pay hundreds of dollars for a single tape.

Unfortunately, the VHS format, like other film formats, suffers from a rather short lifespan, and repeated viewing of the same tape will eventually render it unwatchable.

Photo by Rob Pearce