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No American company bothered to make a VCR
I remember reading repeatedly in the 80s that the Japanese patentholders for vcr's would not allow them to be licensed for manufacture in the US. I'm not sure of all the specifics. I also remember when an American company, GO Video, came out with the dual deck VCR and it was noteworthy because they somehow were able to license the technology, but then they still didn't make them here but in Korea or someplace.
Relibability of most 70s solid state sets can be amazing. Many, many RCA's and Zeniths still plugging away today. There were some junk ones, though, and that helped the Asian companies get a foothold. Lots of the earlier Japanese stuff comes across to me as junk-lots of hybrids with odd tubes, thats my limited experience, anyway.
To further get off subject, I don't think an American company could survive making tv sets these days without some terrible, terrible tariffs imposed by the government. I suspect that the $99 specials from China that WalMart sells would cost around $299 (assuming all parts came from the states and it was assembled here), only on higher-line sets (HDTV, big screens) might the US be at all competitive.
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Bryan
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