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They also started making all plastic mechs after Y2K. Some of the higher end ones aren't too bad, but there's also cheap and nasty ones (I think Philips was up there) where if you dropped the mech 1' with a tape inside or ran a bunch of the late 70s VHS tapes that weighed 3-5x what a Y2K tape weighs plastic would break and it would be junk.
From about 05 to 2012 I did a ton of archiving of shows off cable onto VHS and tried to keep 3+ used machines going on a teenagers skimpy budget. Until 2010 2-3 week vacations were common with an average of 1.5 hours of programming a day. After 07 I was between houses in Florida and Wisconsin so I had to double up equipment (and sometimes packed a deck on a long term trip)...I had used decks of all vintages and a number of the plastic fantastic decks died in transit or from use... usually the plastic decks were busted beyond my skills. The metal ones I could usually fix if the electronics or head didn't fail.
By around 2011 I started finding many S-VHS(ET) decks in thrift stores and switched to those because of improved reliability and better picture quality.
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