Stock up on VHS VCRs when can

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by Eric H

Say what you want about BPC VCRs but they do have one advantage over the old stuff, fewer rubber parts and fewer moving parts to gum up.

Most of them have cheap plastic parts that don't have any grease to get gummy, I expect they might survive ten or fifteen years stashed away in a closet better than one from the 70-80s, provided the caps don't all dry up of course.

I have a Panasonic PV-4022 VCR that has plastic parts (like all VCRs from about the late 1980s to the end of the VHS era) and probably no grease to be found, except perhaps on the drive motor bearings. I bought it around 2003 or so; still works. Not using it much for recording (I have basic cable, local channels only--nothing much worth taping on the networks, IMHO, and I have no blank VHS cassettes anymore), but I do use it to watch my old VHS tapes of TV series and movies, etc. from the mid-1980s. The VCR still works very well for its age. I had a Panny VCR with VCR Plus+ for several years before this one, but a tape jammed in it (as [bad] luck would have it, just an hour or so after I had taped a movie on it--never had the chance to see the tape ) and I had to practically wreck the machine to get the cassette out.

BTW, are there any discount stores left that still stock blank VHS videocassettes? I read somewhere (don't remember where, although I think it may have been here) that in this age of DVDs and DVRs, these cassettes are becoming very difficult to find, if they can be found at all. If they are still available, I think I'm going to get busy and stock up on them before they become extinct. I remember seeing VHS cassettes recently at a Big Lots store for 98 cents apiece; however, at that price, I'll bet local shoppers (the store is in the Cleveland suburb where I grew up) snapped them up like crazy--there may be few if any cassettes to be found these days, not unlike blank audio cassettes, which are nearly impossible to find as well.