One approach to "dumping" new NTSC VCRs?

[andy]

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[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by andy

It's illegal to sell anything with an NTSC tuner if there's no ATSC tuner as well. Rather than adding an ATSC tuner, they just removed the NTSC tuner to cut costs. They clearly aren't following the intent of the law (for all TVs and VCRs to have ATSC tuners), but there's nothing in the law about selling things with no tuner. There are more expensive models with both ATSC and NTSC tuners.

Tivo got around the law by removing support for over the air from their NTSC only boxes.

I don't know what all the fuss is about. Who records TV programs on VHS anymore, anyway? Probably very few, if any. Today most viewers will record shows directly to DVD, with a DVD recorder, or use a combo DVD/VHS recorder and transfer their old VHS tapes to disc. (I'd have done the latter months ago, but my collection of VHS tapes is so large it would take me weeks or months to transfer them all, as I wouldn't do it all in one day.)

I can understand the value of a VCR with tuner if you have what Time-Warner calls expanded basic cable, which is basic plus all stations up to channel 69 or, in some cases, 74-99, or digital cable. If you have basic cable (local channels only), however, there is so little worth taping from the big four networks (not to mention MyTV and The CW), IMHO, that the record function of most VCRs will go unused (at least it does on my Panny PV-4022). As I stated in another post, until my VCR finally goes belly-up (meaning it doesn't work any longer, period, no record or playback--I intend to keep it as long as it will play recorded cassettes and really don't care about recording anymore, for the reasons I just stated) I will get a playback-only VHS/DVD deck. Big Lots now has these players for $40 or less; I bought a Memorex DVD player there for $40 last fall, which replaced a CyberHome DVD I had had for three years (which, BTW, seemed to me to be much more solidly built than the Memorex); then it quit.

How long the Memorex player may or may not last, however, is anyone's guess, as I read in another TV/video forum (not AK) that there is a capacitor in Memorex DVDs (which, BTW, are made by Changhong Electronics of China [!] and not Orion, as I had originally thought) that may and likely will swell and split open, rendering the player useless, within nine months of initial purchase. I purchased my player last September. Today, eight months later, the player still works as well as it did when it was new. Maybe I got lucky and got a one-in-a-thousand unit with a good cap.

[andy]

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