The last VCR manufacturer in Japan will close shop next month

The company’s move to stop manufacturing comes after years of declining sales and difficulty finding the materials for the electronics.

While the last film to be released on VHS was Eragon in 2007, apparently people were still buying enough VCRs to keep Funai Electric in business.

If you do have a collection of old VHS’ sitting in a corner of your basement, you’ll need to take steps to protect them if you want them to remain usable.

That’s probably 750,000 more than you’d think they sold, but at their peak they were shifting 15 million a year, so that’s an unsustainable fall.

Japan’s Funai Electric has been making the recorders since the heyday of VHS tapes more than 30 years ago. Only this March, however, saw the end of its production of Betamax tapes. Back in 1984, the Supreme Court ruled that VCRs could be sold in America, despite the potential for copyright infringement, thus creating the entire home video industry nearly overnight. Eventually the film industry embraced the home video market, resulting in the Blockbuster boon and many a home movie marathons throughout my childhood via the fuzzy, subpar, but somewhat comforting format known as VHS.

Through the Eighties, Nineties and early Noughties, if you wanted to record a programme off the TV you needed a VCR machine and a VHS tape. VHS brought movies into the home in a way they never had been before, and while their visual and audio capabilities were limited (and often eroded with multiple viewings), the tapes paved the way for superior technology like Blu-rays and online streaming.