Production of VCR recorders ends

It's been a slow death for video cassette recorders worldwide which have been around for roughly four decades. In contrast to earlier estimates by consumer electronics pundits, VCR/VHS technology retained a life of its own despite ferocious attacks from DVDs, Netflix, Youtube and others.

But now Japan's Funai Electric has announced it's stopping production of its iconic video cassette recorders - and it's been the only company globally still producing them.

Funai's announcement ushers in the end of a protracted technological era that around the turn of the century saw the company produce roughly 15 million VHS recorders annually.

Even last year, Funai still sold 750,000 of its devices. So, it'll be wrong to claim there's no demand for such recorders anymore. However, customer requests can no longer be met, Funai says, as key component suppliers have pulled out of the business.

Time to move on

Many households still have content stored in the VHS format and want to convert the tapes to DVD or other digital media. Of course, people could send their taped memories to outside service companies, but many don't want to do this because of the personal nature of the content.

Funai said it would continue selling video cassette recorders until inventories ran out and would provide maintenance services as long as it could.

When it comes to outdated technology, VHS devices are in good company with film cameras and floppy disks once used to store PC content and long replaced with memory devices boasting larger capacity.

hg/sri (AP, dpa)