S-VHS cassette recorders

The engineering on the better ones (JVC made better ones) is impressive for sure. Even if you can't record on it any more, you can still play old tapes of your own and any you might pick up at boot fairs. Who knows what you might find on them? Could be a fun hobby! I'm quite surprised the belts haven't stretched or perished after all this time, though. Must have used good quality rubber.

I'm still amazed that videotapes worked at all, much less were reliable and affordable.

It's also my hunch B55 designates a bridge to connect the trace under the 8 of C178 stencil to the trace under the 17 stencil. Old, double- sided PCBs often include bridges and jumpers all over.

The black boxes mentioned at the beginning are probably stand offs. The white lines above the black box shown look like they designate jumpers located on the other side of the PCB.

Danke,

It's also my hunch B55 designates a bridge to connect the trace under the 8 of C178 stencil to the trace under the 17 stencil. Old, single- sided PCBs often include bridges (or jumpers) all over. B55 seems to indicate at least 55 bridges (jumpers) on the board.

The black boxes mentioned at the beginning are probably stand offs. The white lines above the black box shown look like they designate bridges (jumpers) located on the other side of the PCB.

Danke,

CD players are probably right up there for Rube Goldberg complexity, people who knew what they're doing probably repaired them regularly back in the day but I've never had much luck if the unit has a serious fault, and the service manuals I've seen tend to be pretty unhelpful.

A lot of the parts for vintage CD players are unobtanium now particularly the laser diode which seems to be a common fault, in a few decades I expect there will be almost none in working condition. like the Chevy Vega.

I see why people miss vinyl sometimes but I can't imagine anyone will really miss the CD, a real stopgap technology.

Might be interesting to see what's around at boot fairs - VHS tapes are often almost given away.

I've got to get a decent SCART cable as the old one came apart in my hands. I can use component (phono connectors) as well. But S-VHS recorders predate HDMI, and my newest (4-years old) Panasonic TV has only HDMI and component input. An older TV has SCART, component, and a

That HR-S5000EK stopped recording around 1998 and I replaced it with a new JVC HR-S8600EK. I also brought that down from the loft and it worked perfectly after I removed a cassette I'd left in it! It jammed up a bit when I first turned it on, but I eventually got it out. As far as I remember that machine was still recording well when I replaced it with a Panasonic DVD-RAM DMR55E recorder (also analogue only; no HDMI).

As you say, any rubber used must have been of exceptional quality as both machines have survived 12+ years in the loft with temperatures cycling from 0 to 40°C or more. By the way, I paid £699 for that ex-demo recorder in 1991 - the price for a new one was £999!

True, but there must be *something* about vinyl that more than compensates for its shortcomings, given the fact that prices for old turntables have soared and record shops are now stocking vinyl albums again.

Well, "Dirty Harry" might be referring to another Harry...! :-)))

I see that the manual for that machine is dated mid-2002. I had a look and noticed that it had s-video but not SCART sockets. Was it usual for cassette video recorders sold in the US to not have SCART sockets? It seems a bit strange as both the JVC recorders I bought had them. Perhaps there was a greater cost saving to be had by designing them out than having a single case which included them. Whatever, it still shows how good JVC machines are as you're still using yours even though it's approaching 25 years old!

Vinyl sales have been higher than CD sale for years and growing something like 20% per year while CD sales drop like a rock

some if the later pro format were really nuts,

And they have tons of digital error correction, and 20 KHz bandwidth.

Yup, it's astounding.

The album art is bigger on LPs, and they have more distortion (warmth.)

Also as I somewhat mentioned before they haven't made _good_ standalone CD players at a consumer-friendly price point in like 25-30 years. New cars don't come with CD players anymore. Very few laptops have optical drives anymore.

And a lot of the more budget models even in the early 90s were getting enshittified and cost-reduced. And once the laser diode on them goes that's it, I've read that audiophiles have started resorting to cannibalizing cheaper units with the same mechanism to keep higher end ones going.

Meanwhile there are probably like 50 million Technics SL-whatever turntables floating around in generally working condition they made basically the same turntable for like 40 years.

I still offer a recording facility for wax cylinders and trade has been fairly steady over the past few years - about 1 every three months on average.

Whatever next? Open reel tape recorders?

Yeahbut nobody wants Technics turntables (nor speakers for that matter). Top dollar goes for vintage English and Scandinavian ones.

"80s-inspired" new-release video games is a genre, like how synthwave/80s-inspired new-release music is a genre.

There might be more 8-bit looking and playing video games (that were built with modern software tools) on the market now via Steam and online distribution than there were 8-bit games available for sale at any point in the actual 1980s...

In the latter case "that 80s sound" never really went away and popular music goes through cycles of huge reverbs and gated snares...

Yeah I don't mess with either, I move a lot and large collections of physical media are a pain to lug about. I prefer to have books if I'm going to keep one variety of it

buying an LP usually comes with a code to download the MP3 these days