Some stats a friend of mine ebay freak..etc.. did ,reveal that not only the amount of used Sony video monitors and well built (you know Panasonics) Vcr's have decayed drastically ,also the condition and aesthetics of almost everyone shown for biddind today are really painful

The offers for parts repairs or working with defect status! increased 50% last year
Refurbished VCR s increased 50% as a company bussiness and the last Pvm/Bvm monitors sold as Brand new i think it was in 2016 if im not wrong.
We went deeper and realized that 99% of the Sony,Jvc,Ikegami...monitors today are being heavily used at maximun brightness and refresh rate for videogames as well as 75% of the consumer level Crt's under 32 inch screen size.
Official repair parts and service went down at least in Europe last year (sony)

About VHS, Betamax,Betacam Vcrs even worst...money scammers set abusive prices for old stock Hgrade tapes and mid 90s Panasonic,Jvc and Mitsubishi decks....private electronic technicians begin to decline acceptance of these repairing works very sad

A bon voyage to the good 'ole Cathode Ray Tube ...
Kinda chokes me up inside.... and then I think of all that weight !
Fare thee well old CRT monitors.... you have provided many a rooms glow worldwide since the world of television began ....

No love lost for the old tape players. No matter how well taken care of the old tapes were doomed to demagnetize over time.
A flawed format from the very beginning .....
Beta being the better was usurped and duped, er I mean dumped early in the game ...
Ah the chess game of format marketing.
Cutthroat business to be certain.

We will long for those Halcion days of yore when the demand of streaming overwhelms the limits of the broadband or heaven forbid a EMP wipes out our nationwide servers ....
People will talk about the old days when you held a video/music format in your hands .......

8 Track, cassette tape, DAT, CD, and LASERDISCs ! ? ! .... kids will scratch their heads and wonder Y .... and where did they all go ....

Damn, you made fine poetry for our pain

Not sure how you can possibly make those percentage claims, other than the ones based on eBay data. The 99% gaming at max brightness claim in particular, there is just no way this is fact.

There is still on place near me that can repair CRTs. Unsurprisingly, the guy that does it is over 60. Nice fellow, but probably retiring before too long, then there will be no options for me.

I have some old pro deck vcrs acquired very cheap, as well as some newer consumer level svideo decks. All still working fine, tbh. That said, I've been replacing more and more of my VHS tapes lately. Had thousands at one point, probably down under 200 now.

1) they aren’t being made anymore
2) entropy

Kinda knew this...

And yeah, tape...tape sucks. Tape is why I got into LD in the first place.

EDIT: This sort of prognosis probably means more to the half of the forum (at most) who isn’t literally set for life sitting on a huge pile of gear. I don’t want to be morbid or anything but, like the machines, we only live so long. Most of the guys I knew who attempted to buy enough turntables in 1988 to last them the rest of their lives did in fact succeed at that.

The pricing on PVM type monitors has gone nuts thanks to game collectors. CRT production monitors used to go for peanuts, but now...the BVMs are particularly desirable and someone paid like $5k for the big 32 inch one like a year ago (they were a fraction of that before online communities hyped them all), and I feel lucky to have an Ikegami TM20 from eBay before all that. This is a good and bad thing - good in that CRTs are worthless junk to 99.9 percent of the population in the flat panel era, so high prices will save a number from being thrown out, and bad for those who still want one.

VCRs could go up as retro collectors of stuff like old horror movies on VHS look to play their collection, but they are still pretty cheap. I got a great condition 80s NEC HiFi deck, in the box with manuals and stuff stored away for years like a time capsule, for $20 a few months back. I appreciate the quality of made in Japan pieces like that from the 80s, before VHS decks became complete trash, even if I'm not the biggest fan of the format.

They made a LOT of VCRs.

beta has problems too but the VCRs are rarer. I hope to transfer both VHS and Beta to DVD and or my computer at some point unless I can find the title on LD DVD or BD.
I've had to get rid of some good TVs over the years due to moving but I hope the last one I have which is a Polaroid one lasts for a good while. it is nice and small so its lighter and easier to move than the others which I hope to keep it.

Yep. And the demand is microscopic. I paid $5 for an SVHS JVC deck with incredible auto-tracking, $5-10 for pro decks, just got a DVD recorder w/ a VCR built in as well for $10 etc...

I used to have a lot of junkier VCRs, but donated all those off when I got better ones.

Maybe it is not a fact fact but yes subconsciously you put brightness up when you are on alert while gaming....endless flashing lights are also displayed by some arcade games. There are really nice and lonely people still working on them but you know without original new parts. Still have over 100 tapes

Tapes dont suck if you love to feel them on your hands specially Betacam ones. Im young and im afraid last decks will die before im old

Bvm prices are just ridiculous....agree that 80s and mid 90s Decks build quality is great ,im putting to age test two Panasonic nv- VHS they work good
but in some moments their rew engines are like...ok just give me a second im fine

$5-10 for a pro deck ? when where how ?

DVD dies too, best way to digitize are Cards and make copies of them to copy again to a newer cards imho.

I think most people max brightness on any display, no matter what they are doing. I've never liked to put that kind of wear and tear on my displays though.

Just dumb luck and minimal interest on the pro vcrs. A rummage type shop I used to check ran into a whole lot of them (I want to say like 8-10) so I grabbed a few when they were going out of business. Shame really, that place would get cool stuff because the guy running it had ins with getting no longer wanted items from tv stations, radio stations, schools etc... They are older Sony ones from the 80s. You just have to keep a look out for these kind of things, because unlike pvms it's really just a matter of them popping up more than anything else.

I randomly found a PVM years ago fir less than 10 dollars I think but I no longer have which I regret not keeping it- I did not know about gaming on them at the time.

Honestly they are nice, but a bit overblown. I have a few and some high res CRT VGA monitors and I like the VGA monitors more for the most part.

I was using a CRT up until December of last year (some of you may remember the thread I made in the for sale section trying to give it away.) I didn't really want to get rid of it but I had to for several reasons--one being my next apartment being on the 4th floor, and the prospect of having to heft that 250 lb+ KD-36XS955 WEGA up that many stairs wasn't leaving a good taste in my mouth.

I never had any issues with that set. Had a great picture for both LD and HD sources and best of all, I got it for free!

I think the difference between standard shadow mask CRTs and Sony's Trinitron "aperture grill" was that the latter was specifically made for a brighter picture. So the picture really doesn't die on those sets despite their brightness possibly being set too high for too long. Plus, you can still get WEGAs serviced as I found out (when my KV-40XBR800 got the dreaded blinking red light an authorized service center could still fix it and made house calls! I just decided against it when I found the XS955 for free.) So Trinitron tubes will have a longer life than other CRTs. Just that everything else around the tube on the set may not last (thankfully the most common problem mentioned before, the blinking red light, is just a chip that needs replacing, but I can't imagine they'll make that chip forever.)

That being said, I am happy with the Panasonic Plasma I replaced the XS955 with. LD and other SD video sources look great on it and of course HD sources do too. Biggest downside so far is that SD video games don't look so hot on it. Hooked my Saturn up to it recently and ewwwww . . . so much blockiness!

As far as VCRs go, well, just like the format itself, they weren't meant to last forever. Lots of moving parts means more potential for failure. Hell, I'm surprised as all get out that the 1987 SL-HF750 Betamax VCR I have--over 30 years old!!!--still works. I just had to make sure to try to get a little more life out of that thing by finding a new/old stock Betamax tape rewinder!

My CRT will be taken from my colld dead hands..after spending a week repairing it last year I love it and appreciate it even more. Lugging a CRT up stairs is nothing a paid moving company won't do.

No thanks. I've never heard good things about moving companies from my friends who used them. Every single one has ended up with items lost or broken and had to jump through hoops upon hoops to get reimbursed for them.

Sure as hell not going to trust them with my LD collection or LD players. And they way they would reimburse for those, you sure as hell won't be getting what you paid for them at this point going by how insurance companies take "depreciation" into account.

elahrairrah how were you hooking the Saturn up?

I have an S-Video cable for the Saturn, so I used that directly into the Plasma.

A lot of this is wrong, sorry.

I used to fix arcade machines and monitors. They still sold and made brand new parts, flybacks, chassis etc. All I would do would be drop in a new chassis and it worked as long as the ohm reading was correct or something like that.

You could fix 20+ year old monitors with just cap kits. I believe out of 20 I only had 1 that was too far gone, and the real reason was that it had been worked on prior with a botched job.

Another issue is brightness, this is false. You would NEVER set brightness higher for a videogame, you are in a darker room and there is just no sense, making the game setting harder is another issue, you make more money
Making a game brighter won't make you more money.

CRTs are dirty creatures, inside they are filthy, all the static that holds onto dust etc.
I'm glad for one that we don't have to deal, always hated the curve and weight.

CRTs will outlast all other monitors as long as they don't get tossed, but who wants 150-250 pound pieces that are worth 5 bucks if you are lucky.

gorgeous, blank physical media products such as these will never be made again. cherish what remains;



and never discount a classic VCR,
especially a beautifully-finished die-hard workhorse such as the JVC HR-S8000U, prominently featured on a recent-ish feature film;






my own, modified version;