The World’s Last VCR Manufacturer Stops Production

It’s often said that kids who came of age in the late 2000’s do not know why people use the phrase “hang up the phone.” It’s fair to suppose that future generations will not know why people “rewind” videos either.

Not that this hasn’t already been a foregone conclusion for some time now, but the recent news that the world’s last VCR manufacturer is closing up shop certainly clinches it. The VCR is officially going the way of Betamax and the rotary phone.

More than thirty years after it first manufactured a VHS videocassette recorder, the Japan-based Funai Electric has announced that it will discontinue production by the end of July, Ars Technica reports.

While many readers may reasonably be surprised that VCRs are still being built this far into the 21st century, Funai actually posted unexpectedly robust sales of 750,000 units in 2015, still far below its peak of millions per year, according to NBC.

VCR’s may have long been supplanted by the higher quality DVD and Blu-ray formats, but in their heyday from the 1970’s to the 1990’s they conquered Betamax as the home video player and recorder of choice.

Sony officially admitted defeat and discontinued its production of Betamax back in 2002, but film studios stopped producing films in VHS shortly thereafter in 2006, according to NPR. Both formats now rest in technology’s graveyard, although some enthusiasts and collectors have created a niche market for them.

Another trend here seems to be that in Japan, outdated technology has a tendency to cling to life well past its natural span. For instance, the fax machine is anything but a relic in the hi-tech island nation. Millions of fax machines are still sold each year and used in Japan today.