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A Redditor is squeezing entire movies onto a single floppy disk
They made a custom VCR to watch them with as well.
Say farewell to VHS (if you hadn't already)
The last company that still makes VHS players will reportedly cease production of the technology at the end of July. The news comes from Japan's Nikkei, which claims that Funai has decided to call it quits long after everyone pulled out of the game. The firm has decided to bow out after sourcing the components necessary to build the devices became too difficult to continue. Oh, and the fact that it's 2016 and VHS is about as useful a format as wax cylinders in an age of lossless digital transfer. Despite this, 750,000 of the players were sold worldwide last year, the majority probably going to hipsters who say that they can only appreciate Terminator 2 with tracking lines.
Daily Roundup: a new Engadget, sex ed on VHS and more!
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
My VCR taught me about sex
Sex. The word alone still makes me giggle. But that's more to do with my status as a self-described man-child, and a proud one at that, than any real sexual immaturity. Blame my parents. They never sat me down for a serious talk about the proverbial "birds and the bees." Neither did my older brother and sister, the supposed torchbearers of all pre-teen sex how-tos. So I got my education elsewhere; from a keen bit of advanced (for the time) videocassette-recording technology called the VCR and premium cable. Timeshifting made me a man.
VCR head gets Frankenstiened into a beefy momentum scroll wheel
We've seen a fair share of VCR hacking in our day, but this momentum scroll wheel built from an old VCR head by Instructables community member Osgeld sets a new bar for jerry-rigging dead technology. Apparently the project arose from a desire to find a 21st century-approved use for the circular part that was gathering dust after being stripped from a spare Sony VHS player. The result is a bulky, yet useful, scroll wheel that can easily be set into motion and sustained via its own inertia to keep spinning for long periods. That feature could prove useful to anyone saddled with a mountain of video editing work, or even you lazy folk just hoping to flick less while reading the web. Unfortunately, a quick glance at Osgeld's DIY tool and part lists indicate you'll need to do quite a bit more than ransack a tape player to get this job done right. But then, when do the good things in life ever come easy?
Finnish VCR enthusiast is a Finnish VCR enthusiast
50 years from now we'll all be making this same video with Android handsets, you just wait and see.
VHS distribution grinds to a halt
We already gave VHS a proper burial after JVC became the last firm to shut the door on VHS player production, but there was still one nail in the coffin that wasn't quite hammered shut. Today, it all ends. The last notable distributor of VHS films -- Distribution Video Audio out of Palm Harbor, Florida -- has shipped its final truckload of tapes, probably to a small town library or a mom 'n pop shop in a place you'll never hear of. According to co-owner Ryan J. Kugler: "It's dead, this is it, this is the last Christmas, without a doubt." An unceremonious way to exit, sure, but we have a sneaking suspicion that it'll one day be able to say it made it longer than practically every other physical film format that succeeded it. Here's one last tear for the format that was -- now, time to plan a trip to the local flea market.[Via CNET]
VFD from VCR generates 40 VDC to power DIY amp
So, this is a pretty ingenious use of spare time. With a vacuum fluorescent display (VFD) from a VCR used as the amplifier, a crafty DIY-er was able to power a pair of headphones. We'll be honest, the wiring specifics are totally irrelevant to our interests, but this sure does look awesome and we might buy one if it was commercially available. The amplified power is, in the maker's own words, "limited," but that's not really the point, and we have a feeling that Thomas Dolby sounded just as scientific (and awesome) as he would through the greatest headphones ever made. [Via Make]
Larcenists get a cheap Blu-ray player (the illegal way)
Can't wait for Black Friday? Neither could two suspects in Virginia Beach. Reportedly, a crafty duo entered a local Walmart late last week, with one placing a Samsung Blu-ray player in her cart while the other placed a DVD / VCR combo unit in his cart. Once that was complete, the two met in the pet section, swapped the unwanted DVD / VCR unit out for a Blu-ray deck and proceeded to checkout. The cute couple paid for dog food and a rather inexpensive DVD / VCR player, yet arrived home with dog food and an improperly boxed Blu-ray player. Moral of the story? Blu-ray adoption would clearly soar if manufacturers would just price the players right. (We kid, we kid.)[Via CDFreaks]
Standalone VCR party finally ends, JVC shuts the door as it leaves
We were fully prepared to start harshing on VHS as a dead-end technology that never went anywhere during its time in retail (as a joke, of course), and out of nowhere, a bona fide tear slowly ran down our left cheek. Today, friends, is a day worth remembering. Today truly marks the end of an era, as so far as we can tell, JVC really was the only company still producing standalone VCRs. Of course, the outfit will continue to serve customers with a need to play back VHS tapes by offering up DVD / VHS combo units, but those looking for a shiny new slice of retro in 2008 will be out of luck after remaining inventories dry up. All told, over 900 million VCRs were produced worldwide, with 50 million of those boasting a JVC label. We simply couldn't think of a more fitting way to put the iconic VCR (which just turned 30 in 2005) to bed than by hosting up a poll (over on Engadget Classic) and soliciting your input -- here's hoping the videocassette lives on in your domicile in one form or another, even if it's just the resident dust collector.[Via Impress]
Pinwheel and old VCR used to make wind-powered LED
Now that Blu-ray has emerged as the lone HDM victor, that aging VCR is likely looking for a new home (if it wasn't already). Thankfully, we've found the perfect excuse to rip it wide open versus hauling it off to the local thrift store. In one of the more elaborate how-to guides that we've seen, Charles Palen explains how to create a wind-powered LED by using scrap parts within a VCR, one your youngster's pinwheels and a varied array of power tools, wiring and calm nerves. Notably, an unwanted CD-ROM drive can be used if you're dead set on watching those Disney classics on VHS one last time, but regardless of which apparatus you destroy, be sure and hit the read link for the step-by-step.[Via instructables]
DVD players finally overtake VCRs in US
We can't remember the last time we even used a VCR (nor did we ever figure out how to program the clock on those blasted things), but apparently we (and probably you, too) are just a little ahead of the curve. According to a recent Nielsen study, there are finally more American households that have DVDs than have VCRs. Translated into statistics, that means that 81.2 percent of all households in the good ol' US of A have DVD players, surpassing the 79.2 percent that have VCRs. (We've got no idea how many of those are dual-use machines, however.) Nielsen's been tracking this trend since 1999, when only 6.7 percent of American households had DVD players; we take that to surely mean that by 2013 the six percent of people who have Blu-ray or HD DVD players currently will have finally settled on one of them newfangled hybrid devices that we're dying to get our hands on.[Via PVR Wire]
JVC's DR-MV7S VCR / DVD combo recorder promises to upscale VHS
Although we're huge fans of convergence around here -- i.e. packing as many functions as possible into a single device -- our love of feature-creep has never extended to VCR / DVD combo units which, with double the amount of mechanical parts, make them twice as likely to end up at the repair shop or in your attic. Well there must still be some consumer demand out there for these disasters waiting to happen, as manufacturers continue to crank them out, always looking for a way to differentiate their device from countless others. We haven't really seen too much innovation in this space for awhile, but now JVC has broken out a new unit called the DR-MV7S that not only does recording on both sides of the divide (including DVD+R and DVD-R), it actually promises to upscale your crappy old VHS tapes for better viewing on that HDTV set. The engineers at JVC must really be some miracle workers, because the MV7S's internal scaling chip apparently cranks those old home movies up to 720p or 1080i over an HDMI connection, allowing you to relive embarrassing moments from your past with even greater clarity. Other nice touches on this $270 wonder include MP3, WMA, and DivX support, bidirectional dubbing between DVD and VHS, and an iLink input for transferring newer, slightly-less humiliating footage from your DV camcorder. Supposedly this model is available immediately, but with such lofty and untested ambitions, we'd follow HDBeat's advice and make sure you buy one from a store with a long return period and no restocking fee.[Via HDBeat]
Roll your own TiVo with a VCR and a cell phone
Our peeps at Hack A Day just came across this sweet mod that combines a cell phone with a VCR -- you know, the one you've been keeping on the off-chance that you might want to watch that tape your parents shot of your vacation to Sea World back in '85. We're not sure if it's the VHS nostalgia or classic Ericsson, but something about this rig really makes us want to put away our mobile-enabled TiVos and Media Centers, and get back to basics recording our shows the hard way. It's just more rewarding that way, ok?[Via Hack A Day]
