Got myself a working VCR for the first time in years. I have two others, but they stopped working so long ago I’m not even sure when. I had intended to attempt to fix them, but I never got very far with that, and don’t have much ability. My Uncle Joe, who passed away, had quite a few, so I bought one at one of the estate sales. I got a Toshiba D-KVR20, a DVD / VCR combo. I’m hoping that doesn’t mean the VCR side is poor quality, being tacked on just for those “old movies”.
I watched a movie I bought at the sale as well, Short Circuit 2. Hadn’t seen that movie since I was a kid. It held up well. Plenty of misspoken phrases, just like the first. A bit simpler, but still good.
The VCR seems to play just fine. The quality isn’t as good as DVD’s, and no captioning or special features of course, but it plays the movie well enough. I believe it has auto-tracking, but also has buttons to adjust manually. It has the slow-fast-slow rewind to protect the end of the tape, though the fastest is still a little slow seeming, like three seconds per minute of tape. Or maybe I just have forgotten how long it took.
The DVD player may not be as good as my normal one. My TV seemed to not get the aspect ratio quite right and the video may have been a bit grainier. I only did a quick test though. If that’s true, then I will probably need to keep both devices.