#FlashbackFriday Lets You Correct Your Mistakes, Instead of Watching Them

Because who wants to watch something else?

Don’t answer that!

Yesterday, rewinding a videocassette from a certain brand (played on any VCR) could bring back the guy of your dreams, while giving that “live” feeling.

Today, we’re looking at a VCR that helps you record movies and programs successfully, on that brand’s (or any brand’s) videocassettes!

I had two VCRs in my home prior to having my own (a Christmas present when I was fourteen years old), and the one thing we never used was the program timer.  If we wanted to tape something and were going out, we would set up the videocassette and press “record” before we left.  Once I had my own VCR, this was never a problem – I learned how to program the timer and would set them up in advance whenever I knew something was on and I had school, someone was being interviewed on a late night talk show and I had to go to bed, or was not going to be home.  Sometimes, it was nice having a timer set even when I was home, just in case I forgot to start the VCR.

In a way, operating the on-screen timer on a VCR was the precursor to scheduling blog posts (which I do all the time).  And like the trusty VCR timer, you just hope the blog post scheduler will work when you need it to!

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That’s the aim of Zenith’s VCR on-screen programming, which boasted being able to fix your programming mistakes to avoid taping something you don’t want to watch…like the morning farm report.

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(You actually wanted to record the late movie…at 6 pm).

Watch the magic of avoiding recording mistakes…when you click play!

Un-mistakable!

Zenith Electronics was established in 1918 as Chicago Radio Labs, and today is a wholly-owned subsidiary of LG Electronics as of 1999, with headquarters in Lincolnshire (Vernon Township), Illinois.  Zenith was the inventor of subscription-based television, and the first company to develop High Definition Television (HDTV) in the United States.  They’re also responsible for the modern wireless remote control (called “Space Command”) in 1956.

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For years, Zenith’s advertising slogan was “The quality goes in before the name goes on,” and while the products were built well (and to last), Zenith itself faced legal issues in the 1970s and 1980s.  Zenith was a co-plantiff in an antitrust lawsuit beginning in 1974 against major Japanese television and electronics manufacturers, which went until March 1986, resulting in ruling against Zenith.  In a way, they never really recovered from this case.

But they prevented you from recording the morning farm report on your VCR by helping you set the timer correctly, so there’s that.

And Zenith still exists…so upside?

I’m about to do something right, and schedule this post, checking the scheduled publishing time carefully, so that when I promise a 10 am EST post, I get a 10 am EST post!

Have a fantastic Flashback Friday, and a great weekend!

11 comments

  1. I just remembered the name of that remote, it was called the VCR copilot and you set the knobs and then had to leave it pointed at your VCR.

    Liked by 1 person

      1. That might make a funny Christmas article, an article about those awful items that are only available at Christmas time. I call them “obligation gifts”, the gifts you have to buy for people you don’t really care about or know much about.

        Liked by 1 person

  2. I remember there being quite a few things to try and help people record stuff, since the user interface on VCR’s was pretty bad in the 80’s. Do you remember VCR Plus? Where every show had a 6 digit code and you could put the code into the VCR and it would record that specific show. There was also a remote that had two dials on it that you could set and it would supposedly set the time on your VCR.

    Liked by 1 person

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