It's one final hit of the "eject" button.
On Thursday, the last-known existing manufacturer of VCRs, the Funai Corporation of Japan, said it would stop making them due to the "difficulty acquiring parts." Japan's Nikkei reported the news.
“We are the last manufacturer... in all of the world,” the company said in a statement, which cited sales of just 750,000 in 2015. That's down by millions from the video cassette player's heyday.
The electromechanical devices played and recorded video on cassette tapes about the size of a paperback book, revolutionizing the TV, movie, and consumer recording industries during its reign from the 70s to 90s. But the VCR was eventually supplanted by higher image quality DVDs. Those sales are themselves now suffering at the hands of instantly gratifying and cheaper on-demand video streaming.
VCR, R.I.P.
