Very Curious Retro

Dug out the two archived VCRs from the basement with a view to digitising some of the family tapes.  

I'd forgotten about this one - a Panasonic dating from the time when (briefly) Radio Times put a barcode beside each programme and you could scan the code with the remote, and zap it into the VCR.

Some cool technology and design - check out the fold-down controls on the main unit.  Mind you, it was £499 in the day (found the price tag in the box!) so I'd expect some serious cool.

That the date-setting bar codes only go up to 2010 suggests (1) wild optimism in the early 90's, and (2) it really is quite old.

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The other VCR is the one that replaced this. A lot less cool, but with that new fangled thing of picking up programme start times from the TV transmission.  What will they think of next?.