My VCR reached the end of time!

I have an old Sony SLV-757NC VHS VCR’s (and even older Panasonic NV-H70 EA) which get a lot of use as I time-shift most things to avoid commercials. Both have been great machines but I discovered tonight that the Sony has reached the end of time!

The Panasonic was one of the first Hifi VHS machines (must be 15 years old) and I got the Sony when they first started making VHS (10 years ago?) as it had a NICAM Stereo tuner. It was the only way to get digital stereo reception as I had a good, but non-NICAM, Sony TV* at the time. I set it to record “Scrapheap Challenge” every Friday but found it recording tonight (Thursday). I found the set day & time was correct and the machine thought it was recording on Friday 13th January 1984. I have obviously been using it longer than Sony anticipated and the internal calendar ended at 31–12–2004 so it had gone back to the beginning of its calendar which was 1984.

Its old, but still playing OK, and I found out from www.timeanddate.com that I can set it back to 1994 as it started on a Saturday like this year so the date/day will be the same then found someone else has the same machine and has mapped out conversions to 2016. The Panasonic has no time problems as is just a simple 7 day repeating clock with no months to complicate things.

I think it may be great excuse to get two of my “Toy Wish-List” items. I had already decided to get a Sony RDRHX900 DVD HD Recorder (DVD + 160gb Hard Drive) to replace one and a new Sony VHS Hifi for legacy tapes I won’t bother transferring to DVD. Might have to go shopping for the RDRHX900 on Saturday whatever day/date that is and get a birthday present!

* My Sony Living Museum: The 15 year old Sony TV was replaced by a Sony ES29 Trinitron a few years ago so I could play NTSC DVD’s but I gave it to someone who still using it every day and it still looks ok. My WMF202 Walkman (1991) and Sony D50 (first ever portable CD from 1985) are used regularly & still going strong!