My father recorded the news every night so he could watch it when he got home from work, so we had a VCR pretty close to the end of NTSC broadcasting.

I can recall at one point the last generation of rubbish units-- I think they were all basically the same basic Funai model with different badges by then Funai-- I had to open the lid and bend back some metal piece that was preventing operation, because they were so flimsy.