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February 19[edit]

How to play 1970s era VCR tape[edit]

I've come across several old VCR tapes that appear to be the Grundig variant mentioned at the end of this article. They look identical to this except they have a yellow "4" instead of a green "2". How would I go about playing these tapes? If I transferred the actual magnetic tape off the original spools and into a VHS housing, would a standard VHS player be able to recognize it? The tape inside looks the same as VHS tape visually.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.138.195.178 (talk • contribs) 16:58, 19 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

A standard VHS player would have no idea what to do, for a slough of different reasons; the formats are very incompatible. Your best bet is to find a commercial conversion service -- I searched for "vcr" conversion service and found several candidates that might have the equipment to read these tapes. --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆 𝄐𝄇} 19:23, 19 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I haven't seen the players for sale, but I do see the cameras come up for sale now and then. You can buy a Grundig camera and use it for video playback. It won't be cheap though. I just checked eBay and they are going for around $600. 209.149.113.5 (talk) 13:19, 22 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]