Miscellaneous desk
< February 18	<< Jan \| February \| Mar >>	February 20 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Miscellaneous Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is a transcluded archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

February 19

How to play 1970s era VCR tape

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]