- [Jared] Sometimes, looking at older technology
can be fascinating.
In the 1980s and 1990s, this is how you'd watch movies
and record shows off your television.
In this video, we're gonna take a look
at the inside of a VCR and show how it works.
(electricity buzzing)
This video is sponsored by NordVPN.
(gentle music)
This is the VCR, it stands for Video Cassette Recorder,
it plays VHS cassette tapes,
VHS stands for Video Home System.
Take the tape, push it in, press play,
and there's your movie.
The VCR is becoming a thing of the past,
if you were born after about the year 2000,
you might not have even used one of these.
Nowadays there's DVDs and Blu-ray.
Why use these when you can just stream everything
off the internet?
The VCR is probably not going to make a comeback,
but to me, this is still a fascinating piece
of technology.
To really understand it,
we need a little bit of background.
In the early 1900s, if you wanted to watch anything
on a screen, you had to leave your house
and go to a movie theater.
Black and white televisions made their way into homes
by the 1950s, in the 1960s came the color TV.
Then in the late 1970s came VHS,
this was a huge game changer.
Previously, you were limited to what was being broadcast
at that time.
So if a TV program was on at 7:00 p.m.,
then you had to be in front of your TV at 7:00 p.m.
There was no way to record it, with VHS,
you could now record TV programs
and bring home your favorite movies to watch
whenever you wanted, this was a big deal.
Now to be fair, there was another competitor
called Betamax.
It looked and worked very similar to VHS.
Betamax was slightly higher quality
but VHS was slightly cheaper
and could store a longer length of video.
After a few years of battling it out, VHS won over
and that's why most people today are familiar with VHS.
VCRs and VHS tapes were most popular
during the 1980s and 1990s.
Then we saw it's decline in the early 2000s
when DVDs began to rise in popularity.
DVDs could produce better quality
and you could fit a lot more of them on a shelf
next to each other.
However, even today there are some enthusiasts
that still use VHS and lucky for me, you can still pick up
a VCR player at a thrift store for only 10
or 20 U.S. dollars.
When I was younger, I remember looking inside
and seeing all of the parts.
I remember thinking, how does it work?
So this video is an attempt to satisfy the curiosity
that I had when I was younger.
First, let's take a look at the VHS cassette tape.
You can see two reels inside.
From the bottom, you can see how the VCR will spin these.
In the front is the spring-loaded door.
This is normally locked into place.
The VCR will press right here to move back a small plate
which then unlocks the door.
When the door is open, you can see the magnetic tape
where the movie is stored.
I would highly recommend not touching this
with your fingers, you could ruin the tape
and make it unwatchable.
On the bottom of the VHS is five screws,
take these out and then the top half of the plastic
outer shell comes off.
As the movie plays, the magnetic tape will slowly move
from the supply reel all the way over to the take-up reel.
Part of the tape will actually be pulled out
so the VCR can read it.
Well, I'll show you how that works later in the video.
Most VHS tapes hold about 248 meters of tape.
If you were to unravel all of this,
it would be enough tape to extend
most of the way up the Eiffel Tower,
that's a lot of tape.
This is the reel lock mechanism.
It prevents the reels from rotating
which keeps the magnetic tape from coming out.
When the VHS tape is inside of the machine,
a piece of metal will poke up through this hole.
This will push the lever which will unlock both reels.
If the video was rewound all the way,
then the magnetic tape should be completely
on the left side.
I can still remember the old stickers on VHS rentals
that would say, be kind, rewind.
Sometimes you would get charged to small fee
if you didn't rewind it.
Now let's look at the actual VCR player.
After undoing a few screws,
part of the case usually comes right off.
There were a handful of companies that made these machines
and quite a few different models, but overall,
they will be very similar because they all need to be able
to read the same VHS tapes.
Here's a few of the main parts; the circuit board,
which controls most of the electronics, the power cord,
which comes to the back of the machine
and connects to the circuit board, the motor,
which runs most of the mechanical operations, the RF tuner,
which reads channels being broadcast over the air
and the actual VCR mechanism is right here
in the center of the machine.
There is a complex system of gears
to move the mechanical parts of the machine.
Let's start here with the Carriage Loading Assembly,
this is where you insert the VHS tape.
The mechanism takes over and lowers it down.
Did you catch all that?
There were many things that just happened at once,
let's see it again.
Notice the spring-loaded door at the front of the VHS.
When the tape comes down, this door opens up
which exposes the magnetic tape.
On the base plate of the machine,
you'll see two guide rollers.
The VCR motor can move these along curved tracks.
When the tape is inserted, the guide rollers will fit
right into these holes on the bottom of the VHS.
When the guide rollers move,
it pulls the tape along with it.
This happens every time you put in a VHS tape,
this is how the VCR gets ready to play the movie.
Sometimes they call this the M-Loading System
because the shape of the magnetic tape
kind of looks like the letter M.
The tape is wrapped around the drum.
This is the part that reads information
on the magnetic tape.
You might be thinking the drum is crooked, isn't it?
Did somebody put it in wrong?
Maybe it's broken?
Nope, this is intentional, it's supposed to be tilted
by just a few degrees, later in the video,
I'll show you why, but first, lemme show you
a few more of the parts.
This is the capstan, and this is the pinch roller.
When the machine is in play mode, a roller spins
which will slowly pull the tape.
It's important to keep the magnetic tape pulled tight
against the drum, that's the job of the two tension arms
right here and here.
This is the erase head, when the VCR is in record mode,
the picture and audio will be erased
before new information is written by the drum.
This is the audio and control track head.
This writes and reads the sound and extra information
to the magnetic tape.
When we want to rewind or fast forward the VHS,
the tension arms and pinch roller will disengage,
then the spools beneath the VHS will take over.
If it's in fast forward, then they'll spin clockwise,
but if it's in rewind, then they'll spin counterclockwise,
these can move very quickly
so that you don't have to wait as long.
The VCR has to stop before the end
where it could snap the magnetic tape
which would make it unwatchable.
But how does it know how to do this?
How does it know when to stop?
Well, there's a tiny LED light right in the middle here
and then end of tape sensors on each side.
When the VHS tape is inside the machine,
the LED light will be blocked by the magnetic tape.
Once it gets to the very end, the tape is clear,
now the light can shine all the way to the sensors,
this is how the VCR knows that it's reached the beginning
or end of the tape.
There's one more sensor I'd like to point out,
this is the record sensor.
There's a little square tab on the front of the VHS tape,
this is what tells the VCR sensor
whether it's okay to record or not.
If there's a tab there,
then the VCR will let you record on the tape.
But if it's been broken off,
then the VCR will prevent you from recording,
this is why store-bought VHS movies wouldn't have the tab,
it would be a shame to record over a priceless movie.
Let's talk more specifically about the drum
and how you read and write information
to the magnetic tape.
On the side you'll see several small holes.
These are the heads that can read or write the information.
Some machines only have two of these
but higher quality machines will have up to six heads.
Sometimes the front of your VCR will actually tell you
how many heads are in the drum.
The top half of the drum will be spinning at up to 1800 RPMs
or rotations per minute.
The magnetic tape will be moving
at only a few centimeters per second.
Remember that the drum is not actually
pulling the magnetic tape, that's the job
of the pinch roller that we saw earlier in the video.
This pulls the tape, so it now slides along
the surface of the drum.
Here is the reason that the drum is tilted.
On the magnetic tape, the video information
will be written in diagonal lines.
This is to optimize the best use of the entire width
of the magnetic tape.
The writing and reading of these lines
will be done by the heads inside of the drum.
You can see how the heads stick out just barely
so that they touch the surface of the magnetic tape.
So the heads are spinning around
and then the tape is slowly being pulled.
If you follow the magnetic patterns,
the heads will be tracing along these diagonal lines.
This is referred to as helical scan,
it's the method for how they read
and write information to the magnetic tape.
These heads are sensitive to the magnetic patterns
on the tape.
This makes a signal which moves
through the electronics and up to your TV
where it is then converted into the picture that you see.
If your VCR is in record mode, the video signal from your TV
will be converted into magnetic patterns
that will then be stored onto the magnetic tape.
Once the magnetic tape gets past the drum,
it then comes past the audio and control track head.
This will read and write sound information
to the very top of the magnetic tape.
Remember the green diagonal lines,
that's the video information, what you see on the TV screen,
and the blue at the top, that's the sound information
or what you hear from your TV.
Then the bottom of the tape is used
for extra information that tells the VCR
how fast to move the magnetic tape.
For those who remember, this was the result
of the tape speed setting.
You could fit more video onto your tape
in exchange for lower quality playback.
Some VCRs had a feature called Hi-Fi audio
which is basically higher quality sound.
It had two specific audio heads inside of the drum.
The sound information could be written
in the same space as the video.
The audio would be written deeper inside
so that it wouldn't be confused with the video signal.
When you're all done, it's time to eject the tape.
We basically just do everything in reverse,
the tension arms go back in,
then the pinch roller comes out,
the magnetic tape goes back in, the VHS door closes,
and the tape comes out of the machine.
Notice this lever on the right side, when it gets bumped,
it will then pull open the outer door
so the VHS tape can come through.
There are a handful of controls on the front of the VCR.
Each one of these controls has a corresponding button
on the circuit board, press the control
and inside this moves a small lever
which then presses the button.
This is how you control the VCR player.
Knowing how complex a VCR is,
it's amazing that they hold up for so long.
Even if you take good care of it,
avoid getting dust or moisture inside
and avoid putting any objects inside the front,
this is a very bad idea by the way,
these sensitive components will eventually wear out,
and in fact, VHS tapes won't last forever either.
So if you have any precious home movies stored on here,
it's a good idea to not wait too long
before transferring them to digital storage
which will last a lot longer.
Making these videos is hard, it takes a lot of research
and then putting together the 3D models and animating them.
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(gentle music)
My name's Jared, I create 3D animations
to show and explain how things work.
Watch another animation by clicking one of these cards
or click here to subscribe.
Thanks for watching and I'll see you next time.
(gentle music)