Always fascinating to see retro technology that fulfilled a certain "niche" or very specific purpose. I think of video tape rewinder units as well to save the "wear and tear" of rewinding on one's VCR. Youtube'rs like Techmoan often feature old gadgets related to computing or audio and video and his channel is a lot of fun with the things he discovers, tests/repairs, and talks about.

Here's an "advertorial" from September 1982 from The Toronto Star that goes into more detail on how this device works:

This reminded me of a similar thread in Oct 2023.   It also contained details about a VCR I owned a few decades back which had a feature to eliminate ads on recordings.      Did Anyone Ever Use This VCR System?

SpinningWheel wrote:

This reminded me of a similar thread in Oct 2023.   It also contained details about a VCR I owned a few decades back which had a feature to eliminate ads on recordings.      
Did Anyone Ever Use This VCR System?

I had the VCR-Plus systems in several machines I owned back when VHS was the only way to capture anything. I'm pretty sure I never used it - not even once. It was just so much simpler to enter the channel, the day and the date of what you wanted to record, rather than fumbling with a bunch of random numbers. Enter it wrong and you missed your show. 

And in those pre-Internet days, that meant you might not see it again until the summer - or not at all, if a show got cancelled early, never to be seen again.

RadioActive wrote:

Back before I was born, my parents bought a gadget that allowed a VHF TV (as they almost all were then) to get UHF channels. That was around the time Channel 17 first signed on the air and was an NBC affiliate. I found the thing in their basement many years later and tried it - and it worked, 

Using the Bank of Canada inflation calculator and using 1953 (the year WNED first went on air) as a guide, that gadget would cost approximately $300 in today's money.

Also, in the early 1980s when convertors were a big thing (remember when getting 30 channels was a novelty?), some manufactures offered UHF convertors, which allowed you to get the same channels as the more expensive push-button models offered, but on your UHF dial. I had one and it worked pretty good and IIRC, the convertors of the day offered channels up to 36-38, or somewhere in that range. The UHF convertors didn't offer the option of getting unscrambled pay-TV channels, however, those still required a set-top convertor and descrambler box.


PJ

Last edited by Paul Jeffries (January 1, 2025 9:17 pm)

mace wrote:

RadioActive wrote:

Thank you for this! I had no idea how it worked. But what if you had a prolonged sequence of black, like in a horror movie? I guess you would have lost that part of the picture. 

And losing ten seconds of show each and every time there was a pause, not to mention the mechanical wear on the machine? I can see why it didn't catch on. I wonder whatever became of "Mr. Shelton."

Back before I was born, my parents bought a gadget that allowed a VHF TV (as they almost all were then) to get UHF channels. That was around the time Channel 17 first signed on the air and was an NBC affiliate. I found the thing in their basement many years later and tried it - and it worked, 

I think when Channel 17 went off the air (before returning as an educational station) they disconnected it, because at the time there were no more UHF stations in Buffalo.

It wasn't exactly like this one, but had a tuning dial and I think may have used Channel 3 to display the signals. 

I wonder how clear the reception in the GTA would have been of WBUF when it was owned by NBC. I have read that viewers in East Buffalo got better NBC reception from Rochester than was available from WBUF.

When NBC bought WBUF, it invested in a new tall tower for channel 17 in North Buffalo and a more powerful transmitter. This was the facility that was passed off to WNED and which was used by channel 17 until the Grand Island tower went up in 1986.

With a decent antenna, WBUF would have been seen pretty decently back then in most of the GTA, for the few who had UHF reception.

(NBC also started building a new studio complex for WBUF at that same North Buffalo site, but it abandoned UHF before finishing the studios. It sold the unfinished building to WBEN radio and TV, which expanded it and moved in in 1960. WIVB/WNLO are still there today.)

Years ago when I was housesitting for my parents while on vacation, I would record Corrie Street for my Mom. While watching, I would pause the VCR to edit the commercials. This saved VCR space plus Mom wouldn't need to FF.