Is Funai making VCRs again? (RADVCR scam!)
 

i was recently pointed to a web site that seems to be selling rebranded funai VCRs. i was under the impression that funai stopped in 2016, so i'm wondering if these are in fact new machines, or just rebadged old stock?

also, are these any good? i've been having a rough time finding a reasonably working deck in my price range, but this seems like it would be amazing if they were any good.

anyone got any insights?

I don't think they just decide to start making VCR's again after they folded and dismantled all their equipment, It is not as easy as you may think.
As to the quality of the VCR's, They are good for playing back tapes or for rewinding, Not for capturing if quality matters.

it seemed unlikely that they'd have just started again, as its exactly as easy as i would think (aka, very, very difficult) to setup a factory for such things. i was more wondering if they had just kept the factory going on a smaller scale for some reason.

i may give one of these a try, as for the price, mediocre capturing would be acceptable.

Odd. They also sell yarn:

quite the diversified business!

Wee woo! Wee Woo! Red flags galore! :yikes:

A first time poster "discovered" this website and product.

Domain registered 1/29/21 https://www.whois.com/whois/radvcr.com

Check out the pictures on the website of this "brand new" unit. Manufactured in October 2012???

Obviously fake photoshopped "RadVCR" logo!

Mods, please ban the OP and lock this thread.

Is it even rebadged? The VCR image looks badly photoshopped to me.

6-8 weeks delivery? WTF? That has to be coming drop-shipped from China. In which case 6-8 weeks is laughably optimistic during CNY (most of Jan-Feb), and in the era of COVID, where we have a freight shortage and mass shipping delays. More like 3 months minimum wait.

That website "about us" is mostly nonsense. Likely outright BS in some places. Nobody should be that gullible.

"Look! Back by popular demand! Phone booths! Would you believe we had a hard time finding these new! They were out of stock everywhere!" :rolleyes:

Nobody in their right mind is searching for a garbage Funai combo unit. When Funai shut down, my only thought was "good riddance".

No.

@lingyi, I don't think the OP here is a spammer, but I'll be watching. Delinked URL, just in case.
@Formica, is the yarn actually related, or just another Shopify template site?
@latreche34, Funai used to eat tapes, transports were crap, so not even good for preview playback.

OP, please get your [deleted because lordsmurf is giving the OP the benefit of the doubt] story straight. The website claims the combo is brand new, custom made in a multi-million dollar factory by a family business at can make only limited quantity! Yep, sounds legit to me. :D

:laugh:

That whole site is BS. :screwy:

"high demand" = COVID + CNY, meaning it will arrived never minus a day. :2cents:

Pre-2020, I ordered stuff from China often.
But shipping from China has been beyond horrible, with my last few packages going entirely MIA. I'd be insane to order anything more than a trinket for a few dollars (aka, cheap computer part, or KO action figure) -- and even then, waste of time, as it'll likely end up as a refund.

Ha! I searched the "RAD" phone number and found the yarn site. But if you look at the "RAD" privacy policy page, it's evident that they're a yarn company first, because they've forgotten to switch out the yarn company name.

Despite their promise to refund money immediately, even before your unit is returned, they also state:

well, based on lordsmurf's comments, i'm suddenly not even a little interested in ordering one. this is why i posted here, i couldn't find any reviews, or anything suggesting they were credible, so i thought i'd ask. dropping the link was far from an attempt to spam, it was mostly to show what it was i was talking about. i was also unfamiliar with the funai brand all around.

so, yep, i asked, and i got an answer. y'all just saved me $200!

also, i wondered how the yarn site tied into it all, other than looking pretty much the same. then i noticed on the vcr site, they didn't edit mentions of the yarn site out of their copy/pasted text.

this is clearly just someone drop shipping these from warehouse finds in china. wouldn't be that big of a deal if it was actual good old stock, but clearly not the case. sorry for bringing it up!

also, for the record, i'm not even a little bit affiliated with the web site. i was told this was a friendly community that knows about old video tech. i've been lurking on the board for a short while, mostly learning about time base correctors, and using the boards to look up information about VCRs i've been encountering in the wild. this is the first time i've found a model that there wasn't info on here for, so i thought i'd ask. no need to presume i'm ban worthy already. i'll just go back to lurking.

Noted and my apologies for the harsh words. Was overly suspicious because of your first post about an obviously scam product and site.

Please continue to post. I promise I'll be nicer and less judgemental. :depressed:

i appreciate that, thanks!

admittedly i should've been put off by the terribly worded web site, but i really wanted the consensus here to be "this is a great product, your search is over!", so i overlooked what are now obvious flaws.

It's a recycled VoIP number, and has belong to many shady people, including outright scams where somebody was trying to phish social security numbers. Look several pages deep into Google SERPs, and you may be shocked (or not, I'm not surprised whatsoever).

Nah. Scam sites just "rip"/copy-paste ToS/PP/etc from other sites. Some are even built into the templates, and never changed. The worst are when the template has a __ or My New Company text left as-is.

Not surprised. Funai was a rebadger brand, used by Toshiba and many others, for the low-end EOL consumer decks.

I didn't think so. :angel:

Yes! :D

You're fine, participate. :congrats:

Well, in your defense, we have had a lot of spammers lately. I do appreciate all spam reports, because most are usually accurate. Most.

If you're looking for a boat anchor that may arrive in 3+ months, "great product, your search is over!" :laugh:

A better approach may be to start a new thread, list what you want, the budget for it, and some project specs. ie,
How many tapes?
What recording mode are your VHS tapes?
- SP, LP, EP/SLP, or a mix? If mix, % of each?
- If not known, guestimate. (What you don't want to do is put these tapes in a ratty old VCR, and have the tapes get damaged.)

... but in a new thread, not this one. I have a feeling this thread will be mocked (not you, but the ridiculous VCR), so let's move that more serious discussion to its own home.

ha! the non-punctual boat anchor image got a giggle out of me.

the problem with my situation is that i'm not using most of this gear the same way the majority of the folks here are, but a lot of the knowledge exchanged here helps me greatly. i'm a video artist, and i've been using VCRs, and garbage tapes for various purposes for quite a few years. i have a lot of modified video processors that happen to work even better with TBCs. i have a couple different capture cards, for different purposes. discovering this community mostly happened when i got deeper into learning the technical sides of why things behave the way they do, and what i can do to help mitigate my "why isn't this behaving the same as it did yesterday" questions.

so, i don't really have a specific goal in mind. i'd just like to stop constantly having my tapes eaten by thrift store VCRs, and stop feeling like i need to have 3-5 VCRs on hand (because something will always be broken on each one), when one solid one will work.

wow, all of what i just spelled out would probably make a good thread now that i think about it. "help me find useful stuff and learn some things, but realize my budget is that of a person who's salary comes from art". no one answer the above points, i'll create a thread for this tomorrow after i've had some sleep!

Alright, that's it ... you're like the 5th person to come here for artistic use of this gear in the past month. Did you perhaps come here from Reddit, as most of the others did?

I'm going to create a post discussing some exact gear, and take some samples of how it fubars video. :)
But that's apparently a good thing for art usage.

I have some bad equipment in the attic, and some of you may actually want it in the current condition, so that's a thought. And if all you want is a low-end VHS VCR, that you know works, I have a deck that I'd part with.

Is artistic use of VHS really a thing now? Not just a passing recent fad? If so, I may revive a project of mine.

i came here from a google search in late december, but i think it was january before i setup an account and dug deeper. i don't use reddit. i've been doing this stuff for a lot of years, but there may be a fad now, i'm not sure.

i know that a younger artist did a youtube video about TBC that mentioned this forum, that may be sending people here.

Whaaaatttt??!! :eek:

Using craptastic cards on the sly eh LS?! :D

It appears to be a rebranded Magnavox ZV427MG9 (discussed here and here), manufactured back in October 2012. So it's probably still new enough that the plastics haven't gone brittle and the lubricants haven't dried out, maybe.

wow, those threads definitely haven't swayed me away from the "no thanks" on these