However, the TV part of the product ‘emulates the CRT effect,’ which means it doesn’t use an actual CRT.
500 USD
For a cheap AliExpress controller board.
An flat screen! (Not real CRT)
And a VHS Player…
What a bargain…
I’m surprised it’s that cheap. I doubt they will sell many of them. They have to cover the cost of all the tooling required to build the VHS players. They are fairly complex and have a lot of moving parts. It’s been about a decade since anyone made a VHS player. Unless they got lucky and found the tooling sitting in a warehouse somewhere, they would have to build it all.
The price seems to be $400 (American style list price, so the real price is going to be closer to $440), but yeah that’s still pretty high what it is.
Is there actual technical appeal in CRT aside from nostalgia? I imagine the magic dying the moment I lift the box and remember how much they weigh.
I do like the design (as someone who grew up in the 90s and early 2000s, but I do wish they took a more retro-fusion aesthetic (just slightly smaller bezels and larger screen) and approach to features (higher native resolution of say 1024×768), especially since it’s not a real CRT.
