Sansui SV-R7000
(1982 - 1984)

How the mighty have fallen... The great Sansui merely redadging somebody else's VHS recorders - the old days engineers must have shivered.

Cool looks, though, and with all the features a futuristic VCR could boast then; IR remote, front-loading system, 8-hour recording capability, 2-week timer, picture sharpness control, search function, comprehensive display, Quartz-Locked direct-drive motor, auto-rewind and even a "double-flap" cassette hatch to let the frenetic recordist know he (or she) has indeed already fed the beast with another tape... or not.
The upper (but already black) SV-R9000 added a 105-channel, cable-ready tuner as well as switchable Dolby noise reduction and two-channel FM Simulcast. Also an emergency power back-up system so that clock and timer settings don't vanish in case of power failure - home recording was at last here, very much alive (although in '82 not cheap yet) and missing a show or a film was, finally, at last, impossible.
With 240 lines of resolution (tops) and 45dB of video s/n ratio (tops, too), this was only VHS. Sure - but it was new, exciting and allowed all of us a glimpse of the sense of ubiquity !

Now, for the audio recordist, Sansui's (much advertised in Japan) TRICODE PC-X1 PCM processor was also available for hours of PCM recordings - maybe a way to get a little bit of the Sansui magic after all.