@noiob over here, VCRs had composite *input*, and TVs typically didn't until approximately the 90s, so you would use the VCR as a composite-to-RF converter, and it couldn't be used the other way around
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@Felthry weird, it makes much less sense that way around
@noiob I don't know what the market was like in Europe but over here a majority or at least significant minority of households wouldn't have upgraded their TV since maybe changing from a black and white one to a color one. a lot of people still *had* black and white tvs in the 70s when the first VCRs were being made, even
a lot of tvs sold even into the 90s didn't have composite input, just RF, and everyone had a VCR with composite input by then so they didn't need to
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@noiob remember also that SCART was never a thing over here. the only connector most TVs had was an F connector for 75 Ω coaxial RF input (or on really old ones, four screw terminals for twin-lead VHF/UHF)
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@noiob Someone else from Germany suggested a VCR, and we discovered that European VCRs typically output composite--North American ones never did, they always output RF over coaxial, the same thing we're trying to get something to convert to what our capture card can take as input
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