| Combo television unit | |
| Launch Year: | early 1970s (experimental movie rental equipment); mid-to-late 1980s (mainstream market) |
A combo television unit, or a TV/VCR combo, sometimes known as a televideo, is a television with a VCR, DVD player, or sometimes both, built into a single unit. These converged devices have the advantages (compared to a separate TV and VCR) of saving space and increasing portability. Such units entered the market during the mid-to-late 1980s when VCRs had become ubiquitous household devices. By this time, the VHS format had become standard; thus the vast majority of TV/VCR combos are VHS-based.
Most combo units have composite inputs on the front and/or back to connect a home video game console, a second VCR, a DVD player, or a camcorder. Some units may also include a headphone jack or S-Video inputs.
Though nearly all TV/VCR combination sets have monaural (mono) sound though with stereo soundtrack compatibility, there are a large number of TV/VCR combos with a stereo TV tuner, but a mono VCR (some may even include a mono sound input alongside a composite video input. Some models from Panasonic also included an FM tuner.[1]
When DVDs were released, brands such as Toshiba introduced a TV/DVD/VCR combo. However, many of these units turned out to have unreliable DVD players and never had a large place in the TV market.
Modern televisions tend to be mostly composed of solid state components, while VCRs require physical movement for both the inner workings of the VCR and the actual viewing of a VHS tape. VCRs also tend to require occasional service to upkeep the VCR, including things like cleaning the heads, capstan, and pinch rollers. For this reason, it is not uncommon for the included VCR to cease functioning or to become unreliable years before a similar fate befalls the television component due to lack of easy maintenance.
As late as 2006, flat-panel TVs with integrated DVD players appeared on the market, and integrated TV/DVD sets started overtaking the TV/VCR market. This is due to both the low price and overwhelming availability of DVDs and more compact form factor, as opposed to the increasingly rare video cassettes and near-extinction of cathode ray tube displays in the consumer market. However, in the late 2010s, Smart TVs have become affordable and have been a popular choice for video playback and are considered a modern version of the combo TV.
During the era of their popularity, many of these units displayed product videos in stores or for other commercial displays. The main reason for this was unlike most low-end, standalone VCRs, many included an automatic rewind feature.[2]
See also: Smart TV. Some fully functional computer systems or game consoles have been built into some models of TVs over time. Hewlett-Packard currently has a version of their TouchSmart line of computers with a built-in TV tuner, and even has a built-in DVR; also making it a TV/DVR combo which is a relatively rare concept.[3] As of late 2006, Samsung introduced an LED TV with a proprietary operating system with Internet access to websites like Facebook, YouTube, Hulu, Netflix, and other sites. Other TV/Computer combo equipment can simply just be flatscreen TVs with USB ports which allows USB flash drives and external hard drives to be connected to allow for audio and video playback, in which it can give a streamlined, fully solid-state profile.
Almost every modern day TV sets have simplified CPUs and memory chips for basic functions such as channels and video settings, and video timing for LCD flat panels; however these examples are not sophisticated enough to qualify as significant examples. Other computer parts are used for real-time playback of DVDs on combo TVs with DVD player (and Blu-ray Disc for more high-end models) functionality; however these dedicated functions alone don't qualify as significant examples either.
In the modern day, the distinction between a combo TV and an all-in-one PC have blurred with the modern smart TV concept.
In 2010, Sony introduced a TV with a built-in PlayStation 2.[4] [5]