I found this absolutely terrific VCR at the State Road Goodwill two days ago. It’s been awhile since I’ve had a really good VCR/electronics find, at least one worth writing about, but boy, I fell in love with this one the instant I laid eyes on it. There was some random guy in the general vicinity of it when I first spotted the beast, and your Northeast Ohio Video Hunter was indeed prepared to do some violent shovin’ if it came to it. It didn’t, though. It never does.
It’s a GoldStar GHV-8500M Hi-Fi VHS VCR, complete with cool flip-front door to protect the precious insides. There doesn’t seem to be a lot about this particular model online. A Northeast Ohio Video Hunter exclusive?! Bonus cool winnins?!?! I’m not pathetic enough to believe THAT, but still, it doesn’t appear that this is an especially well-remembered model.
The sad fact of the matter is I just don’t have many GoldStar products. As far as VCRs go, most of the GoldStars I come across are newer, cheaper-looking models, and thus are quickly passed up in lieu of other things more befitting my increasingly limited funds. This one though, it just looks classy. I can’t find a date on it anywhere, and online searches turned up only a kinda vague 1990-1991, but the style of it looks early-1990’s to me. I want to guess 1993, because the flip-front door (which is really what attracted this thing to me in the first place) reminds me of the last Betamax ever released in the U.S., the SL-HF2000. Not exact, of course, and nowhere near as cool, but reminiscent nevertheless.
Anyway, my 1993 guesstimate isn’t that far off from 1990-1991. It’s from somewhere around there, at least.
Boy this thing is slick. It absolutely seems like a higher-end model to me. It’s Hi-Fi, it’s got the cool flippy door, and it’s got extra RCA jacks in the front. SIGNS O’ QUALITY, MAN. The number of options found inside the flip-door isn’t the most extensive ever seen on a VCR, but the few found here is still more than many other units from the same time period (in which you’ll have the standard power-play-rewind-fast forward-pause-eject buttons, the channel select buttons, and not a whole lot else.)
There’s the back of the unit. More RCA jacks. Helpful power cord. So now you know. See, GHV-8500M. Did you think I was lying? I wasn’t.
The side of the unit, featuring some slick an’ stylish contours. So now you know. The molding on the side ultimately doesn’t mean anything, of course, but it does give the underlying impression that this model is “somethin’ special,” I s’pose.
I absolutely love the fact it has a digital read-out of the audio levels. More evidence it may have been a higher-end unit. The cheapo models I’ve come across don’t have anything even close to that sort of thing. Usually, when I come across VCRs with this feature, the audio levels are found in the form of LEDs. I think I prefer them in the classic green and red LED form, but that’s no knock on the digital version found here.
Luck o’ the Irish, it works! When I tried the unit out in Goodwill, sans any kind of picture obviously, it seemed that it worked fine except that it acted a little wonky when rewinding. At only $5, I gladly took the chance, because as previously stated, I really like this thing. But now that I’ve had the sucker hooked up, I can see that it was just reacting to the old-school memory counter hitting 0000. I really, really don’t like this type of counter; my feelings towards this style falls somewhere between annoyance and outright rage. I didn’t think anyone was even still using that system by the early-90’s, but hey, there it is. It’s probably the only thing about this VCR I don’t like, but since it’s not like I’ll be using this thing 24/7, it’s not too big of a deal.
Speaking of the counter, I can’t get any kind of related-display to show up on the VCR itself. I’m thinking this was a feature only accessed via the original remote. Since the original remote did not come with this unit, it’s a feature seemingly forever barred to me.
One more thing: when you insert a tape, the VCR practically vacuums it in. This isn’t a fault with the unit, it’s clearly how it was designed to handle tapes, and just like the superfluous molding on the side, it makes you feel like you’re going first-class.
From start to finish, this is a slick unit; it must have displayed terrifically in the home entertainment centers of the early-1990’s. It has just enough late-80’s/early-90’s style to look, erm, stylish, but still fairly simple overall without going the full route to straight-up cheap lookin’ (that is to say, it doesn’t look as low-quality and generally unappealing as many of the VCRs manufactured in the 1990’s tend to, despite the plasticy gray appearance.)
Works good, looks good, this one’s definitely a keeper.
THE NORTHEAST OHIO VIDEO HUNTER 