Granada's TV Rental Stuff

[Markymark]

We didn’t rent our TV equipment, but I remember our first top loading Ferguson video recorder - my Dad was a steelworker and in the 1980s was insistent on buying British manufactured home electronics and appliances - regularly had to be sent back to Comet for repairs.

Except that Ferguson VCR (8922 ?) was 100% badge engineered by JVC in Japan

https://www.rewindmuseum.com/vhs.htm

[Humphrey Hacker]

We didn’t rent our TV equipment, but I remember our first top loading Ferguson video recorder - my Dad was a steelworker and in the 1980s was insistent on buying British manufactured home electronics and appliances - regularly had to be sent back to Comet for repairs.

Except that Ferguson VCR (8922 ?) was 100% badge engineered by JVC in Japan

https://www.rewindmuseum.com/vhs.htm

Did anyone use Matsui TV’s etc? They were exclusive to Curry’s/Dixons.

[Markymark]

We didn’t rent our TV equipment, but I remember our first top loading Ferguson video recorder - my Dad was a steelworker and in the 1980s was insistent on buying British manufactured home electronics and appliances - regularly had to be sent back to Comet for repairs.

Except that Ferguson VCR (8922 ?) was 100% badge engineered by JVC in Japan

https://www.rewindmuseum.com/vhs.htm

Did anyone use Matsui TV’s etc? They were exclusive to Curry’s/Dixons.

A brand name deliberately concocted to sound Japanese, but actually Turkish made I think. Didn't the company that made the stuff become Vestel, who used to badge lots of stuff, notably the Digihome PVRs that Argos sold in the 00s?

[Humphrey Hacker]

We didn’t rent our TV equipment, but I remember our first top loading Ferguson video recorder - my Dad was a steelworker and in the 1980s was insistent on buying British manufactured home electronics and appliances - regularly had to be sent back to Comet for repairs.

Except that Ferguson VCR (8922 ?) was 100% badge engineered by JVC in Japan

https://www.rewindmuseum.com/vhs.htm

Did anyone use Matsui TV’s etc? They were exclusive to Curry’s/Dixons.

A brand name deliberately concocted to sound Japanese, but actually Turkish made I think. Didn't the company that made the stuff become Vestel, who used to badge lots of stuff, notably the Digihome PVRs that Argos sold in the 00s?

Don’t know about that but they were pretty good.

[Neil Jones]

Vestel still exists. I dare say the vast chunk of TVs are Vestel products in new packaging.
Argos TVs sold under the Alba and Bush brands are repackaged Vestel.

Vestel is often seen as "cheap and cheerful" amongst people who know about this stuff and I believe its only Samsung, Sony and LG who make their own sets. Almost every other brand on the market is Vestel in new colours. Exceptions are mainly the above, Philips (outsourced to some Chinese company) and Panasonic, who did their own sets initially, flogged the operation to Vestel, bought it back and then sold it back agaom so there are some "genuine" Panasonics in between the Vestel stuff. But the bulk of it is repackaged Vestel.

For most people they don't really care who made it as long as it works.

[London Lite]

We didn’t rent our TV equipment, but I remember our first top loading Ferguson video recorder - my Dad was a steelworker and in the 1980s was insistent on buying British manufactured home electronics and appliances - regularly had to be sent back to Comet for repairs.

Except that Ferguson VCR (8922 ?) was 100% badge engineered by JVC in Japan

https://www.rewindmuseum.com/vhs.htm

Did anyone use Matsui TV’s etc? They were exclusive to Curry’s/Dixons.

My secondary school had Matsui 14" CRT portables.

I haven't had a Vestel set since the final CRT from Beko I owned in the noughties. Otherwise it's been LG or Philips, the latter a budget £200 set that is 1920x1080 but the picture is nearly as good as my old LG.

However as Neil mentions, there are plenty of happy customers with Vestel sets badged under numerous brands.

[Humphrey Hacker]

Matsui were basic but so reliable. My portable had rotary dial tuning and was my first colour monitor for my NES and later SNES. I also had a Matsui video player (not a recorder).

For years I had an indoor aerial then in 1996 had it linked to the main aerial system which meant I could tune in Sky on channel 5 then later 6 (but what was on the main set was also on my portable)

Ahh memories.

[Inspector Sands]

Very unusual and not very useful in the 80s. But mind you the next step was putting too many presets, I remember seeing sets in the 90s and 2000s still boasting '100 channel memory' when there's no way in the UK that they would ever be used even if connected to cable

But there was various other things that outputted in a way that a TV saw as another channel.  Such as old school games consoles and VCRs.  The TV just saw them as another broadcast channel, and VCRs were by default usually on UHF Channel 37, which was where Channel 5 launched (for the most part) and the whole returning thing they had to do to launch.

Yes of course, but you weren't ever going to have 95 devices connected... and there were only 47 UHF channels (some sets would have had a VHF tuner too, but in most cases it was absent/disabled)

That said in the dying days of analogue I did fill every preset on my portable TV with the help of a long bit of coax lashed up down the hall of my shared house

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We didn’t rent our TV equipment, but I remember our first top loading Ferguson video recorder - my Dad was a steelworker and in the 1980s was insistent on buying British manufactured home electronics and appliances - regularly had to be sent back to Comet for repairs.

Except that Ferguson VCR (8922 ?) was 100% badge engineered by JVC in Japan

https://www.rewindmuseum.com/vhs.htm

Our first VHS was a Ferguson Videostar 3V29 and it was a great machine and the quality was great, I digitised some of it's recordings a few years back and they looked excellent. 

I remember it had a few repairs though, the tracking needed sorting a few times and the bulb under the tape machanism always blew, funnily enough when I Google the machine now that part comes up for sale. I seem to remember that the bulb fault had a knock on effect on the device itself

[London Lite]

I got a good 10 years or so out of an ex-rental Thorn EMI front loader VHS.

[JAS84]

Granada's had a lot of logos other than the G-arrow.

Rental: https://logos.fandom.com/wiki/Granada_Rental
Corporate: https://logos.fandom.com/wiki/Granada
Hospitality: https://logos.fandom.com/wiki/Granada_Hospitality

[Spencer]

It only had 4 push-button channels on it though, which meant when Channel 4 came along, we had to watch that through the video.

My grandad had a Baird TV with only 4 preset buttons, I think we tuned it into Channel 4 for him but I doubt he ever watched it and never had a video. 

Very unusual and not very useful in the 80s. But mind you the next step was putting too many presets, I remember seeing sets in the 90s and 2000s still boasting '100 channel memory' when there's no way in the UK that they would ever be used even if connected to cable

Baird? That’s going back a bit. It was either Baird or Ferguson in our house.

One of my school friends had a Baird branded telly. Ultrasonic remote control to change channel. He used to jangle his keys when he left the room while his mum watched the telly, and make it change channel. Sometimes she didn't notice !

Reminds me of Victoria Wood talking about leaning on the remote and thinking Gorbachev had won the 3-2-1 holiday. 

Incidentally the Baird name was revived in recent years as BrightHouse’s own-brand for TVs, which probably made them amongst the most expensive TVs you could buy.