Combo television unit

Combo television unit

A typical TV/VCR combo.
Inception	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 either a VCR or a DVD player 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 RCA connecters on the front and/or back to connect a home video game console or a camcorder. Some units also have a headphone jack to watch media without disturbing others.

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. A major exception to this convention is TV/DVD combos, which can have a stereo VCR included in the unit (i.e. a TV/VCR/DVD combo). One of the major drawbacks of a TV/DVD/VCR combo is that the integrated VCR can sometimes activate the CSS programming on the DVD player portion, making it impossible to watch DVDs on the unit.

Modern televisions tend to be mostly solid state machines, while VCRs require mechanical manipulation of VHS tape and require occasional servicing. For this reason, it is not uncommon for the VCR component to cease functioning or to become unreliable years before a similar fate befalls the television component. This leaves users with only "half" of the set in operation and a more expensive repair or replacement.