This VHS Tape Plays Video — But Not How You Think

Physical media is popular with the young people right now, as they grew up in a world with mostly digital media and the CDs, cassette tapes, and VHS tapes of yesteryear have a tangibility that really appeals to them. But the truth is that we all switched from physical media to digital media because the latter is so much more convenient. Just rewinding VHS tapes was such an issue that numerous products were sold to make it easier. But what if the VHS tape itself played videos? That’s exactly what Redditor CommonKingfisher achieved with this project.

This is a VHS tape with its own screen capable of displaying videos — no VCR or TV required. Just pick up it up and flip open the tape cover, and the video will start playing! It combines the charm of physical media with some of the convenience of digital media.

The key to this project was a very interesting product: a video greeting card. Those are like the audio greeting cards that gained popular a couple of decades ago, but with an entire screen to display video. They sell for $15-40 a piece on the Chinese marketplaces and that price is possible because the hardware components are so common and affordable these days. That hardware includes everything needed to play short videos: built-in storage, video decoding, an LCD, a speaker, a battery, and control buttons.

All CommonKingfisher had to do was pull those components out of the card, cut a window in a VHS tape, and glue the components in place. The greeting card hardware automatically starts the video when the recipient opens the card, which is triggered by a simple magnetic reed switch. CommonKingfisher repurposed that so the tape cover opening starts the video. And they tucked the control buttons under that cover.

The greeting card hardware lets the user flash any video of a suitable format that fits in storage. CommonKingfisher put some of The Matrix on there (it isn’t clear how much of the runtime fits at the given compression) and stored the tape in the appropriate case.

And the best part? CommonKingfisher never has to rewind the tape.