Quote:
Originally Posted by dj_fivos_sak
AFAIK, Thorn was a company in the UK that rebadged Ferguson's and JVC's VCRs for the rental market. I've seen lots of them in this forum and other places on the web. The JVC HR-3xxx and 7xxx series had many rebadges by these companies.
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In the UK, Thorn Electrical Industries and (from 1980) Thorn EMI owned "Ferguson" - for the great majority of the time Ferguson existed in the UK (mid-1930s).
Ferguson Radio Corporation, since the early 1960s, was actually called British Radio Corporation, then Thorn Consumer Electronics, later Thorn EMI Ferguson (from 1980) and then back to Ferguson Limited (after Thorn sold Ferguson to Thomson of France in 1987).
Thorn also owned several UK TV and video recorder rental companies: Radio Rentals, DER and Multibroadcast. Thorn owned a UK retail chain of shops called Rumbelows, until they closed it down. The Thorn rental businesses sold their own branded version of the Ferguson models (some models had slightly different features). For example, Radio Rentals used the "Baird" brand.
When Ferguson/Thorn started selling VHS VCRs in the UK, they were sourced from JVC of Japan.
Later, in the 1980s, Thorn joined a consortium of Thorn, JVC and Telefunken, called J2T, who made what were essentially JVC VCRs, but in Berlin (Germany) and Newhaven (UK).
For a short while, Thorn EMI Ferguson actually designed parts of the electronic circuitry in what were basic JVC mechanisms and designs, such as making their own UHF tuner and IF panels and adding various operational features. This soon stopped and the Newhaven factory was closed.
When Thorn sold Ferguson to Thomson, the J2T venture ceased and Thomson started selling Ferguson branded VCRs of their own manufacture. Later, I believe they formed some sort of alliance with Toshiba of Japan and Ferguson/Thomson VCRs used Toshiba mechanisms.
Ferguson (which also made TV, radio and audio sets branded HMV, Ultra and Marconiphone).
I'm fairly sure that the early FV series still used JVC mechs and electronics, until Thomson had geared up to market their own VCR range in the UK.Looking at the service manuals, that seems to be the case. I have an FV26D (with digital video frame store and effects), which is equivalent to the JVC HR-D700EK.