I still have fond memories of my VCR+ (handheld unit.)
It wasn’t that it was a bad idea. It was fantastic while it lasted. It worked flawlessly. If I wanted to go out of town for a week or two I could enter every single program I wanted recorded. All I had to do was get a friend of mine to put in a fresh tape when needed. And when I was home, it was just so fantastic to be able to plan my recordings for an entire week or more without any hassle.
But then the company got bought out and the only way you could get the same functionality was to buy an entire VCR which had it incorporated as an “extra” feature. EXTRA = MORE EXPENSIVE.
And then TV guide and all the newspapers stopped publishing the codes.
The day they got bought out was its downfall. They totally broke what didn’t need fixing to begin with. It was a genius invention which big business totally screwed up.
Likewise for WEB TV. the second they were bought out by Microsoft, the whole thing went to hell in a handbasket.
I was going to buy one but opted for a different device instead. It was also ruined by Microsoft.