To be fair, the issue is not that people did not set the time, everyone with a brand new VCR took the normally needed one-two-three hours time to read the (bulk

To be fair, the issue is not that people did not set the time, everyone with a brand new VCR took the normally needed one-two-three hours time to read the (bulky) instructions and learn about tens of functions they would never use at first installation, and did set the time. Only, next time there was a blackout (or even in some cases a low or high spike in voltage) of the mains (or you needed to switch it off to do some electrical repairs) the time would reset to 12:00 and usually there was no way to re-set it without the instruction manual and it was way too work to find the instructions. For the nostalgics, a nice .gif: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1200am_blink.gif https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1200am_blink.gif