One of my VCR's has a load of LED 7 segment
displays
My family's first VCR had a mechanical timer (not too much different than
an alarm clock) and a knob-tuner (obviously using the same tuner mechanism
as knob-tuned TV's) for selecting the channel.
No, it wasn't one of the very first, it was just a cheap low-end model from
a few years later!
Tim.