Why no built-in TBC in 1980+ VCRs?

[DVtyro]

Originally Posted by old_tv_nut

Adding a TBC to a home VCR would produce little or no improvement to the picture on a home TV set.
Large incremental cost + miniscule incremental improvement = not worth it

The clipped Q&A from a 1985 magazine I attached above was about skewing on some tapes, a defect, which is usually mitigated by a TBC. I have some tapes that show this defect, some of them I can play on my machine that has built-in TBC, and the frame comes out straight. Problem is, the machine plays only in SP mode, so cannot play crappy EP tapes on it.

So, TBC is not just about jittery image, but about fixing more glaring issues, in some cases it can make barely playable tape look just fine.

But I hear what you are saying - in most cases it would be useless unless someone used their VCR for dubbing, especially in the time when TVs were flickery 60 Hz interlaced, not something like 120 Hz with built-in deinterlacers.