And Voyager. Slightly better but still not very good.
And then there's Mill Creek Entertainment. How that place stays in business is beyond me. Substandard packaging and unplayable disks.
The last VCR was made in July......
- Thread starter Gingerbread Demon
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And then there's Mill Creek Entertainment. How that place stays in business is beyond me. Substandard packaging and unplayable disks.
Of course your 25 year old VHS player still works. I have one roughly that old that's still in good shape too although these days I don't use it much. Anyhow, there's a reason for the saying "They don't make 'em like they used to".
It;s generally true.
OMG I remember when they did this on Mythbusters...... Results were for me rather astonishing as I never thought that was possible.
I always preferred the sound of a nice hifi encoded vhs over a dvd. It just sounds nicer to my old ears.
I heard the CD-ROM revving up awfully loud and knew right away I had to eject that CD fast. Unfortunately, the eject mechanism was slower than me and--BANG! Spent the next ten minutes picking out shredded CD fragments from inside my computer. Later on, I saw that same Mythbusters episode about exploding CDs.
Heh. I still play old albums I have on audio cassette on my boom box from time to time. Used to even have a few on vinyl until a few years ago (gave away my turntable in a garage sale).
I had a CD explode on me once, too.
There's a reason CD-ROM drives didn't go faster than 56x, and unfortunately there were some discs that weren't made well and couldn't stand up even to that speed. (Plus, a damaged disc is more likely to shatter under stress.)
There's a reason CD-ROM drives didn't go faster than 56x, and unfortunately there were some discs that weren't made well and couldn't stand up even to that speed. (Plus, a damaged disc is more likely to shatter under stress.)
I've never had that happen.......As I said the only way I knew about that was via Mythbusters.
I remember the first show I ever recorded with a VCR: an episode of The Dukes Of Hazzard. 
And you could always tell by the white streaks and dropouts which bits had been repeatedly paused and played over and over. Usually scenes involving naked stuff.Just chewed up tape if you didn't clean the heads every 5 minutes
Especially if you played a lot of rental tapes.
I ditched my VCR and gave all my tapes away (including the full collection of TNG, Voyager and DS9) when I moved house back in 2008.
And you could always tell by the white streaks and dropouts which bits had been repeatedly paused and played over and over. Usually scenes involving naked stuff.
Back in the day I used to have a few tapes like that..... ummmmm including a movie with Pheobe Cates
VHS dies, Mega Drive Lives!
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/11/09/sega_megadrivegenesis_lives_again_in_brazil/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/11/09/sega_megadrivegenesis_lives_again_in_brazil/
Just passing by one of the shops in the town earlier, and they had half a dozen (original) Mega Drive consoles. I think they also had one of the older nintendo machines too.
During the DVD era, the only way to watch HD movies on those early HD TV sets, was believe it or not on VHS. The tape had more than enough room to hold a digitally encoded 1080i movie...
I remember the first show I ever recorded with a VCR: an episode of The Dukes Of Hazzard.
I had ours set each day to record Robotech so I could watch it after school. I was always SOOOOO mad when I'd come home to find that our local station showing it changed the schedule and I'd end up with He-Man or something equally bad. I had most of the three series on tape at one point. Then when the DVD collections came out, imagine my dismay when I realized the transfer quality was so bad that they didn't look much better than my old tapes. grumble grumble...
I wonder how many people are aware of the existence of digital tapes. They're still in relatively common use for server backups, but there are also digital audio and video versions, too (as your video attests).
If optical media hadn't taken off, we'd probably be using digital tapes instead of DVDs/Blu-rays.
I actually owned a "blank" VHS tape a year or two before I purchased my first VCR, a Panasonic, one of the earlier front loading units, but with a wired remote, yes, "wired". It connected via 1/8th plug to a jack in the back. Obviously, it was a "two head" unit.
Anyway, back to the tape. I had seen a "making of" special about "The Dark Crystal" on PBS that I really wanted to watch again and again as I wished. I learned that a college professor of mine had a VCR, so I asked if he might record a repeat broadcast. He agreed, so I went to purchase a blank tape. At the time, even blank media cost around twenty bucks, a decent chunk of change compared to the price of blank audio cassettes. But I bought it and loaned him the media. He recorded the show, but the irony was that I did not have a machine upon which to play it.
Before I bought the recorder I described above, I loaned that tape to a cousin of mine who had already joined the home media revolution. Initially, I had her record a segment of HBO's "Video Jukebox", a rocked out version of "Rum Tum Tugger" from "Cats" (I fell in lust with Bombalurina from that number). Later, she recorded a segment of "Foulups, Bleeps and Blunders" (ABC's answer to NBC's "Bloopers and Practical Jokes") guest starring William Shatner who introduced the first (and only) national broadcast of the iconic Star Trek "blooper reel".
For "shiggles", I just inserted that tape into a combo VCR/DVD player I have and after a bit of manual tracking adjustment, that tape I purchased near the end of 1982 is playing remarkably clear! If it looks "grainy", that's largely due to my using an HDTV as the playback screen instead of a CRT type "boob tube".
Anyway, back to the tape. I had seen a "making of" special about "The Dark Crystal" on PBS that I really wanted to watch again and again as I wished. I learned that a college professor of mine had a VCR, so I asked if he might record a repeat broadcast. He agreed, so I went to purchase a blank tape. At the time, even blank media cost around twenty bucks, a decent chunk of change compared to the price of blank audio cassettes. But I bought it and loaned him the media. He recorded the show, but the irony was that I did not have a machine upon which to play it.
Before I bought the recorder I described above, I loaned that tape to a cousin of mine who had already joined the home media revolution. Initially, I had her record a segment of HBO's "Video Jukebox", a rocked out version of "Rum Tum Tugger" from "Cats" (I fell in lust with Bombalurina from that number). Later, she recorded a segment of "Foulups, Bleeps and Blunders" (ABC's answer to NBC's "Bloopers and Practical Jokes") guest starring William Shatner who introduced the first (and only) national broadcast of the iconic Star Trek "blooper reel".
For "shiggles", I just inserted that tape into a combo VCR/DVD player I have and after a bit of manual tracking adjustment, that tape I purchased near the end of 1982 is playing remarkably clear! If it looks "grainy", that's largely due to my using an HDTV as the playback screen instead of a CRT type "boob tube".
Haha I had a copy of Entrapment in that format...... It never got played though as the VCR was not right to play that format tape. If I remember rightly being purchased a month before I had got that on a DVD.
I remember the He Man cartoons and She Ra and recording those to pause them and admire the women back in high school........ Ours had a digital tracking thingy. And I have probably admitted way too much lol
I miss Laserdiscs much more than VCRs.
Why is that?
I've never physically handled a laserdisc movie.... I know they were the same size as a 12 inch vinyl record but that's about all.
To be honest, for server use, very much so (wasn't part of my role, but nobody else would do it for several years) - but I'd never heard of them for video. I don't think I ever saw them for sale in the UK and back in the day I bought quite a few tapes.
