VHS nostalgia... =(

[Itisnotlogical]

I'm depressed now. I remember when I was a kid (well, more of a kid- I'm still only 14, this was 10 years ago) that VHS cassettes took up a majority of the space on the entertainment center, and DVD's were something of a novelty. I'd have to rewind a movie every time I wanted to watch it.

So, yesterday I really got a craving to watch Terminator 2. I got all excited and I dug up the old cassette... and remembered that I didn't have a VCR anymore.

This really made me sad. I remember watching First Contact almost every day, and every time I'd have to rewind it, and sometimes I'd skip forward to the part where the Enterprise shows up, and when I got sick I'd just put in Return of the Jedi and relax...

I know the VHS ain't coming back, but the nostalgia still makes for some really good memories. Does anybody else have fond memories of the good old VHS?

Coming up in a decade or two here, I'm going to be having fond memories of the DVD when Blu-Ray becomes the dominant medium...

 

[Level 2 Diagnostic]

Fuzzy picture quality, tracking lines, tapes wearing out or getting tangled in the player, having to wait an eternity to fast forward/rewind... I grew up with the format, but there is literally nothing I miss about VHS tapes.

 

[Haggis and tatties]

Only thing i miss about VHS is the ability to FF right to the actual content you want to watch, i hate those DVDs that's make you watch those anti piracy warnings or splash screens for each company involved in the DVDs making and you cant skip by them, so that i have to sit through them till i get to the main DVD menu.

But apart from that nothing else comes to mind, i still have quite a few videos but the time is swiftly coming when I'm afraid they will have to be binned.

 

[iBender]

Old lumpy VHSes, with different qualities, like Sony was better to record on than some lesser brand, and you had different lengths like 1hr 20min tapes and 3hr tapes... When I first went to America too, I noticed they had different VHS box covers, to what I knew in England that is.

 

[Sheep]

Fuzzy picture quality, tracking lines, tapes wearing out or getting tangled in the player, having to wait an eternity to fast forward/rewind... I grew up with the format, but there is literally nothing I miss about VHS tapes.

Agreed with Mr. Diagnostic 100%. I haven't had a VCR in about 10 years and don't miss the format one bit.

 

[The Boy Who Cried Worf]

I don't miss VHS at all. I still have a VCR!

 

[Itisnotlogical]

I meant more of a nostalgia thing than the benefits and downsides of the actual format. Like vinyl records and velvet Elvis paintings.

 

[iBender]

Well, when I first listened to Jimi Hendrix, it was on Vynl, then Voodoo Child: The Jimi Hendrix Collection came out, I baught a copy, for my 16th birthday, heard it, and it sounded funny, to me, almost slower and down beat but I soon got used to them again. -- That's the only case of format shock that I can think of right now.

 

[species5618]

I don't miss VHS at all. I still have a VCR!

I still have mine as well, and still use it from time to time--though I have it hooked up to an old 20" CRT set as opposed to my 46" HDTV. On the CRT it looks, well, like VHS, but on the HDTV it's pretty much unwatchable. HDTV's aren't very forgiving when it comes to picture quality, so every flaw and problem with VHS is very apparent.

Even some DVD's I own look pretty dodgy, despite the upscaler built into the blu ray player--my Angel DVD's in particular. What looked crisp and well-photographed on a 20" CRT is murky and fuzzy on the HDTV--strange, considering some of my DVD's look very good on the HDTV, such as Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and Hellboy.

 

[GNDN]

Fuzzy picture quality, tracking lines, tapes wearing out or getting tangled in the player, having to wait an eternity to fast forward/rewind... I grew up with the format, but there is literally nothing I miss about VHS tapes.

Agreed with Mr. Diagnostic 100%. I haven't had a VCR in about 10 years and don't miss the format one bit.

I have VHS tapes that I recorded 20 years ago or more that still work just fine. I have DVDs that I burnt less than a year ago that skip, freeze, or are simply unplayable. Digital recordings have a long length of advantages, but home-burnt disks are very sketchy at times and I wouldn't consider archiving anything on DVD without a tape or hard drive backup.

Also it is a pain when I want to just pop in an episode of something on a commercial dvd and am forced to sit through the same previews, studio logos, intros, etc. depending on the authoring of the disk.

 

[Canadave]

I meant more of a nostalgia thing than the benefits and downsides of the actual format. Like vinyl records and velvet Elvis paintings.

I don't think VHS will ever have the same nostalgic appeal as vinyl records. I grew up with VHS, and I don't miss it in the slightest now. Records, on the other hand, are becoming cool again because there's a physicality to them that other music formats can't quite match.

However, I do have a VCR, as we have a combined DVD player\VCR that we picked up for free a couple years ago.

 

[iBender]

I actually don't have a DVD recorder 'oh the tech scandal', so I haven't recorded off TV in a decade, I do have a DVDR Burner, so I have made my own dvds, but that's something I do miss, seeing something from TV you like and hitting record.

I have a VCR, but it's broken.

 

[Amaris]

Oh yes. I still own a handful of VHS tapes. One of them is my collection of Simpsons episodes I recorded back in 1994.

 

[iBender]

I still have my VHS tapes too
includeding a lot of great stuff I made from 1990s televison.
Mostily OLD School Disney Channel, Nickleoden and Cartoon Network
AND SOUTH PARK season 1, I recorded every episode of that over my Kenan & Kel tape (A part of me regrets doing that.)

My older brother's Guns N' Roses bootlegs found their way into my collection too aswell as some old MTV stuff.

 

[Sparky]

I have a VCR in storage as well as a bunch of tapes. I'be been meaning to hook it up again and take a look at the stuff recorded on them. I bet the nostalgia from the old commercials alone will be worth the effort.

 

[Owain Taggart]

Only thing i miss about VHS is the ability to FF right to the actual content you want to watch, i hate those DVDs that's make you watch those anti piracy warnings or splash screens for each company involved in the DVDs making and you cant skip by them, so that i have to sit through them till i get to the main DVD menu.

But apart from that nothing else comes to mind, i still have quite a few videos but the time is swiftly coming when I'm afraid they will have to be binned.

I personally feel that chapter marks is where it's at. With a DVD or Bluray, you can jump straight to the chapter which can't be done on VHS. Ok, well some VCRs supported marking, but not all of them did and they still didn't work the same way. Most of the time it was guess work.

 

[Starbreaker]

I have fond memories of wearing out two Wee Sing VHS's as a child.

 

[Goliath]

Oddly enough, I still use my VCR all the time. Just not to watch tapes.

My TV is so old, it has only a single cable jack in the back. So I have to plug my DVD player into my VCR, and then run the single line from the VCR to the TV.

I still have a few VHS tapes. In most cases, I just don't care enough about the movies to replace them with DVDs. or a DVD isn't available. Or, in one case--an old film noir, Naked City--the only DVD available is from the Criterion Collection, and I don't want to pay the premium.

I still have a lot of my old taped-off-of-TV Trek eps on VHS, in a box, but only because I can't be bothered to throw them out. The last time I actually watched them, I was surprised at the poor quality of the picture.

I'm not really nostalgic for VHS, no.

 

[RandyS]

Fuzzy picture quality, tracking lines, tapes wearing out or getting tangled in the player, having to wait an eternity to fast forward/rewind... I grew up with the format, but there is literally nothing I miss about VHS tapes.

30 seconds is an eternity??

Kids today......

Sure, sometimes I miss VHS. It WAS the format I built my current video collection with back in the good old days of 1986 after all.

 

[Amaris]

Fuzzy picture quality, tracking lines, tapes wearing out or getting tangled in the player, having to wait an eternity to fast forward/rewind... I grew up with the format, but there is literally nothing I miss about VHS tapes.

30 seconds is an eternity??

Kids today......

Sure, sometimes I miss VHS. It WAS the format I built my current video collection with back in the good old days of 1986 after all.

Actually, depending upon your VCR, it could take anywhere from 30 seconds to 5 minutes to rewind a tape.