What to do with collection of VHS Trek tapes??

[gottacook]

Also my daily driver is 55 years old.

OK, I'll bite - what kind of car is your 1963? (If I had a garage, the oldest car I'd drive would be a '67 because that was the year energy-absorbing steering columns became standard equipment.)

As for VHS tapes, I've been throwing them out lately - but selectively. For example, 25 years ago I taped the "Ve ... made it!" segment of "By Any Other Name" (my favorite few minutes of that episode) and I'm keeping it because the only version easily viewable today (unless I want to purchase an early DVD) is the remastered one, where unfortunately they made the distant Andromeda galaxy much too large.

 

[UssGlenn]

OK, I'll bite - what kind of car is your 1963? (If I had a garage, the oldest car I'd drive would be a '67 because that was the year energy-absorbing steering columns became standard equipment.)

It's a Volkswagen Beetle. My commute is all along reasonably low speed surface streets.

 

[Lance]

But seriously folks, people act like you have to throw old things out just because something new came along. I guess sometimes you have to, but sometimes the old thing keeps working just fine.

As for formats - if it's not physical, you don't own it, IMHO. Sure I have a ton of MP3s, but most of them are ripped from CDs. The CDs will never die. I don't trust the MP3s to always be there. Sure I stream movies and watch in-demand. But movies and TV shows that I always want to be able to watch any time, I have on DVD or BD. They'all always be around, any time I want to watch them.

This is why I believe there's still a market, even if it's becoming diversified by new options. I never understood the "streaming is here, physical media is dead!" argument, which people have been saying for nigh on five years or more now, especially living in a part of the world where internet comnectivity... exists But can occasionally be unreliable, where signal strength can vary, where licences to stream a show can end and the series you thought you paid for and "owned" suddenly disappears from your service... to me, it was never an either/or proposition between streaming and physical media. Streaming to me was (and has proven to be) always a replacement for the movie hiring library, it's the easy option for weekend viewing, but there will always be a market there for people who love a TV showor movie so much they want to actually own a version of it. Physical media is reliable, as long as the machinery exists to play it on. The two formats (streaming and physical media) don't have to be in competition, because they're both servicing different markets.

Also I think people are smarter than the studios think. The studios want physical media to die, they've spent six years trying to hasten it's death and actually push people to online services, because they know they have more control over the consumer that way. But I think Joe Citizen tends to understand that cloud services etc are not strictly 100% reliable 100% of the time, even if they do make use of them.

 

[Guy Gardener]

We are not happy that physical media is dead.

It's daunting to start another journey of thousands of dollars trying to collect another physical collection, that cannot last longer than 10 to 15 years... When for 8 dollars a month, we have temporary access to thousands of collections that it would take us millions of dollars to physically collect (at full price?).

As old nerds we are set in our ways, but new nerds will adapt to the new tools at hand, rather then set aside 4 thousand dollars to buy all of Star Trek on Bluray, they can watch it all on netflix in 6 months for 48 dollars.

In 10 years or so Lance, your internet nationally will be better, and they will probably no longer be selling Blurays as a consumer product, because it has been eclipsed by superior tech, that already exists.

 

[UssGlenn]

I never "buy" movies digitally. I either watch it on a streaming service or I own the disk. I've got around 100 DVDs, and just a handful of blu-rays of my absolute favorites.

 

[Jayson1]

We are not happy that physical media is dead.

It's daunting to start another journey of thousands of dollars trying to collect another physical collection, that cannot last longer than 10 to 15 years... When for 8 dollars a month, we have temporary access to thousands of collections that it would take us millions of dollars to physically collect (at full price?).

As old nerds we are set in our ways, but new nerds will adapt to the new tools at hand, rather then set aside 4 thousand dollars to buy all of Star Trek on Bluray, they can watch it all on netflix in 6 months for 48 dollars.

In 10 years or so Lance, your internet nationally will be better, and they will probably no longer be selling Blurays as a consumer product, because it has been eclipsed by superior tech, that already exists.

I agree. To me though I just need my Blu-Rays to hold out long enough until I die someday. I'm 43 so they need to holdout I guess for another 40 plus years and when I crock it means the problem is no longer a issue I have to deal with.


Jason

 

[thribs]

Put them in a box and store in your attic.
That’s what I did.

 

[BillJ]

I agree. To me though I just need my Blu-Rays to hold out long enough until I die someday. I'm 43 so they need to holdout I guess for another 40 plus years and when I crock it means the problem is no longer a issue I have to deal with.

Just make sure to buy a couple of backup players over the next decade or so.

 

[tafkats]

If you want to have the commercials and so on, you can buy a device for about $150 that takes a VGA output from a VCR and digitizes the video. I bought one a few months ago and it works pretty well.

 

[Jayson1]

You know what I found out my sister has. I went over to house today for Christmas and she still had a dvd/vcr combo player and a few vcr tapes. Some she bought for cheap at Goodwill and thrift shops. Well she has a VCR copy of "Empire Strikes Back." I think that might be worth as much as $200 dollars and she got it for like quarter. I think anything where you can get hold of the old "Star Wars" movies without the special edition cuts must be worth lots of money. Even she didn't know how valuable it was.


Jason

 

[BillJ]

Put them in a space probe and launch them towards open space.

 

[fireproof78]

You know what I found out my sister has. I went over to house today for Christmas and she still had a dvd/vcr combo player and a few vcr tapes. Some she bought for cheap at Goodwill and thrift shops. Well she has a VCR copy of "Empire Strikes Back." I think that might be worth as much as $200 dollars and she got it for like quarter. I think anything where you can get hold of the old "Star Wars" movies without the special edition cuts must be worth lots of money. Even she didn't know how valuable it was.


Jason

This. This alone makes my VHS player completely worth it. I now have two copies of Star Wars on VHS.

 

[uniderth]

In 10 years or so Lance, your internet nationally will be better, and they will probably no longer be selling Blurays as a consumer product, because it has been eclipsed by superior tech, that already exists.

But when the internet goes down, they'll be sorry.

 

[marsh8472]

I had the same problem. I started recording star trek on VHS in 1992 and by 2008 I had them all recorded. But since they're so easy to watch online these days I ended up throwing all those VHS tapes away, about 250 of them.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

The thing is, people may still want a permanent backup, but having the money to pay for all of them has become a luxury.

 

[Guy Gardener]

I'm slowly giving away thousands of homemade dvds right now to a woman who is probably going to tell me to stop soon, because it's just too much.

Soon, she is going to have to go furniture shopping.

After luxury, it's inconvenience.

 

[fireproof78]

I had the same problem. I started recording star trek on VHS in 1992 and by 2008 I had them all recorded. But since they're so easy to watch online these days I ended up throwing all those VHS tapes away, about 250 of them.

Seriously, send them to me. I will at least get more use out of them. I hate streaming.

 

[Jayson1]

Seriously, send them to me. I will at least get more use out of them. I hate streaming.

You mean you don't like it when the W-fi goes out when it rains or the spinning wheel thingy pops up when it doesn't download fast enough or how sometimes it can get blurry for a second and then go back to normal.

Jason

 

[fireproof78]

You mean you don't like it when the W-fi goes out when it rains or the spinning wheel thingy pops up when it doesn't download fast enough or how sometimes it can get blurry for a second and then go back to normal.

Jason

Yes, I know I'm strange in that way

 

[johnnybear]

I prefer the actual item in my hands and not have to pay out each and every time I watch my favourite episodes!
JB