Old friend, we have been together for over ten years. You have been my companion through three cities and were always waiting for me when I got home. But now, I’m afraid, our time has drawn to a close.
It pains me to say, but you no longer entertain me. I know you’re not dead yet, but there is simply no place for you here any longer. I thought about finding somebody to adopt you, but you’re just too damn old and useless. Nobody is going to want you, so I am going to unceremoniously throw you in the dumpster.
I’d take it off your hands. I wish I knew people just giving away VCRs. I have a big collection of movies on VHS and I’m not gonna spend money to rebuy every movie on DVD and then have to spend money to rebuy every movie on Blu Ray and then have to spend money to rebuy every movie digtially so I’m gonna keep my VHS collection and hoard VCRs so I can keep watching them when my VCR breaks.
Alex (my seven year old who has no idea what a VCR even is) got a VHS copy of… Tom and Huck?.. for Christmas. I had to explain to him what it was and then he got all upset that he can’t actually watch it ever.
He was very gracious for the gift though. Good boy.
I have a VCR still hooked up to the entertainment system but I can’t remember the last time I turned it on. Once I finally transfer those old home movies (like my wife in her dance competitions) to some digital media, it will also be going away to the great electronics store in the sky.
I don’t want to live in a world where kids don’t know what VCRs are. VHS movies are so much better for children. They can leave them lying around and hold them in their hands and they won’t get damaged like DVDs will get scratched up. They can just put in the movie and play it without having to navigate through the menu and stuff.
You see, the last time I moved (last spring) I accidentally forget to unhook the cable from the back of my old TV (my spare, CRT version, that’s just in the bedroom), so when I moved it, the co-ax pretty much ripped the jack right off the back of the set.
So, I had no way of stringing cable into it at all. I was going to throw it out. They it occurred to me that the RCA jacks on the thing were working perfectly. I bascially use the VCR as nothing but a channel tuner.
Cable co-ax to VCR-in, RCA from VCR-out to TV-in and I’m back in the ‘falling asleep while watching the TeeVee in bed’ business.
:eek: Mine never lasted more than three years max. However, I’d tape 4-6 hours daily, and then play back/review daily (often it was mostly in FF mode).
It was just really well made. Sanyo really knew how to build the things. What will really blow you mind, though, is the one that it replaced back in circa 2000. A top loader that was probably pushing 20 years! Now, THAT thing just would not die. I pawned it for some tiny amount and I suspect it might still be chugging along somewhere.
Can you still buy blank video tapes at drug stores? Because I’m still taping shows off mine, and the last time I went to buy blank tapes at the Osco, they didn’t have any.
I will be majorly pissed if I can’t buy blank tapes any more.
When I was a kid, my parents bought my first VCR. This was the model, which the post indicates was made in '84, so I probably got mine in '84 or '85. It kept working for over twenty years. It finally died when I was moving, and accidentally dropped it onto a cement floor.
Still, that’s pretty impressive. That one machine saw me through the almost the entire video tape era. I got it just as the price on VCRs was coming down to an affordable level, and I lost it just around the time that the DVD pulled ahead as the medium of choice for home movies.
My VCR is a VCR/DVD combo, and I actually use it quite a bit. I still have a ton of movies on VHS, both purchased and recorded, and am too cheap to replace them with DVDs (and then, of course, the inevitable replacement with the next technology).
Have a VCR/DVD combo for anime I am too cheap to re-purchase on DVD and old fansub tapes. Get off my damn lawn you kids, fansubs were better when they were 5th generation copies that you waited weeks in the mail to come. PSXer will likely agree with me on that.