Have a 13 inch VCR/TV combo in the bedroom. Use it to fall asleep to, no reason to update it. On occasion something will be on that I’ll want to record. It still works, why not use it? VHS tapes are only $1. Have a DVD player I paid $5 for at a supersale for watching Redbox movies on it.
I watched some of my porn tapes for the first time in years just a couple weeks ago. It was like meeting some old friends…
I use my VCR a few times a year, most recently about a week ago. It still works, it’s still hooked up, the used tapes are dirt cheap now, and the video quality is acceptable if not brilliant. Some of the old movies from the 1930s to 1950s that I want to watch have never been released on DVD, Blu-Ray, or streaming. In a few other cases, the DVDs are just too expensive or hard to find.
I have a bunch of old TV episodes on videotape that I either can’t get on DVD (because they don’t exist in that format) or else they just aren’t important enough to me to pay to replace them. I rarely watch any of them, but I did watch one episode a few weeks ago. I suspect that if all my VHS tapes disappeared into a black hole, i wouldn’t miss them at this point.
The Shaw tech (Shaw is my TV and Internet provider) was actually very nice when he hooked up my cable box; depending which buttons I push on my two remote controls (actually I have three, but I almost never need the third) I can continue to use the old analog signal piped into my DVD/VCR combo and then to my TV or use the digital signal from my digital box straight into my TV. It means I can only tape a limited selection of channels and that selection is getting fewer as the months go by (since Shaw is slowly getting rid of analog and going completely digital). Still, for the time being I have been able to tape the programs I want and give them to someone else to watch.
I don’t watch them so much as play VHS tapes so that I can record them to DVDs. I do this for friends and coworkers. It’s been a couple of months.
About 3 months ago. I love the Alastair Sim version of a christmas carol and I only have a VHS copy of that.
A reasonable number of VHS videos either aren’t on DVD, or they are collector item DVDs and vastly overpriced. So for the time being, VHS it is for those few films.
To the best of my knowledge…maybe 20 years?
About a year ago.
I have a series of training videos for a recreational sport I do. As my skills improve I go back and look at the videos for new tips.
It’s the only reason I keep the VCR. The videos aren’t on DVD and they’re very good.
A few weeks ago.
I have a VHS-to-DVD dubber, and every now and then transfer one of my tapes to DVD. Some of these are unavailable on DVD, or hard to find (example: Zacherley’s Horrible Horror, a sorta proto-MST3K). A few months back I watched VHS taped episodes of the Gerry and Sylvia Anderson pre-Thunderbirds show Supercar on VHS.
This fall I started a project of converting my collecton of about 300 VHS tapes to DVD, I finished it about a month ago. (Actually I have about ten VHS tapes I’m gonna convert Real Soon Now. It was a pain in the ass but as I was converting them I also created an index of what I had on DVD on a text file on my computer. (I know, spreadsheet would have been better, but I know text and not spreadsheets.)
I now have an enormous store of old movies and TV shows indexed, and I know exactly what I’m not watching, because I don’t watch TV any more. Gaming and internet are way more nteresting. I do make vidclips from the DVDS for my blog and stuff, it’s much easier to do from DVDs, though there are quality issues (most of my 300 tapes were recorded at the 6 hour speed).
Let’s see… last time was probably 2007 or so, when my wife had to review hours of grocery store parking lot camera footage for a law case. I helped her by spelling her from time to time.
Last time for entertainment was probably in the 2005-ish time frame, when I was rewatching some of the first 4 seasons of “Futurama” that I’d taped back a few years before.
Still have the VCR actually- it’s a rather bad-ass (for 2001) JVC Super-VHS model with some kind of pseudo-Super VHS mode for regular tapes.
Probably some time around 2003. I lived near and independent video store that had a cult movie section, and most of them were on VHS.
Watched to the end? Years. But I have scanned through tapes to post on YouTube not that long ago. I have some excellent Mitsubishi S-VHS decks, and have picked up a few extra through the estate sale company I shoot photographs for. It’s worth investing $10 in another one given the limited possibilities of getting one of the ones I use repaired.
I am guessing around 2003. That was the last time I owned a VHS player.
ETA: Actually, reading the above replies jogs my memory–probably 2005, when I had to watch some footage for a lawyer I was working for, to summarize its contents.
Whoa. That was the last tape I watched too! Except it was one year and three months ago. My family recorded it in 1987, and the combination of the somewhat creepy b/w film quality (it looks so much older than 1951 to me–compare it to All About Eve) and the very brief commercial breaks makes it a nostalgic must-see for my family at the holidays. It’s available on Youtube and of course one can buy the DVD, but we insist on what we call “the cheese version” (thus yclept because the airing was apparently sponsored by Emmentaler Cheese–not a single brand, as far as I recall, it’s basically almost a PSA for the Swiss cheese).
Unfortunately, it got stuck in my VCR and I’ve been afraid to try and get the tape out. It’s 26 years old and I fear breaking it. I’d rather dismantle the VCR piece by piece than damage that tape! And yes, I must get it transferred to DVD once it’s finally freed.
I’ve not had a VCR attached to a TV in perhaps 5 years. I do have one, next to the old CRT TV stored in a closet. Actually I do think I did initially have it hooked up to the HDTV, saw that I don’t like to watch SD on it and took it out.
Last century probably. Haven’t watched a DVD for many years.
“old porn tapes” as in . . [ul]
[li]Actual old physical media[/li][li]Sexy septuagenarian genre tapes[/li][li]Porn from the 1930s[/li][/ul]
