Do you still use a VCR and VHS tapes?

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by PaulKTF, Aug 27, 2016.

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  1. adm62

    adm62 Senior Member

    Location:
    Ottawa, Canada
    44% still use VCRs? I haven't even seen one in about 10 years. This cannot be a normal sample of the public!
     
  2. amonjamesduul

    amonjamesduul Forum Resident

    Location:
    florida
    Still have one in my closet but i see no scenario where i will ever use it again.
     
  3. profholt82

    profholt82 Resident Blowhard

    Location:
    West Michigan
    While I enjoy movies on bluray and dvd, I still have a number of VHS tapes. There are actually a large number of cult movies and foreign films that were never transferred to newer formats, and VHS is the only practical way to view them nowadays.

    I have an S-VHS player which provides decent picture quality on an HDTV, but this is dependent on the tape transfer so some look better than others. Most standard VHS players look awful on modern HDTVs unfortunately. I do still keep an old CRT tv in the basement though, which they obviously look much better on.
     
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  4. Dan C

    Dan C Forum Fotographer

    Location:
    The West
    Our daughter turns 2 in October and we've limited her screen time, but she's just at the age where we can occasionally watch family entertainment together. She really loves anything animal-related ("Puppies!") so recently I want to a thrift store and picked up several VHS tapes of great family movies like "Babe" and "Homeward Bound", among others. Cost me a buck!

    I've also got gobs of VHS tapes of airchecks I keep in boxes. Had some time to myself last week and popped in an unlabled tape I had. Turns out it was the NBC live coverage of the 1989 San Fransisco earthquake. It was a fascinating window to an era of steady, calm live news reporting by both NBC and SanFran affiliate KRON. No screaming graphics filling the screen, no histrionics or fake emotion. Just news and community service information as it came in from good journalists. I was sad after watching some of it....

    dan c
     
  5. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    I think you're better off digitizing directly to computer files and avoiding DVD entirely. The problem with DVD is that the optical media itself could go bad, or the drive could go bad, plus the amount of compression involved with DVD is an issue. At least if you capture a digital file, you can decide how much compression is necessary.
     
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  6. Quadboy

    Quadboy Forum Resident

    Location:
    Leeds,England
    I am veering away from DVD's to digital files via a HD to the TV.
    I do notice the improved difference between a DVD and a video file.
    I've been leaning towards H.264 avi 640x480 for the recent vhs 4.3 conversions,but my program (avs video editor) has so many video options I'm unsure which is best,and wether bit rate is an issue......as I digitized the tapes at high quality 9000kbs.
    I just suppose it's mostly about the type of file being used?
     
  7. tommy-thewho

    tommy-thewho Senior Member

    Location:
    detroit, mi
    I have a vcr and some tapes but I rarely use it.

    I have a couple of movies that never made it to dvd.
     
  8. Morpheus

    Morpheus Forum Resident

    Location:
    Texas
    I do only because I have some sort of oddball stuff on them I taped, and it's not available on DVDs. Mostly cornball stuff or nerd specific. :agree:
     
  9. alexpop

    alexpop Power pop + other bad habits....

    Playback only. Never use it.
    File under :Dodo.
     
  10. Eddie Winters

    Eddie Winters Well-Known Member

    Location:
    San Francisco
    I still do but on rare occasions. I have been trying to locate certain Live shows or TV clips from the pre-internet era that did not necessarily make it to digital before VHS tapes completely died out. I have been working on some period related documentaries which required me to locate and skim through countless VHS tapes before transferring them digitally. Nothing like rewinding a VHS tape to the beginning and having the tape break! :cool:
     
  11. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    There are diminishing returns for VHS. Look at it this way: DVDs typically have a bitrate of maybe 5Mbps (peaking at 9Mbps), so I think going much more than that will be overkill for VHS.
     
  12. digdug67

    digdug67 Hockley's Hits Here!

    Location:
    Hockley, TX
    Yep, I'll still watch 'em occasionally. I have an old Magnavox player with countless hours on it that still works fine, and an RCA tv from '89 that works fine too. Thrift stores still have the tapes usually dirt cheap - .25~.50 cents each. That's considerably less than we had to rent them for back in the day :)
     
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  13. keefer1970

    keefer1970 Metal, Movies, Beer!

    Location:
    New Jersey
    The last VCR in our house died about three years ago so that was the end of the VHS era for me. Whatever tapes I still had went out to the curb with the dead player.

    ...though the last time I went closet cleaning a few months ago, I found that I still had my VHS copy of Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park, which I had totally forgotten about. I guess I didn't have the heart to get rid of that one for whatever reason. :D
     
  14. driverdrummer

    driverdrummer Forum Resident

    Location:
    Irmo, SC
    Nope. Never liked the look of VHS.
     
  15. SonyTek

    SonyTek Forum Resident

    Location:
    Inland Empire, CA
    Yes, still have my first VCR I obtained in 1986, a Sony SLV555, famous for sticking pinch roller arms and guides - nothing a little oil won't fix. I have lots of off the air tapes of concerts, videos and news (I recorded the network news on my birthday each year for a number of years until I began to forget to do it). I have a Composite Video to DV FireWire Converter that uses a high bitrate, as well as a Composite to MPEG hardware converter with CBR/VBR selection. One day I need to start converting everything to digital. I really don't know what I have exactly.

    I also have tons of 8MM video tapes from vacations to convert, dating back to 1987 or so. Lastly, I have tapes from my DV tape camcorder, but I didn't make as many of those before the format died, and I have no idea if my JVC camera will still fire up or not.

    I figure at some point, someone will be needing working models of all these formats to convert their tapes, so I try to keep one player for each format working if I can. It will be many years before there's zero demand for them. It helps that I have some spare parts and know how to repair them :)
     
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  16. Bingo Bongo

    Bingo Bongo Music gives me Eargasms

    Location:
    Ottawa, Canada
    Transferred the stuff I wanted to DVD decades ago...... :magoo:
     
  17. Culpa

    Culpa Forum Resident

    Location:
    Philadelphia, PA
    I still use a VCR. I pick up the occasional VHS tape from the local thrift shops, they're usually either 25 cents, 50 cents, or a dollar.

    In the past year or two I've gotten the Stones' "Video Rewind" and "25x5", and "Compleat Beatles", none of which are available on DVD. Picked up Looking For Mr Goodbar a few months back, also a fun CMT comp from the '90s. Hee-Haw, Dean Martin, etc, there's always something cheap and fun to put on while just hanging out.
     
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  18. dprokopy

    dprokopy Senior Member

    Location:
    Near Seattle, WA
    I have a ton of home movies my brother and I made with my dad's video camera in the early 80s that I'm just now getting around to digitizing. Turns out the VCR I had wasn't cutting it, so I found myself, in 2016, having to hunt down a "new" (used) VCR.
     
  19. Remember me from page 1?

    OK, first I should point out that it is $130 Australian and we seem to have a huge tax on entertainment and technology. Always have and it seems we always will, unfortunately.

    Anyway, the main show I'd like to put on videotape is "The Big Bang Theory", you know, that sitcom that doesn't die. But thinking about it, I think it would be good to put "Mr Robot" on tape as well as "Deadwood" (even trying to convert the latter into 4:3, I think that would look awesome in a weird and twisted way!).

    Possible thread hijack alert! Which modern shows would you put on VHS? And which 16:9 shows would you even convert into 4:3? Also remember, for PAL territories, it is easy to get 4 hours on one tape in SP mode, whereas NTSC territories seem to have been limited to 160 minutes (2hr 40). But my question is all hypothetical, so let your imagination run wild!
     
  20. Karnak

    Karnak "81, 82, 83, 84..."

    I just bought these - but my satellite receiver won't last forever and afaik the new ones do not provide outgoing video connections that my vcrs will work with.
    [​IMG]
     
  21. IronWaffle

    IronWaffle It’s all over now, baby blue

    Can't say I'm nostalgic for the format but found this interesting:



    Also worth a re-watch: this chuckle-worthy "Kids React to VCRs".
     
    Last edited: Oct 20, 2016
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  22. BLUESJAZZMAN

    BLUESJAZZMAN I Love Blues, Jazz, Rock, My Son & Honest People

    Location:
    Essex , England.
    I used them for a long time after they finished. Probably stopped in about 2008.
     
  23. Locutus67

    Locutus67 Forum Resident

    I still have my S-VHS deck, a JVC HR-S9800U as part of my system & still use on occasion. I have a couple dozen concert & anime vids that I watch once in a while. Anime from tape doesn't look near as bad as a movie/TV show + the audio from a concert tape is still plenty good. I try to remind myself to pop a tape in every couple months just to keep the machine alive.
    I have an older Sony SLV-595HF from 1991 that served as my mainstay during the heyday of VHS rentals & large collection. The deck is minty with all accessories & well packed in it's original box. I used it a couple years ago for a few hours & it still seemed ok.
     
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  24. ZackyDog

    ZackyDog Forum Resident

    Location:
    USA
    Well, I needed to use my VHS tapes as a source to transfer them to blu-ray discs. These were never available on DVD, let alone blu-ray:

    [​IMG][​IMG][​IMG][​IMG]

    But after they are transferred, I use my blu-ray player.
     
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  25. Dude111

    Dude111 An Awesome Dude

    Location:
    US
    I love my VCR ..... Analog is beautiful :)
     
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