My parents asked me to transfer some home videos to digital a few years back, and a coworker had a VCR with USB output, so I popped in a cassette and saw footage of my older brother as a three year old at Disneyland getting bowled over by the White Rabbit (who was late, was late, for a very important date). This fabled family story having actual video evidence was amazing, but unfortunately interrupted seconds later by a mid-season episode of Dallas that had been recorded over it.
So, this happened in our family. A collection of old 8mm films once transferred to VHS were discovered and...the World Series had been taped over it. I'm sorry you lost your memories, too.
I feel like torrents have taken the place of VCR these days. Although I have Prime, Mubi, Apple TV, and Netflix, as you've said, it's more like a monthly rental than ownership of media. If you want to record off these streaming services, then there's ways to "steal" content in this way. Of course, if you can't find what you're looking for on whatever streaming services there are, even Mubi, which generally has that random movie from 1978 that you read about in someone's social media post, torrents generally have it. Living in Mexico, I don't have the opportunity to have physical artefacts anymore, but I can lug around a 3T hard drive filled with scripts and the movies of the scripts. It's fascinating seeing what didn't make it to the screen from the page and it's not dependent on having an internet connection (or even a TV!). We have a wall projector with Roku and I can't imagine how a VCR would connect to that, or where I would even buy the blank tapes. I have a DVD writer, but where would I even buy the blank DVDs these days (Amazon, of course). Plus, it's so luggage to cart around the physical media in these global nomad days.
Indeed. I feel like it should be way easier to print photos off iPhone. Why isn't there some kind of photo printing service where you can just shoot off photos and the size you want them to be printed, and it just shows up at your house in a cardboard backed envelope. I mean, I can think of a number of stores here in Mexico City (e.g., Lumen) where I can go and print photos, but given the phenomenal volume of photos taken, I feel like there should be some kind of way to curate them and turn them into print media. Your complaint seems that you can't really do that with digital media, even if it's on Bluray or DVD because even these media degrade over time or become outmoded like VHS. It becomes a process of shifting media from media to media as others have mentioned digitalizing VHS to DVD and to hard drives. I have about six hard drives here, two back up my photographs, with quite some overlap between the two. I even have a few flash drives and camera cards sifting around in a box. It's not like I can display them on a shelf and pick them like my books. Gotta get into it, sift through it, find stuff. I keep wanting to make a book of sorts by finding photos I love, writing a paragraph (or two) about the photo and then printing both on facing pages.
I suffer a deficiency of VHS nostalgia. Awful quality output, bulky and exasperating form factor that breaks easily (and stuff like rewinding etc), and almost anything that was released on VHS that wasn't in another medium was edited and pan and scanned to hell. VHS really is plastic garbage and I'm not for it.
However, addressing the television recording element, yes, there's a missing element of crowd-sourced cultural archiving destroyed by DRM. This particularly affects live event, news, and any sort of ephemeral broadcasting, which itself is going the way of the dodo.
There's ways the Internet archives itself in that matter, which are as different from VHS as the Internet is from television. Anywhere from way back machine style "snapshots" of a website to clip video remixes on TikTok. The same basic public reflex to appropriate media for their own use is alive and well in a different format.
I mentioned this in another post. I distrust digital records. There's a disconnect between the archive and myself that can be severed. I don't think I'll ever get over this. Keeping things on my computer or a hard drive rather than a shelf I can collate is problematic to me.
If we're going to wish - why not Beta instead of the VCR? Actually, I have a handful of VHS cassettes that I haven't disposed of yet mostly out of laziness about trying to sort out where. But I do see people still trading them and some of the VHS players surface from time to time as well.
I enjoy the slowness of that act. I sometimes worry the ease with which I consume art is actually diminishing it. Art, from my experience, should require ritual or ceremony to be properly enjoyed. Even if that's going to a museum. That's a step, it's a conscious act, and I think tapping on random images on a streamer just isn't that.
I'm happy with my DVDs and Blurays in general. I'll take any physical media. But VHS...it was something else. And the recordable element was so important.
Personally, I have zero desire for the return of the VCR. The visual fidelity was awful, and tapes were cumbersome to own and rewind, not to mention the way they degraded over time. I agree with your horror over streaming services, but see a better solution. It's called a VPN. I spend ten dollars a month for a VPN and torrent all my media, unapologetically. If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing. I once spent twelve bucks to "buy" the show 'Firefly' from Amazon but when I got angry with their abusive behavior toward their workers and stopped subscribing to Prime, they took away the show I thought I'd owned. I realize that if everyone stole their media it would cause a problem for creatives like you who make their living making video, but it's neither your fault nor mine. We need a new delivery mechanism, or at least, we need to regulate the streaming mechanisms that currently exist. Until there is a reasonable, economical method to buy media, I intend to continue to steal mine. I do very much like having my own hard copy of movies I love, and appreciate the fact that hundreds of them are on a 512gb flash drive rather than a bookshelf full of VHS tapes.
I have 3 VCRs and just hooked them all up when I moved. Been watching old tapes. It’s super fun. The thing I miss most about VHS is BLOCKBUSTER. Making a night of it. Wandering the aisles, looking at all those covers and then having to commit to a couple special movies for the weekend. Standing in line, grabbing that bucket of microwave popcorn and a huge box of candy. It was an event. Now, I sometimes get lost in the cornucopia of digital choices and end up not watching anything. Choice fatigue.
I'm hoping to head there this week, mate. I've looked it up and it might just be the Promised Land for me. I'll message you about what's been distracting me - but it's good news.
I still have a VCR and lots of videotapes! Haven't watched any of them in years but I hold on to them as streaming services pull interesting films off their sites all the time. Keep (or buy) the physical media you love!
This is fascinating. I imagine I would not like it either, if I could see. It sounds akin to displaying the Mona Lisa with Instagram filters and presenting it to be the "authentic" experience. Or perhaps there is room for both options, but one which does not erase the original experience and how it was intended to be enjoyed.
As an editor this is a tough one. I know what will happen eventually. If you’re my age then we all do. Back in the day I’d buy the original watch it let’s just enough times to know the film line by line. Then get my boy whose dad had two vcrs to make me a dub. We did this with our cassette tapes. You rarely caught me with the original album. There was always a 90 min Maxwell tape in my Walkman.
It’s analog, it’s going degrade no matter what you. Just by playing it you damage it. Tough deal. First the audio goes, then tracking issues arise. Then the tape itself just falls apart. That’s why dvd took off. Also you were able to put more data on dvd hence those BTS “featurettes” blew up in the 90s. The Simpsons dvds took full advantage. Having cast and crew do feedback over each episode for that season.
If that’s vhs how many tapes is that? I remember looking at renting the Godfather, two tapes…nah son I’ll watch it on HBO select the ELP and tape that bitch all on one tape. Of course that came with its own issues 😆🤣
I think it's worth observing that the degradation of cassettes collided with the advent of a new technology that made them obsolete, which then, in even shorter time, collided with another technology that made those (mostly) obsolete, then streaming came along. What I'm just musing about is how the lifespan of a cassette isn't a dealbreaker for me. Another reason it's not is that Blurays still exist, I can buy them, but their price has actually not substantially changed and, in fact, they've started to go up because there's not enough of them sold anymore. They're more specialty items, like vinyl, than a casual delivery device. So, I now have Blurays that can get scratched if you have butter fingers and I can't even tape up and copy to another cassette to salvage what's on it - and I pay through the roof for that privilege. Look, this comment is all over the place, I get that. But I think there's something in my ramble...
Cole, I had a thought in regards to your quest to obtain a good and functional VCR. It does require travel. Specifically to Akihabara, the electronics district in Tokyo.
Guarantee you will find a good one in the second hand shops there. Not sure if they sell online but that's where old electronic gear is bought and sold and usually in good working condition.
I have found some online resellers here in Australia, but I'm hesitant because of the regional differences. Many of the films I'd want to get on VHS wouldn't play on them.
If someone created a VCR that never eats the tapes, I’d buy it.
Honestly, I didn't mind this that much. It was part of the fun. Cassette tapes did the same thing and yet I miss it.
My parents asked me to transfer some home videos to digital a few years back, and a coworker had a VCR with USB output, so I popped in a cassette and saw footage of my older brother as a three year old at Disneyland getting bowled over by the White Rabbit (who was late, was late, for a very important date). This fabled family story having actual video evidence was amazing, but unfortunately interrupted seconds later by a mid-season episode of Dallas that had been recorded over it.
So, this happened in our family. A collection of old 8mm films once transferred to VHS were discovered and...the World Series had been taped over it. I'm sorry you lost your memories, too.
I feel like torrents have taken the place of VCR these days. Although I have Prime, Mubi, Apple TV, and Netflix, as you've said, it's more like a monthly rental than ownership of media. If you want to record off these streaming services, then there's ways to "steal" content in this way. Of course, if you can't find what you're looking for on whatever streaming services there are, even Mubi, which generally has that random movie from 1978 that you read about in someone's social media post, torrents generally have it. Living in Mexico, I don't have the opportunity to have physical artefacts anymore, but I can lug around a 3T hard drive filled with scripts and the movies of the scripts. It's fascinating seeing what didn't make it to the screen from the page and it's not dependent on having an internet connection (or even a TV!). We have a wall projector with Roku and I can't imagine how a VCR would connect to that, or where I would even buy the blank tapes. I have a DVD writer, but where would I even buy the blank DVDs these days (Amazon, of course). Plus, it's so luggage to cart around the physical media in these global nomad days.
My issue is I've learned to hate anything digital. I don't trust it. I've lost so much that way. And yet, my physical records are all still here.
Indeed. I feel like it should be way easier to print photos off iPhone. Why isn't there some kind of photo printing service where you can just shoot off photos and the size you want them to be printed, and it just shows up at your house in a cardboard backed envelope. I mean, I can think of a number of stores here in Mexico City (e.g., Lumen) where I can go and print photos, but given the phenomenal volume of photos taken, I feel like there should be some kind of way to curate them and turn them into print media. Your complaint seems that you can't really do that with digital media, even if it's on Bluray or DVD because even these media degrade over time or become outmoded like VHS. It becomes a process of shifting media from media to media as others have mentioned digitalizing VHS to DVD and to hard drives. I have about six hard drives here, two back up my photographs, with quite some overlap between the two. I even have a few flash drives and camera cards sifting around in a box. It's not like I can display them on a shelf and pick them like my books. Gotta get into it, sift through it, find stuff. I keep wanting to make a book of sorts by finding photos I love, writing a paragraph (or two) about the photo and then printing both on facing pages.
I suffer a deficiency of VHS nostalgia. Awful quality output, bulky and exasperating form factor that breaks easily (and stuff like rewinding etc), and almost anything that was released on VHS that wasn't in another medium was edited and pan and scanned to hell. VHS really is plastic garbage and I'm not for it.
However, addressing the television recording element, yes, there's a missing element of crowd-sourced cultural archiving destroyed by DRM. This particularly affects live event, news, and any sort of ephemeral broadcasting, which itself is going the way of the dodo.
There's ways the Internet archives itself in that matter, which are as different from VHS as the Internet is from television. Anywhere from way back machine style "snapshots" of a website to clip video remixes on TikTok. The same basic public reflex to appropriate media for their own use is alive and well in a different format.
I mentioned this in another post. I distrust digital records. There's a disconnect between the archive and myself that can be severed. I don't think I'll ever get over this. Keeping things on my computer or a hard drive rather than a shelf I can collate is problematic to me.
If we're going to wish - why not Beta instead of the VCR? Actually, I have a handful of VHS cassettes that I haven't disposed of yet mostly out of laziness about trying to sort out where. But I do see people still trading them and some of the VHS players surface from time to time as well.
They're still out there, yes. I'm going to find one myself, I think, even if the thing only lasts six months before it calls it quits.
I’d like to transfer some of my old VHS tapes, but I really don’t enjoy the fast-forward/rewinding part.
I enjoy the slowness of that act. I sometimes worry the ease with which I consume art is actually diminishing it. Art, from my experience, should require ritual or ceremony to be properly enjoyed. Even if that's going to a museum. That's a step, it's a conscious act, and I think tapping on random images on a streamer just isn't that.
I would welcome the return of the VHS, as I discovered so much of what I love through the format. We need to advocate for its return.
Likewise, the DVD is a form that needs to be better respected.
I'm happy with my DVDs and Blurays in general. I'll take any physical media. But VHS...it was something else. And the recordable element was so important.
Personally, I have zero desire for the return of the VCR. The visual fidelity was awful, and tapes were cumbersome to own and rewind, not to mention the way they degraded over time. I agree with your horror over streaming services, but see a better solution. It's called a VPN. I spend ten dollars a month for a VPN and torrent all my media, unapologetically. If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing. I once spent twelve bucks to "buy" the show 'Firefly' from Amazon but when I got angry with their abusive behavior toward their workers and stopped subscribing to Prime, they took away the show I thought I'd owned. I realize that if everyone stole their media it would cause a problem for creatives like you who make their living making video, but it's neither your fault nor mine. We need a new delivery mechanism, or at least, we need to regulate the streaming mechanisms that currently exist. Until there is a reasonable, economical method to buy media, I intend to continue to steal mine. I do very much like having my own hard copy of movies I love, and appreciate the fact that hundreds of them are on a 512gb flash drive rather than a bookshelf full of VHS tapes.
You might be interested in this piece I wrote then: https://colehaddon.substack.com/p/what-if-the-only-way-to-protect-films?utm_source=publication-search
I have 3 VCRs and just hooked them all up when I moved. Been watching old tapes. It’s super fun. The thing I miss most about VHS is BLOCKBUSTER. Making a night of it. Wandering the aisles, looking at all those covers and then having to commit to a couple special movies for the weekend. Standing in line, grabbing that bucket of microwave popcorn and a huge box of candy. It was an event. Now, I sometimes get lost in the cornucopia of digital choices and end up not watching anything. Choice fatigue.
I post about video stores in notes all the time. They were temples, in my mind. A terrible, terrible cultural loss.
Easy Store in Kyneton Cole! Excellent VHS selection to rent n buy.
I'm hoping to head there this week, mate. I've looked it up and it might just be the Promised Land for me. I'll message you about what's been distracting me - but it's good news.
I have many fond memories of VHS and cassette tapes, but for both the tape part doesn't last like vinyl does.
This is true.
I still have a VCR and lots of videotapes! Haven't watched any of them in years but I hold on to them as streaming services pull interesting films off their sites all the time. Keep (or buy) the physical media you love!
I do my best.
I kept my VCR but it acts up sometimes -I would love to snag a new one.
I wish they sold them...but there are unopened boxes out there and refurbished ones that can be had for around the price of a decent Bluray player.
This is fascinating. I imagine I would not like it either, if I could see. It sounds akin to displaying the Mona Lisa with Instagram filters and presenting it to be the "authentic" experience. Or perhaps there is room for both options, but one which does not erase the original experience and how it was intended to be enjoyed.
As an editor this is a tough one. I know what will happen eventually. If you’re my age then we all do. Back in the day I’d buy the original watch it let’s just enough times to know the film line by line. Then get my boy whose dad had two vcrs to make me a dub. We did this with our cassette tapes. You rarely caught me with the original album. There was always a 90 min Maxwell tape in my Walkman.
It’s analog, it’s going degrade no matter what you. Just by playing it you damage it. Tough deal. First the audio goes, then tracking issues arise. Then the tape itself just falls apart. That’s why dvd took off. Also you were able to put more data on dvd hence those BTS “featurettes” blew up in the 90s. The Simpsons dvds took full advantage. Having cast and crew do feedback over each episode for that season.
If that’s vhs how many tapes is that? I remember looking at renting the Godfather, two tapes…nah son I’ll watch it on HBO select the ELP and tape that bitch all on one tape. Of course that came with its own issues 😆🤣
I think it's worth observing that the degradation of cassettes collided with the advent of a new technology that made them obsolete, which then, in even shorter time, collided with another technology that made those (mostly) obsolete, then streaming came along. What I'm just musing about is how the lifespan of a cassette isn't a dealbreaker for me. Another reason it's not is that Blurays still exist, I can buy them, but their price has actually not substantially changed and, in fact, they've started to go up because there's not enough of them sold anymore. They're more specialty items, like vinyl, than a casual delivery device. So, I now have Blurays that can get scratched if you have butter fingers and I can't even tape up and copy to another cassette to salvage what's on it - and I pay through the roof for that privilege. Look, this comment is all over the place, I get that. But I think there's something in my ramble...
Cole, I had a thought in regards to your quest to obtain a good and functional VCR. It does require travel. Specifically to Akihabara, the electronics district in Tokyo.
Guarantee you will find a good one in the second hand shops there. Not sure if they sell online but that's where old electronic gear is bought and sold and usually in good working condition.
I have found some online resellers here in Australia, but I'm hesitant because of the regional differences. Many of the films I'd want to get on VHS wouldn't play on them.
If I recall, some makes & models are multiregional. Can't remember which one are though 🤔