Just how fucking old am I?

[+ purplekow]

While at work today, I mentioned that I was going to buy a new VCR as my old one, built into the TV set, didn't work any longer and that though I rarely used the VCR, now two of the programs I enjoy very much are on opposite each other, Heroes and 24. The staff of the office, who are admittedly of a different generation, looked at me as though I was out of my mind to consider buying a VCR. They were unsure whether new ones were still being made. In fact, their bemused comments made me feel as though I had stepped out of a DeLorean and was suddenly ignorant of the last 25 years of advancement in electronics.

So, am I hopelessly out of date or are they others out there using VCR's; eight tracks and phones with very long wires? And if not those, what other "ancient" items are still being put to good use?

[Guest zipperzone]

I'm a kind of low tech guy too. I find it helpful when confronted by electronics I don't understand, to contact my nephew. He will be 7 on his next birthday.

[Guest Merlin]

It is almost too late to buy a DVD player. In a few years all movies will be downloaded into computer/TVs with large memory hard drives.

[JT Brooklyn]

purple..You now can buy a DVD Player for around $150..The Quality I'm sure you found out is Much Better, also Storing DVD's is much easier.

 

BUT IF you do have alot of VCR Tapes, you really don't have a choice. Many before you finally gave up and threw their 8 Tracks away eventually! LOL

 

Look at it this way...Give Up a "1 Hour Hookup" and your Whole New Viewing Experince can begin!

 

It alway's amazes me, How some Guy's don't Blink on "Paying" a Working Guy's Rate..Which is Basically 40 mins of Sex and Bye Bye.

 

BUT will put off deciding on other things in their Live's to do with their $$ for Weeks or even Months at a time! LOL :P

[EXPAT]

To record TV shows, most people are using DVR (digital video recorders) now. Either your cable company can upgrade your cable box to a DVR (where you can record two things at once) or you can buy a DVR and connect it yourself. Or of course one of the most popular items is TIVO, although I refuse to pay yet another subscription in addition to my cable bill.

[Guest RandyRon]

Hey Purplekow,

 

You think you're old, I'm still trying to get some new 45s or 78s to update my music library. I also seem to be out of date with the new terminology. A few weeks ago, I had a straight guy tell me that he was having trouble with the guys he supervises always "Cornholing" at work. I almost lost it as I had visions of Daisy chains on the production floor. It turns out that "Cornholing" is a type of bean bag toss game.

 

:+ :+

[+ Charlie]

My partner just bought a machine that will enable him to transfer his old VCR porno tapes to DVD before they deteriorate further; then he can throw the tapes away, unless there is a charity somewhere that wants them. VCRs and machines that only play DVDs are still available, but they're pretty cheap.

 

I don't have that problem, because I have never had a VCR or a DVD player, and my best tv is older than Ben Nicholas, so it doesn't have ports for all those accessories. I have never seen an ipod and don't understand how it works, and I use my cellphone only for making and receiving calls (I don't even know how to program numbers or access voicemail on it, though that is partly because the instructions are incomprehensible). I don't have a digital camera or a scanner, so I can't advertise on Silverdaddies, and I've never figured out how to read attachments that are sent to me via email. And I figure that my ignorance and lack of technology probably save me a lot of unnecessary aggravation.

[Richard]

I think you can buy a dual deck vcr/dvd player, so you can still see your existing library of tapes and record new ones, while being able to access the dvd libraries. Some of my preferred houses of porn no longer offer vhs.

 

They may be going the way of the wooly mammoth, but you might even be able to get a dual deck vcr/dvd that permits you to record your vhs tapes onto dvd. It is certainly true it's much more space efficient.

 

There are so many folks with vhs and dvd collections, that it will be a while before the industry completely abandons the technology. Still, I would go out and get it now while the going is good. You can still get turntables for your LPs, but they are an audiophile's item now, not for guys who want to play their records.

[seaboy4hire]

>Hey Purplekow,

>

>You think you're old, I'm still trying to get some new 45s or

>78s to update my music library. I also seem to be out of date

>with the new terminology. A few weeks ago, I had a straight

>guy tell me that he was having trouble with the guys he

>supervises always "Cornholing" at work. I almost lost it as I

>had visions of Daisy chains on the production floor. It turns

>out that "Cornholing" is a type of bean bag toss game.

>

>:+ :+

Although it is used mostly for collectors check out http://www.eil.com for your record collection. I've used it a lot and never had any issues.

 

Hugs,

Greg

 

[email protected]

http://seaboy4hire.tripod.com New page for reveiws http://www.daddysreviews.com/newest.php?who=greg_seattle

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I get 90 mpg! You?

Chicago February 22-25

[Rick Munroe]

>They may be going the way of the wooly mammoth, but you might

>even be able to get a dual deck vcr/dvd that permits you to

>record your vhs tapes onto dvd.

 

We did that, and transferred all of our old VHS and 8mm tapes (home movies, porn, etc). It was a big project but well worth the time, effort and money. And it's easy...all you do is pop in a VHS tape on one side and a blank DVD on the other side, click "dub" and let it go.

[Louis]

I actually have two VCR's. I have a decend DVD player too. I have not bought a DVD burner though, but will get that when I get a new computer.

A friend records all of his shows off of satelite, and then replays them, when he has time to see them. You can get the same thing for cable TV too. I may get one of those when I go digital. I have a good plasma TV, but will probably wait till the fall before I go digital, then I may get a unit that records the shows too.

[Guest PWIT]

>We did that, and transferred all of our old VHS and 8mm tapes

>(home movies, porn, etc).

 

so how does one get to see some of your home made porn? :+ Are you going to start hosting viewing parties on your travels? :9

[Funseeker 22]

That would be a viewing party with a couple of "wooly mammoths". ;-) ;-)

[+ deej]

>A friend records all of his shows off of satelite, and then

>replays them, when he has time to see them. You can get the

>same thing for cable TV too.

 

You can do that with Tivo. I resisted it for a long time because you had to watch the show where you record it. I took the plunge when they released a Tivo box with a built-in DVD recorder. If I have something I want to watch in another room, I don't have to have another Tivo box over there -- just burn a DVD and go plug it in.

 

(The box has video inputs so you can dub from a VHS machine, but I don't recommend it. The copy is visibly darker than the original.)

 

The thing that makes Tivo worthwhile, though, is the software/service. Set a "Season Pass" on a series, and Tivo records it without further prompting even if it shifts around on the schedule. I've caught some god-awful "B" movies I would have ignored because I set watches on the names of a couple of heartthrobs, etc.

 

It feeds the guilty pleasures. :-)

[Guest skrubber]

Eight track??? Just how fucking old are you? At Christmas time I bought a DVD, VCR combination (Toshiba) for less than $100.00 at Sears.

[Guest RandyRon]

One thing to watch when you buy the DVD recorder or DVD recorder plus VCR is to make sure the DVDs you make can be played on other DVD players. I gave a friend a very expensive (over $400) Sony DVD recorder/VCR combination and the DVDs he makes work fine on the Sony but won't play on his other DVD players. He has "finalized" the recordings, etc. but they still won't play on other DVD players. I was told by an audio Geek that Sony has a reputation for making sure you have to use their products for everything.

[Guest Tristan]

I believe the replies already posted have given you good information. Here's a few more things that might help.

 

Check out the web site for Circuit City:

 

http://www.circuitcity.com

 

There are Customer Reviews for all the DVD and VCR products. The reviews are very helpful in describing problems people encounter.

 

I bought a new Sony VCR (SLV-N750)about a year ago for about $70. It's been fine. The tape rewinds at lightning speed. It sounds like it's accelerating into warp drive and then decelerating out of warp drive. I think it rewinds in less than a minute. The picture is fine.

 

As for DVD recorders, people were having a lot of problems with the low - middle range recorders. DVDs didn't play on different machines. One person's digital cable service prevented the DVD recorder from working. Another user couldn't close out the DVDs after recording. So it pays to read the reviews before any purchase. You could also check reviews of any models that contain both the VCR and DVD components in one machine, which a few posters have mentioned. As indicated, it's a lot of labor, but the way to go if you really want to transfer them.

 

I still have VCR tapes that are 20 years old and still play. Right now, I'm not sure what I'm going to do with them. I don't think the labor involved in transferring them is something I want to do. So I may toss some, and save the rest until the tapes are no longer good.

 

I wonder how many VCR tapes are out there. There must be over a billion, or more. Think of how many Hollywood movies, porn tapes, and homemade tapes of TV shows people have made. I bet many people either tossed them or stored them in a closet. I'd really be curious to get some sort of breakdown of what people have done with all of them.

 

- Tristan

[Guest Havan_IronOak]

I just had to add my 2 cents to this discussion...

 

DVR is definately state of the art when it comes to video recording and TIVO is the new VHS. On the other hand I was an early adopter of this technology and am now sorta stuck with the betamax version. I got a ReplayTV unit about 7 years ago and LOVED it. It has the ability to record any show from any channel at any time like TIVO but it also has keywording which allows you to search through listings or record shows of interest. I frequently used to search on GAY and found a number of shows that I otherwise would have missed.

 

The ReplayTV units also talk to each other as long as they are on a LAN so units in one room can play shows that are recorded on units in another room. My units also have a commercail autoskip feature. Any program that I record on one of these units can be sent via the internet to anyone else that has the same type of DVR. Also shows can be tranferred to a computer where you can edit them and/or produce DVDs as you like. can also program the unit over the internet. e.g. Last time I was in NJ a friend told me of a show that I'd like. I logged onto the internet and told my unit back in FLA to record it.

 

The big drawback of the ReplayTV units so far is that they don't have HD capabilities yet.

 

As to an additional monthly fee... ReplayTV units have an optional lifetime subscription option so I don't pay any monthly fees.

 

Now what I'd LIKE to see is an option for the Replay units to play mp3 files as well so that I could access all the music that I moved from CD to disk...

[Louis]

Rogers in Canada does have digital recorders, and they do have a model that records HDTV too. HDTV taks up a lot of memory though. The last time I looked at them was over a year ago, so I am sure they have more memory now too.

[+ purplekow]

>Rogers in Canada does have digital recorders, and they do

>have a model that records HDTV too.

 

I have an HDTV would that mean I would need a special recorder to record the HD channels? I guess I could always just record off the regular channel as I always have a regular version channel as well.

[Louis]

From what I gather there were two different recorders that Rogers offered. At least there was a year ago. The one was a standard digital recorder, and the other one did standard and HDTV.

Future Shop also sells them.