Question for buyers of post-1980 shows. (1 Viewer)

[Jason Seaver]

I feel the same way about "books". I don't go to bookstores. I don't go to the library. When I did read, I became an introverted zombie, uncommunicative with others for days on and. I'd rather spend my time doing something good. So, I decided to just stick with the newsstand and limit my reading to a couple hours on the subway a week (sometimes much less than that). It's odd, but I really like it.

 

[Yee-Ming]

Ya know, that's the best reason possible to get a hard-drive recorder, or DVD-RAM recorder, ie anything with "chasing playback". It's really weird and annoying that one can actually "budget" time to catch up on a taped one-hour show by allocating just 45 mins (need a few mins to fast-forward the ol' VHS).

I must say this discussion has revived my passing interest in these, up till now I've figured that my trusty old VHS would suffice for now for time-shifting purposes. But first things first, that new plasma...

 

[Tony J Case]

I did - but time, accidents, and wear and tear on my tapes over the years has rendered a great many of them erased or unplayable. I've had my mother record over entire episodes of The Real Ghostbusters - and getting them these days, with the syndication edits eating away at the episodes is going to suck ass. Or one of my young Indy tapes wont rewind anymore. The tape is just so old that it's become fused together.

Or Brisco County - I have MOST of the series. But some episodes were bumped and premepted, ones I never had a chance to record.

Or the TV bug in the lower right corner. That thing bugs the HELL out of me - DVDs dont have that (except for Rocky and Bullwinkle, which I wont buy anymore cause of it).

 

[MatthewA]

A. I didn't tape any shows on a regular basis until The Simpsons came on the air.

B. Our family didn't have a VCR until 1984, I wasn't born until 1983, and I didn't know about syndication edits until 1994.

C. I like the better quality.

 

[Chris^B]

I try to make the world a better place. So far I'm sucking it up though. Also, I've been reading quite a bit lately, recently have been on a Tolstoy and Dostoevsky kick, currently I'm reading "East of Eden" by Steinbeck. And I spend time with mi familia.

I'm not saying "television" is evil or anything; otherwise I probably wouldn't be on this forum. I just try to balance it out really well. TV shows on DVD's have made this work well cause we can watch our favorite shows like The X-Files whenever we want and aren't "tempted" to watch everything else. It works for us, but it's not for everyone.

 

[Brent Hutto]

I long ago quit spending time, money and effort to record stuff on a medium that goes bad just sitting on the shelf. The only reason it would be worth the effort to tape an entire series is if the tapes would last for a long time. They don't. A tape recorder is for time shifting, period. Now that I have a HD digital recorder a tape recorder is pretty much for emergency use only.

Even if I had a complete set of tapes of, for instance, Stargate SG-1 I'd still buy the DVD's. Broadcast TV over cable looks like crap. Running it through even S-VHS makes it look even worse. The DVD looks (and sounds) for all intents perfect on our 36" direct-view set. Plus you get commentaries and so forth on many sets.

Heck, the commentaries alone on Futurama, The Simpsons, and The Critic are worth the price of the DVD. In some cases the commentary is even funnier than the show.

And here's my take on the viewing-habits thread. We currently watch one hour of UPN (Enterprise), one hour of CBS-HD (Cold Case) one hour of NBC-HD (Law & Order: Criminal Intent) and two hours of Fox (Sunday nights) pretty much all time-shifted with the DVR. Add in the odd sporting event or special and that's it for TV almost none of it live with commercials. However, we watch 2-3 hours of TV shows on DVD per week (Stargate, Futurama, Simpsons, The Critic, occasionally Babylon 5) and one or two DVD movies per week.

That's about the same 10-12 hours per week of TV that I've averaged watching over my lifetime. The difference is that almost every single minute of that time is very enjoyable. There used to be weeks when evening after evening I'd watch TV for a couple hours and then go to bed thinking "boy that was a waste of lifespan". Now if I want to waste lifespan at least I've been entertained instead of seeing endless commercials and whatever random dreck was on the schedule when I happened to be watching.

 

[Yee-Ming]

I was counting the hours per week I spend watching TV, and I hit 13. I.e. I watch 13 hours per week of regularly scheduled programming. Ouch. This is before DVDs or sporting events (which is of course subject to whatever they decide to put on live).

I try to be more selective of what shows I catch, and even then I've reached 13 hours. I find that following these 13 shows, I'm quite well-entertained; sure, there's the odd dud episode here and there, but on the whole it's pretty good.

The only problem is the danged commercials...