Have you gotten desperate enough to haul out your VCR?

I have a few shows on VHS I keep saying I should transfer such as Alice, the later My Three Sons, all the color Petticoat Junction, some Angie and It's a Living episodes, but I keep putting it off. I guess I just hope they will come out eventually, or if they rerun uncut I will DVR them. It just seems like such a daunting task to transfer all those VHS.

For the time being, I have way too many unopened DVDs to watch before I go that route.

My VCRs never went away!

Neither have mine! Each Weekend I go "Garage Sailing" looking for TV Shows and Movies that people have on sale on either VHS or DVD. I have picked up old VHS Movies for as little as 10 cents each, and once I found a fellow who was THROWING OUT over 100 VHS Tapes with the Trash, I found Two Mini-Series and over 30 Episodes of the Amime Series Sailor Moon along with over 20 Movies in that pile. (I asked permission before taking them)

What's that old saying again?

Exactly.

I'm down to about a dozen commercial VHS tapes.  No TV shows, though, just movies.  The most recent divestiture was Island of Lost Souls, which a friend who literally loves living in the technological past was thrilled to take off my hands.  (Still have the LD, though, along with the Criterion BD.)  I sure wish Universal would make it possible for me to likewise donate The Night Walker to a worthy cause.

Mine never went away either. I use my VCR every night. I have about 850 VHS tapes, and I watch many of them each week.

Well, I do still have a hundred or so tapes of my off-the-air recordings.  TCM movies, a few concerts and documentaries, etc.  I've gotten rid of at least another hundred as I acquired good disc copies over the past few years, but this kind of progress takes time.

But I'm down to only one VCR, and that's the VHS slot in the DVD recorder.  Better take care of that, lest I find myself in the position of having to replace a VCR in 2012 or beyond, and I really don't want to do that.  I would never hesitate to pick up a desirable turntable or tape deck, but please, no more VCRs.

My VHS and Super Beta Hi-Fi are hooked up in the bedroom mini theater just in case.  That's right I said Beta. 

 

I'm slowly transfering those tapes to DVD.

Well, get this -- I also have a couple dozen Beta tapes that I haven't been able to part with, and it was two decades ago my Beta Hi-Fi machine was burgled out from under me.  Yes, I'm still saying "one of these days" I'll pick up a Sony HF-whatever on eBay, or rent or borrow something just to see the damned things again -- whereupon I should most likely toss them.  Pathetic, eh?

I wouldn't say pathetic.  Must be important recordings to you to save them.  Out of curiosity I did a search in ebay for beta hi-fi recorders and only came back with seven.  Perhaps you should act now.

Wow, you had me worried for a moment, because I was watching these only a year ago and there are quite a few.

I'll have to recreate my old bookmark for them, but this is a start:

 

Pull up all Beta VCRs, then narrow the search for whatever you want.  Here it is narrowed to Sony (without specifying hi-fi)...

 

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?Brand=Sony&_nkw=beta%20vcr&_dmpt=VCRs&_fln=1&_ssov=1&_trksid=p3286.c0.m1539

 

In addition to my two Oppo Blu-Ray players, I've still got a few extra region-free DVD players on bedroom TVs, etc., some DVD recorders, several VCRs (both NTSC and PAL), a couple of Beta machines, and a recently-purchased Laserdisc player that I bought simply to play a handful of unreleased-on-DVD titles.

I even had a decent CED player, but I guess I let it sit unused for far too long (about a decade, I think) and it won't play now (I suspect it just needs a good lube).

I don't play tapes very often anymore, but I do sometimes and there are still plenty of tapes in my collection, though mostly of the unreleased-on-DVD and/or off-air variety.

As far as transferring things to DVD (and then getting rid of the tapes), that's all well and good, but unless you also back them up onto a hard disk drive (such as in .ISO files), you're screwed if something happens and that disc becomes unplayable in a few years.

I use my vcr to play tapes of episodes that may have been cut on dvd. It's nice when the unedited episodes have been released on vhs, so I can supplement.

My roommate has been open to the idea of watching the entire run of Soap (which would be the fifth time for me), and I still have the Columbia House tapes that have the two Rodgers and Hammerstein songs intact as well as uncut versions of cut episodes, such as the original hourlong versions of the final show. I also have the last retrospective with Jessica in Heaven. As soon as I get my Mom to ship them to me, it's on.

 

I still keep Columbia House tapes of Sanford and Son, Good Times, The Jeffersons and Diff'rent Strokes that have episodes from seasons yet to be released (in the case of the latter two) and uncut versions of episodes that were cut on DVD, along with the in-store release of the hourlong Married with Children Christmas episode. Not to mention the loads of Beta and VHS tapes with stuff that is likely never to see the light of day on DVD, along with the old commercials. Most of Knots Landing, St. Elsewhere and at least half of Hill Street Blues will eventually make their way to DVD-R. I found that a Golden Girls episode had 30 seconds cut from it on DVD by checking my copy of the network broadcast.

 

Not to mention the last two Peanuts films.

 

So yes, I haul out my VCR every now and then to transfer it. Everyone who the foresight to tape this stuff, I honor you and envy your foresight and having been alive and in a position to tape these shows. Can I have the tapes when you die?