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Yup! I think that's the coolest part... you can find old shows online pretty easily, but the commercials? Not so much.
Coolest part.....but also a massive headache.
Once upon a time, I justified the video collection for the cultural history it represented in its commercials. It showed life during the late Cold War, the start of the Internet, the dot com wars, the start of pay education and more. It showed how shows were marketed, such as the VS commercial at the start of Buffy or 90210 and cars & home improvement on Thursday night.
I thought as I converted the tapes to DVD I would have this great cataloged data base that showed commercials like Coke (Coke is it) and the woman astronaut (Mercury style) walking between her two male counterparts or the one of the woman tripping over her black cat and falling out of her apartment to land next to the boytoy or the weekend scruffy visitor who wants milk for his breakfast and sees the cow up on the hill. Later, when boyfriend and his girlfriend host come into the kitchen, she says, "Are you going to tell him that's a boy cow?".
BUT.......it just became too massive (among other problems). A standard transfer, if it goes perfectly, takes about 6 hours. Then, one needs to sit down with a clipboard and pay attention, not get distracted, to what is on the screen, and that takes time, even in FF. It was a TON of work for 30 second bits which might or might not be there. With the shows bypassed to their DVD series buys, I just decided to let the past just be and live with the memories.
Yep. We have a lot of shows and movies we enjoy on VHS and its too expensive to buy them all over again on DVD// if you can even get them which alot of them you can't // so we have our 80s VCR hooked up to the old tube tv from the 70s - and they both still work and we will continue to use them until they work no more.
Is anyone still using VHS? We don’t know of anyone in our circles. We no longer have a player but have some videos. We will give them away or sell them cheap on Craigslist if there is a market.
Porn on VHS was a trip. Robin Williams described it best on one of the Carson shows, imitating the actress with the flat affect going "Oh Roger. You stud. Come here... and give it to me."
I think that VHS porn was even less well done than 8mm porn. With the cost of film, the actors (performers?) had to get to the down and dirty fast . With VHS and the longer "episodes"; vacant stares, grade school acting, and poor camerawork made some into hilariously bad media.
Porn on VHS was a trip. Robin Williams described it best on one of the Carson shows, imitating the actress with the flat affect going "Oh Roger. You stud. Come here... and give it to me."
I think that VHS porn was even less well done than 8mm porn. With the cost of film, the actors (performers?) had to get to the down and dirty fast . With VHS and the longer "episodes"; vacant stares, grade school acting, and poor camerawork made some into hilariously bad media.
The internet is the greatest porn delivery tool ever devised by the hand of man.
On the topic of VHS, I was a dedicated time shifter back in the day. My first VCR was an Emerson model bought at Walmart for $159 back in 1992 ($346 today) so I could record Star Trek The Next Generation while I was at work. Didn't even have on screen setup, so you had to use a series of tiny buttons on the display to set it, which I got to be very good at. It was pretty awesome to come home near midnight and have a new episode waiting for me.
I still have a working Philips SVHS unit hooked up to a 27 inch tube TV in my "analog nook." I play a tape every few months just to keep it exercised.
The internet is the greatest porn delivery tool ever devised by the hand of man.
On the topic of VHS, I was a dedicated time shifter back in the day. My first VCR was an Emerson model bought at Walmart for $159 back in 1992 ($346 today) so I could record Star Trek The Next Generation while I was at work. Didn't even have on screen setup, so you had to use a series of tiny buttons on the display to set it, which I got to be very good at. It was pretty awesome to come home near midnight and have a new episode waiting for me.
I still have a working Philips SVHS unit hooked up to a 27 inch tube TV in my "analog nook." I play a tape every few months just to keep it exercised.
Of slight historical interest, apparently porn has been the driving force (unintentional pun there) behind a lot of technology.
My first two consumer VCRs were early Betamax, and quite expensive aside from the $25 blank tapes. Working in a theatre, I never otherwise got to see any prime-time programs on TV. (I also had a larger format Betamax that I bought from a TV station I worked at that no longer needed it for ENG.)
Eventually having to move some of my better recordings to VHS was not a happy time. What I have found with VHS is that recordings on good quality tape DO stand up over time as long as they are stored properly. It is the recorders that go bad.
Let us not forget the bootleg VHS that was common for a while, before the studios figured out that there was more money to be made with some VHS than in the theatres. I remember a person long dead who wanted to sell me a bootleg "Star Wars" for some crazy price. That whole activity ticked me off, because it was the straw that broke the camel's back with studios shipping prints out early. That meant that we could not run a test showing to insure that the print was all good and reels were in order. There were a few films after that where you wouldn't want to be at the first showing or two because of mislabeled reels coming from a previous engagement, where the break-apart of the film was rushed to meet the truck.
Bootleg still exists, and always will, but you gets what you pay for (or don't pay for).
It was pretty crappy at 240 lines per inch. S- VHS was much better at 400 lines per inch and ED Beta was even better but cost over 2k for a player in 1993. I had them all.
The last company manufacturing VCRs, Funai Electric, stopped making them in 2016.
I haven't watched a VHS in many years. Growing up in the 2000s we adopted DVDs a bit later than most families, maybe circa 2005. That was probably around when movies stopped getting released onto VHS.
The last company manufacturing VCRs, Funai Electric, stopped making them in 2016.
I haven't watched a VHS in many years. Growing up in the 2000s we adopted DVDs a bit later than most families, maybe circa 2005. That was probably around when movies stopped getting released onto VHS.
I think the last VHS I watched was....."That Man From Rio"......to convert it over to DVD. About a year or two back.
It is more about conserving my VHS machines than the ease of DVDs.....though the latter is very nice, too.
As it is, my consumer made VHS I hit with a salvage magnet and get rid of as I can. My movie VHS, well, those get kept in deep storage for DVD authentication (proof for fair use and non piracy) purposes.
Quote:
Originally Posted by harry chickpea
Very Hot Stuff.
Porn on VHS was a trip. Robin Williams described it best on one of the Carson shows, imitating the actress with the flat affect going "Oh Roger. You stud. Come here... and give it to me."
I think that VHS porn was even less well done than 8mm porn. With the cost of film, the actors (performers?) had to get to the down and dirty fast . With VHS and the longer "episodes"; vacant stares, grade school acting, and poor camerawork made some into hilariously bad media.
I find with such flicks......it depends who is watching. If it is just men, they probably see just sex. With women, it may be much, much more.
For example, ever notice how for such energetic activity......they don't even break a sweat? Or in the opening scene of one flick, where the couple goes from clothes to not, you realize that while for the story they would be wearing shoes, in the production, they are not. Because all the clothed scenes are shot from the knees up and they got out of their clothes pretty easily without having to drag them over shoes.
One thing about it all......sometimes, they had some great musical backgrounds, like the flicks of Paul Norman when Raquel Darrian, Saber, and Sharon Kane were at work. Most of the scenes may not be memorable in entirenity but the music lives on.
AHEM! That said, the freedom of the Internet probably destroyed that industry as much as anything. Why bother to take the time to go to the video store to get what you want in a plain brown paper bag when it can be delivered in seconds in electrons to the privacy of your home.
Last edited by TamaraSavannah; 10-18-2023 at 01:36 PM..
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