The few, the proud,

[tropicsgoddess]

Damn, I haven't used VHS since the early 2000's...that SC must be STUCK in 1989.

[Kristev]

I'm glad I still have some of my old video tapes. They turned out to be remarkably helpful when all of my dvds were in pawn.

[Shalom]

I tried playing a DVD and copying it to VHS years ago but every so many seconds the picture would distort greatly.

That's called Macrovision. There are, or once were, gadgets to defeat that; I have one, buried somewhere in my basement.

edit to add: Sorry, I misread. I thought you were copying VHS to DVD. For that you need the hardware. To go the other way, there is software that does the same thing.

[emax4]

My gf has just loaned me Toy Story 2 on VHS. I will have to hook up my VCR again to watch it.

Trivia: the last film to be released on VHS was A History of Violence, in 2005.

I've seen VHS converters for as little as $10 on ebay and Monoprice.com. Basically you hook up the video and audio cords to the device, and the device connects to your computer, then whatever is on the VHS tapes gets stored as a movie on your computer which you can then transfer to DVD. I've thought about getting one of these for a while, as my parents have VHS tapes of converted 8mm home movies from the 60's, 70's and 80's. I can transfer them, put them on DVD, then redistribute those DVDs to my relatives. I guess it never hurts to hold on to a VCR for such uses.

The only hard part is that you have to sit through watching the whole tape or whatever parts you want to save to your computer. I'm also not sure if such a device would allow copyrighted material (Toy Story 2, etc) to be transferred without any signal loss. I tried playing a DVD and copying it to VHS years ago but every so many seconds the picture would distort greatly.

[grokit]

TMI . . . TMI!

Not nice to criticise Whiskey's habits...

[EricKei]

Think about that for a second.

No. No. No, No. HELL No. I refuse! You can't make ----

Japan and quite a bit of the world would like to have a word with you Juwl.

Not to mention, many TV news agencies before they all went digital...

[bunnyboy]

There's a damn good reason VHS was still around and Betamax wasn't.

Japan and quite a bit of the world would like to have a word with you Juwl.

[Mr. Anubite]

Well, those two pastimes are sure not out of fashion in my town

Those activities are both VERY popular in my High School.

[Mr Hero]

The young lad then leaves for the Boulevard of Broken dreams, intent on becoming the next American Idiot so that one day he might progress to becoming the Jesus of Surburbia (see a theme here?)

Good Riddence to that Basket Case.

[cinema guy]

My Dad has this horrid habbit, he calls DVDs "tapes".

Then he needs one of these.

[Magpie]

There's a damn good reason VHS was still around and Betamax wasn't. (Hell, for instance, my spell checker doesn't even recognize Betamax as being a word...) The only reason I can think of why he would be happy to have found a Betamax player/tapes is he is actually an inverted techno junkie...

But that damn good reason isn't a technical one, and has nothing to do with the fact that Betamax had a technological edge on VHS.

[blas]

My Dad has this horrid habbit, he calls DVDs "tapes".

I have told him time and time again, this is not the dark ages anymore, TV has color, movies are on DVD, not tapes anymore, pops, and he just doesn't get it.

[Shalom]

Gee, you mean copying a 128kbps MP3 to a 320kbps one isn't gonna make it sound better? But 320 is more than 128!

eta: There is sometimes a reason to use VHS, namely because whatever it is you're looking for is unavailable in any other format. I've been looking for a copy of the animation for Joni Mitchell's "Big Yellow Taxi" that originally aired on the Sonny and Cher hour back in the '70s. Saw it once on Gargle Video, but it's gone now, I couldn't figure out how to save it at the time, and there doesn't seem to be any source online at all anymore. Neither was it ever released on DVD, but there's a VHS copy (presumably used) available for purchase online. I'm considering buying the damn thing and converting it myself, but I'd have to buy a vidcap board first.

[Imogene]

He was spending his spare time transfering all of his VHS movies to Beta because it had a better picture.

Think about that for a second.

Okay... but only cause you told me to...

*think, think*

So, he's transferring the low quality picture to a high quality format? Not realizing that he'll still only have the low quality transfer on a high quality format? Taking a low res picture and copying it on a high res machine is just going to be a high res of a low def picture. Just no way to add resolution where there isn't any.

There's a damn good reason VHS was still around and Betamax wasn't. (Hell, for instance, my spell checker doesn't even recognize Betamax as being a word...) The only reason I can think of why he would be happy to have found a Betamax player/tapes is he is actually an inverted techno junkie...

[cinema guy]

My gf has just loaned me Toy Story 2 on VHS. I will have to hook up my VCR again to watch it.

Trivia: the last film to be released on VHS was A History of Violence, in 2005.