The few, the proud,

[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.

[cinema guy]

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

Then he needs one of these.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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...

[grokit]

TMI . . . TMI!

Not nice to criticise Whiskey's habits...

[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.

[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.

[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.

[tropicsgoddess]

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