VCR'S

[Bill]

Must have been either '82 or '83. A corded remote top-loader. I can remember the first thing I taped was "For Your Eyes Only" and not knowing about the two different rewind features. It took half an hour to rewind that movie using the play rewind instead of stopping the movie and pressing rewind.
I also remember the power going out and my mother lugging the whole machine to the rental store so they could plug it in and get the movie out, avoiding any late fee. I'm guessing that was one of them fancy, new-fangled front-loaders.

Reminiscing about VCRs, uggg....

[cjefferys]

My parents used to own a video store, and I remember people bringing in their VCRs with the rental tape stuck inside all the time, to avoid paying late fees. After some practice, we got really good at taking VCRs apart, and safely removing the tape stuck inside. Sometimes we needed to cut off a bit of damaged tape and splice the rest back together, we had a kit that did that. Hey, those tapes cost us a $100 a pop, we were going to make sure we got as many rentals as possible out of one tape.

[wolfie]

Well i am still in the VHS world, infact i just got back from buying a load of tapes.

My VHS is still set up and used every day to watch films and old tv series.

My VHS collection is way over 1000 tapes and i am still buying them.

You can keep your blue ray / hd /3d yabba yabba

Long live VHS.

[kennermike]

I got rid off my VCR and all tapes back in 1998 when I bought my first DVD player the DVD player cost me like $700.00 ouch! what was I thinking .I dont miss VCR and tapes the quality was horrible Beta was a little bit better I was on the verge of buying a laserdisc player back in 1997 but then the DVD came out

[Adam West]

Now that it was mentioned; I do remember an official VHS movie release was $100+. Were VHS movies generally not available for sale to the public and only to movie rental stores? I really have no early memories of any electronics stores carrying movie releases for sale to the general public.

[HardyGirl]

Well i am still in the VHS world, infact i just got back from buying a load of tapes.

My VHS is still set up and used every day to watch films and old tv series.

My VHS collection is way over 1000 tapes and i am still buying them.

You can keep your blue ray / hd /3d yabba yabba

Long live VHS.

Woo-Hoo! You go Wolfie!

[cjefferys]

Now that it was mentioned; I do remember an official VHS movie release was $100+. Were VHS movies generally not available for sale to the public and only to movie rental stores? I really have no early memories of any electronics stores carrying movie releases for sale to the general public.

Generally, yes. Most new VHS releases were "rental priced" at around $100. This way, video stores could take advantage of everyone having to rent the new movies they wanted to see rather than being able to buy them cheap. After they were out for a year or two, the videos would then be reduced to "sell through" pricing, so that people could then buy them for $20 or $30. Studios started to experiment with "direct to sell through" with some bigger releases, I think Star Trek II was one of the first ones sold like this. But right up until the end of VHS, most new releases were rental priced at first, except for Disney kids movies, and some of the bigger blockbuster movies.

DVD completely removed this whole system. Even when DVDs were first released, they were priced to sell (although back then they cost a lot more than they do now). Many studios and video stores didn't like this idea at all, but if anything, it turned us into a nation of movie collectors, and probably ended up making the studios more money. In the VHS days, relatively few people had actual movie collections (except film nuts like me, and the laser disc folks), while these days almost everyone has at least some DVDs at home.

[The Nawd]

I still use my VCR's.

Last year my aunt gave me and my brothers several boxes of VHS tapes. Many were from a yard sale or two (it's all stuff somebody recorded off TV) and several movies from a video store that shut down. A few of the retail movies from the video store still have the original shrinkwrap on them. I picked out what I wanted and my older brothers did the same. Then my brothers sold all the duplicates.

I'm slowly adding in what I picked out into my collection. The tapes made my collection of around 300 expand to roughly 550. Still nothing compared to wolfie.

[Splitty]

I had laborously gotten a large VHS collection, and when DVD came out I was glad that they would take up less space on the shelves, and weigh ALOT LESS in boxes, but was not happy about the idea of replacing all those movies it took me awhile to get in the first place. Some I still haven't gotten the DVD of...

Also, one of my collecting bugs still is I like to track down cheesy bad 80s movies with no DVD release, and transfer them myself in a creative little project. Then I have my own special DVD no one else has. Then a retail version comes out and I'm like 'DAMMNIT!'.

[Thor]

I still use a old JVC vcr. After this one goes that will be it.

[Figuremod73]

My biggest worry with tapes (both vcr and music) is when will the tape inside get eaten up by the machine. I have also heard that 8 tracks are usually very fragile, unplayable now. Its always something to consider with those most prized (unreplaceable) movies, music, and home movies.

[jwyblejr]

I think the thing I miss the most is that every single store you went into had a video section. Grocery store,gas station,whatever. I know people will tell you there's Redbox now. Just not the same.