Quote: "I’m ready to start watching television again, whether on the TV or on Youtube. I ordered videotapes from EBAY. I expect to have a long term relationship with Turner Classic Movies."
They don't make VHS machines anymore, they're impossible to find parts for, & the more you use that old machine the faster it will wear out.
Those tapes for sale are old or used stock. They haven't actually made VHS tape in a long time. What they're selling is stuff in warehouses, garages, storage facilties that's been sitting around for years, or used tapes. Those warehouses have little or no climate control. So most of them are regularly stored in places that are damp, get below freezing in winters, or over 100F in summers for long periods of time.
Those old poorly warehoused tapes can prematurely break, jam, get tangled in your machine & possible break it. They may at least cost you the time to take it apart to get all the tangled bits of tape out of it.
The old tapes are hardly worth the headaches, money, & poor quality picture. Indeed, for quality concerns, I went with super-VHS machines before they had invented recordable DVDs. S-VHS has DVD quality on VHS tape. They had VCDs in the day that would record 78 minutes video onto ordinary Cds, in slightly better than VHS quality, so to record a full 2 hour movie it would have to be split onto 2 CDs. There was SVCD (super VCD) in those days too which was close to DVD quality, but the larger bitrate meant you could only record about 36 minutes of video on a CD. So super-VHS was the only practical choice to record DVD quality. But my 2 commercial grade super-VHS machines haven't been used in many years. They sit in back in perfect condition. Nobody wants them, even if I try to give them away.
They make DVD recorders that will record & play DVDs, & the price is getting pretty cheap. If you're used to recording over the same tape over-over, if you use DVD-RW disks you can record over them too. Some of those DVD recorders come with built-in tuners. So they work just like a VCR. Don't worry about scratching your DVDs a little. Most minor scratches can be buffed out, & a disk can usually get pretty beat up before it won't play -- except for some poorly made brand-x disks, or on some really finicky crappy DVD players. Crappy players won't play a disk if it has a faint fingerprint on them. DVD players can be had for $29-$50.
But most people don't bother with disks either anymore. They just download the mp4, AVI, or MKV of their video or film, that will play on almost any computer or modern device. You can even burn them onto a DVD with your computer. If you don't have a DVD drive in it, you can get a DVD drive that plugs in your USB port for $29-$49. Just about any store that sells video & films will also sell you a download of it to keep on any drive or disk you want. The download is usually cheaper & better quality than anything but the best quality blu-ray disks.
I don't know what kind of TV setup you have, but with a small investment, you can make your viewing easier, cheaper, more pleasant, & watch better quality. It will be almost as fun as going to the movies. A modern excellent quality new 32" HDTV that you can plug a computer, laptop into to use a monitor or home theater only costs $99-$129. The speakers & sound suck on most modern TVs, laptops, & tablets though. So buy at least a $10 portable set of external speakers like I got that sound much better than most modern TVs.
Any old computer or laptop can be your primary media & video player to plug into your TV. But for HDTV video I recommend at least a 1.8ghz single core one, or any dual core or more one. For single core without any problems with frame dropping it should really be 2.2ghz or more, with at least 750mb (0.75) of RAM. Windows 7, XP, or Linux Xubuntu or Lubuntu installed on it works the best & efficient with multimedia. I even got a 1.3ghz single core Apple iBook laptop from 2005 to play HD video fine.
Just don't put a lot of crap software/programs in a computer, & they run smooth for modern media. Almost all modern computers off the shelf are overloaded with tons of useless crap, with some of it being sneaky or downright malicious to your computer, privacy, or security. Then the end user dumps more garbage into it with bad habits, not even realizing they're wrecking their machine -- you shouldn't click on, download, or install everything bright shiny link & app you see.
You can also get blu-ray players for $39-$79. Some of them have USB ports on the player. You can plug in a USB drive or USB flash full of all the video or movies you downloaded from a store (or wherever) into the player, & play them on the player -- no disk needed. Of course, blu-ray players will play DVDs too... even the one you burned yourself, or just burn your downloads on the DVD in their original format. They don't have to be in DVD format on most blu-ray players, they like ordinary mp4 video. I can fit about 14-16 VHS quality movies on 1 single gigabyte of space, or 14-20 DVD to HD quality movies on a standard single layer recordable DVD.
You can find lots or older movies & shows on DVDs at thrift shops & online used shops for pennies per disk.
Let me know what video you're looking for. I may have it already or know where to get it cheap.
A lot of the older stuff you like may be in public domain, or under Creative Commons license where as long as you don't try to sell/charge for the material & you give credit to the creators for public viewing, the material is free. Also netflix carries a lot of older & rare stuff for very cheap price. My sister watches netflix more than regular TV. When I first gave up cable & then later satellite (directv), netflix was a life saver until I got used to doing other tricks... back in the day it was only $7 for almost unlimited TV shows, & lots of older movies. I'll bet Turner classic doesn't have anything that netfix doesn't.
I have over 1,000 DVDs plus some hard drives full of video. Almost all of my DVDs & hard drives survived the fire. Tapes & CD didn't. So much of my years video & software collecting was not lost except the stuff still on VHS & VCDs. I probably have around 8,000 hours of videos on a single 2TB (2000gb) hard drive with 600gb of space still free. Most of it is just movies & TV shows. I don't tape a TV show anymore. Now I save the entire series if I liked it.
Betty's Pub 20.1
Topic: It may be 45 degrees but this is definitely the Winter Flickr! (Read 12199 times)
