The New What Made You Frown Today Thread

[D'Snowth]

I'll agree that tapes take up a lot more space than newer forms of physical media, and I too have often replaced certain tapes with DVDs over the years - mostly if they were store-bought tapes of movies or TV show compilations; otherwise, the only tapes that I will absolutely never part with are rarities or stuff for "historical" value (i.e. old recordings of Cartoon Network shows or SS episodes and the like).

 

[LittleJerry92]

I still have my collection of Mst3k fan recorded tapes from Comedy Central and sci-fi. I refuse to ever part with them.

 

[fuzzygobo]

I taped a number of early 90s Super Bowls. Not for the commercials (as good as some are)or the halftime shows, but for the actual games. I didn’t care for the actual coin toss, or seeing retired players. Terry Bradshaw was one of the greatest quarterbacks ever He was a beast back in his days with Lynn Swann and Franco Harris.. But once he lost his hair he became this pudgy goofball. Even now as an announcer he’s kind of the butt of a lot of fat jokes. He dserves better.

 

[fuzzygobo]

Same thing with the NY Yankees. Some love them, some hate them. But they were one of the greatest baseball teams ever (ldecades-long rivalry wi the Boston Red Sox).
They won more World Series than all other teams put together.
For me, though, the late 70s lineup defined baseball for me (more so for my older brother). Chris Chambliss Lou Pinella, Thurman Munson, Roy White, Mickey Rivers, managed by the legendary Billy Martin.
The Yankees have won World Seies since then.
Like Sesame Street, this was my era.

 

[fuzzygobo]

And one so-so pitcher named Reggie Jackson.

 

[D'Snowth]

As long as we're discussing VCR and DVD player problems, my VCR has been plagued by a really strange and bizarre problem for the past two months that I can't figure out what the problem is, or how to fix it. . . .

It doesn't want to play anything that was recorded in SP. EP, LP, and SLP recordings play perfectly, but for some reason, SP recordings can't be played without a lot of junk showing on the screen, a lot like this:

It doesn't matter if it's a store-bought movie, or home recordings off TV, if the recording is in SP, this happens.

And I find that extremely odd, because usually with VCRs I've had in the past, it's the exact opposite that tends to happen: it's the EP, LP, SLP recordings that tend to succumb to this sort of thing, not SP.

I thought maybe it just needed a good head cleaning, so I tried that, but it didn't do a thing.

 

[fuzzygobo]

I never recorded anything in SP. You get higher resolution, but it eats up more tape.
But old tapes you got from Blockbuster were always taped in SP. That’s why they took so long to rewind.
And in SP, I could never get a decent freeze frame.

 

[D'Snowth]

Same; the more I learned how VCRs worked, the more I recorded in EP or SLP . . . and, I mean, depending on the machine itself, even in EP or SLP, you could still get decent video and audio quality . . . I once had an Emerson TV with a built-in VCR (and DVD player) that was a Hi-Fi, and I have to say, in the beginning, the quality of the recordings, even in EP/SLP, was absolutely amazing: crystal clear picture, and stereo-quality sound!

But yeah, when it comes to EP/SLP, you could easy three feature-length movies, or perhaps about a dozen episodes of a half-hour TV show onto single 6-hour tapes, wherease in SP, the best you can do is one movie, or maybe about four episodes of a half-hour TV show. And I agree, the biggest con with SP was the slower rewind/fast-forward.

But you know, I'm going to be honest, at least with TV recordings and such, there's a certain warmth and sentimentality attached to these tapes for me much in the same way that music lovers have with records. At least with movies, I do enjoy the better and sharper quality of DVD, not to mention the special/bonus features, so in those cases, I'm fine with dumping the old tapes, but when it comes to TV shows, it's nice to hang onto TV recordings on tape, because sometimes episodes of TV shows on DVD might be edited in some way - maybe because of music rights issues, or certain celebrity guest appearances that can't be cleared, or an episode was eventually banned - so home-recorded tapes are the only way of preserving certain aspects of these episodes for posterity.

 

[fuzzygobo]

That’s another thing. Stick with a brand you recognize. Once I had a tv by Daewoo . I got it because it was cheap. But it almost blew up on me. It started humming and smoke poured out of it.
Did I buy a tv or a bomb?

 

[LittleJerry92]

Could actually relate to that when I was recording episodes of Mst3k off the sci-fi channel during its last full year of reruns (2003). Little did my 10 year old self know the show would be off the air completely in January 2004. (Me being me, I didn’t know these were just reruns and the show had already ended in 1999).

The first time I taped an episode I did it in SP and it ate up a huge portion of the tape. So I switched to SLP and managed to get four episodes on each tape!

I did the same when I recorded episodes of Ed, Edd ‘N Eddy off Cartoon Network (I captured a good portion of episodes), and then later on the Simpsons off Fox (I stopped though after I realized the show was on dvd) and Fosters Home for Imaginary Friends on Cartoon Network (sadly I only made it up to season 3).