There was a time when we bought movies we purchased them on VHS videotape. Yes, I admit it I remember this vividly. Not only do I remember it but I belonged to one of those video clubs for awhile where you bought movies. Of course, this company still exist but no longer offers videotapes but DVD and Bluray instead. I remeber back during this time a mmeber of my family saying that they believed that VHS was on the way out and that DVD's were on the way in. I refused to believe them thinking that VHS would never be replaced. Well of course they were right and I was wrong. DVD did take over then along came downloading and streaming movies aloing with TV programs online. So, the days of the video tape are over, but I will admit out loud that I still have a VCR and VHS tapes in my possession, even if such things are now more or less considered obsolete.
DVDs are better quality but they are almost backwards in a way as they can get easily scratched. A VHS tape on the other hand is durable. I have a lot of VHS tapes as well. Some I want to get rid of but some I will still watch.
Oh I remember VHS tapes very well, the long rewinding, the tape being stuck inside the VHS player, bugs and spider-webs ruining the cassette, using a VHS cleaning cassette tape to get better playing, watching a blurred projection of a VHS film, having buckets to shelves full of VHS tapes, and having to use a hexagonal or cylindrical stick to rewind all the video tape my young siblings pulled out of a cassette. I don't miss those days at all. When VCDs, DVDs, HD-DVDs, and later Blu-ray became publicly available, that's when I started to replace all my VHS films or got rid of most. Although I still like watching movies via film, I only do so if it's a movie I really like!
We still use them! My 2 year old loves my old Disney VHS tapes, and since we still have a VHS player it works well for us. I love it, because I'm not attached to them if something would happen to them. Plus, I can pick up more at thrift stores or rummage sales for super cheap.
Yes, of course I remember VHS tapes. I grew up on them. Besides the nostolgia of being a kid I don't miss them at all. Bluerays and even DVD are much superior. Better quality in every are. Definitely don't miss VHS tapes. Another example of how technology has improved so much over the years.
I ditched my VHS player many years ago, along with my DVD and Blu-Ray players too. It's too much crap to have all hooked up to your TV, and too many separate remotes to juggle. Plus I hated the steadily declining quality of VHS tapes. After you watch something a few times, the image starts to become blurred, static starts appearing, the audio starts to sound more muffled, until you get fed up and go buy a fresh copy again if it's something you really like. Then I had to have a separate machine to rewind the tapes, so I didn't have to wait around for that before I could put something else in my player. I don't even like DVD's or Blu-Ray's either since as others noted, they scratch very easily and become unusable in the process. Plus, I shudder to think how much money I wasted on my DVD collection within just a few short years of buying them. I never watched a majority of them again after buying and watching them one or two times. What a waste of money. I would have been better off with a subscription to streaming movies through Netflix had it been available back then. I like that I can download movies now to my USB stick and just plug it into my TV and watch them as I wish. It's much more environmentally friendly than studios manufacturing large batches of DVDs which don't all sell. It's also much cheaper too.
I was actually part of the era of the Beta Max, then the VHS. Interesting. I remember the long rewinds too. Our player broke a long time ago and has since transitioned from VHS to VCD. Never had a DVD player aside from the laptops. Ah, memories. I still find some VHS tapes at our home though. They are in our cabinets, sadly collecting dust.
I have one and tapes still at my parents. I was doing an Intellectual Property course and as VHS tapes and players are not obsolete, libraries cannot download a digital copy of a film for reference or use if a VHS copy is still available. The law says they can only download copies under fair use if there is no other version available and the law (US) considers VHS players still available and not obsolete although most teenagers wouldn't know what to do with one!
I remember VHS and Betamax only too well. Does anyone remember the earliest toploader video recorders? The ones where the remote control was attached to the player with a cable? How things have changed! I have actually been selling off my DVD collection over the past year or so. I'm concerned that I'm going to have the same problem that I did with video tapes - where I'm stuck with a whole load that nobody wants becasue they're obsolete.
Man, I don't want to know what you did at your home. I never had a problem with VHS, except for the old, old VHS player we used to have as our first breaking down (after being like 12 years old). Didn't even have to use a cleaning kit, and it ran absolutely fine.. I believe the VHS player we still have still works, too, even for being more than 10 years old as well.
