VHS memories

[Prowler]

VHS is long dead by now since DVDs and Blu-Rays are superior technology. Not to mention the rise of streaming and digital media. But let's face it, VHS had a ton of charisma and gave us some of the best memories of watching our favourite movies, cartoons and tv shows at home whenever we felt like.

I loved DVDs for their menus and content, but still they don't hold a candle to VHS in terms of fond memories.

Where do I begin!

Like most people who grew up in the 90s and before, I went to my local video rental store often when I was a kid with my family. My mother would usually rent a movie for her to watch over the weekend while I'd rent a cartoon VHS tape. It was almost always Looney Tunes or Disney cartoons. I remember watching at least 4 Ducktales episodes thanks to that.

I also remember owning Tiny Toons How I Spent My Vacation and the Ducktales movie on VHS.

But then there's also the blank VHS tapes you'd buy to tape stuff on TV. And there were DOZENS of those at my house. My brother would tape a lot of movies for my mother and he'd also tape Simpsons episodes for himself. He also taped a bunch of FW Ninja Turtles episodes, mostly from season 2 and 3. And when the show came back on tv here in 2003 or so, I taped the entirety of the FW series and made it an yearly summer tradition to fully rewatch it until 2008. That was the last year I rewatched the series because our VCR would die around early 2009.

Besides TMNT I remember watching a lot of taped Simpsons episodes from the golden era seasons and some Tiny Toon Adventures episodes, mostly the Prom episode and the Thirteen-something episode.

There was something magical about going to your local video rental store on Saturday morning and renting a couple of VHS tapes to watch over the weekend. Also, don't forget to rewind or else you'd pay a small fine!

VHS was much more practical than DVDs and Blu Rays in the sense you could start right back where you left off and you could fast forward through ALL the ads and disclaimers in the first minutes of the tape.

[MikeandRaph87]

The ease of recording the television and preserving it on a tape of your own. It was never a common practice with DVDs which I find shocking considering the upgrade of technology and space available.

As for actual VHS memories, when I attended preschool we would have a video that ended the day and if no one brought one we would watch The Great Boldini episode from the Burger King HS giveaway set. It was never a favorite episode of mine, but I probably saw it 20 times within a year back in 1991-1992.

[Prowler]

Originally Posted by MikeandRaph87

The ease of recording the television and preserving it on a tape of your own. It was never a common practice with DVDs which I find shocking considering the upgrade of technology and space available.

As for actual VHS memories, when I attended preschool we would have a video that ended the day and if no one brought one we would watch The Great Boldini episode from the Burger King HS giveaway set. It was never a favorite episode of mine, but I probably saw it 20 times within a year back in 1991-1992.

I never once recorded something on DVD. But that's because my family bought a DVD/VHS joint player around 2000 or 2001 and, if I remember, it could only play DVDs, not record them. One that could do both would be more expensive. Remember that DVD technology was pretty expensive in the first few years which is why the PS2 was quite pricey at launch... and yet many people bought it so that they could obtain a cheap DVD player back then

[Wildcat]

Ya I have good memories of renting movies and video games but really it’s something I would never want to do again.

You’d only get them for a few days or a week at most then you’d have to go back to return them on time. Streaming is way better (in general, not all the subscriptions they require).

As for VHS itself. At the time it was fine and we’d record stuff too but again don’t want to do that again. DVR/HD/BR quality video is so much better.

I had a DVD recorder. Didn’t work that well so I returned it. I think because the process of writing something to a disc was slower than a film just copying the screen is why it didn’t become a trend. That’s why DVR did.

[Prowler]

Originally Posted by Wildcat

Ya I have good memories of renting movies and video games but really it’s something I would never want to do again.

You’d only get them for a few days or a week at most then you’d have to go back to return them on time. Streaming is way better (in general, not all the subscriptions they require).

As for VHS itself. At the time it was fine and we’d record stuff too but again don’t want to do that again. DVR/HD/BR quality video is so much better.

I had a DVD recorder. Didn’t work that well so I returned it. I think because the process of writing something to a disc was slower than a film just copying the screen is why it didn’t become a trend. That’s why DVR did.

I definitely don't want to go back to those days either. But I have very fond memories from the VHS era. I can't say the same thing about, let's say, the dial-up internet era. That sucked even back in the day.

[IMJ]

I still have.... SO many VHS tapes boxed up in storage along with a few players. The tapes span recorded-from-TV to real releases.

[Storm Eagle]

I actually still have two VCRs, and one of them is hooked up to the 4K TV that I have. I bought two of my own VCRs back in 2002 so I can make copies of things. That was also the year I got a DVD player, and never bought anything on VHS again that I could get on DVD. I even replaced all of my VHS movies with their DVD counterparts, and thankfully I didn't have that many.

I still have a few store-bought VHS titles that haven't been on any other format, and also VHS tapes with promotional material that was sent to me by Nintendo Power magazine. I also have a few recordings of TV shows that haven't been released on DVD, and a few tapes with TV specials and commercials and other random things.

I remember how I used to buy packs of blank tapes to record shows such as Digimon and Power Rangers, but a lot of those shows have thankfully been released on DVD. So it's nice to have something more official, and on a format that's more durable. With that, I was able to dispose of a huge chunk of VHS tapes.

My mother and stepfather had a DVD/VCR combo that could record on blank DVDs. I once used it to copy things to DVD-Rs when they were out of town. They didn't know I was using it. Then one day, I saw that they had disposed of it. That sucked since I still have a lot of blank DVDs left, and I didn't get to copy everything I had.

There's a part of me that wishes I had kept my VHS copies of movies. It would be nice to watch them on the format again just to see how far we've come. I just don't miss having to adjust the tracking sometimes.

I finished high school in 1997, and they even recorded the graduation and everybody got a copy of it. I still have my copy, but I haven't looked at it in forever.

[KROW]

We used to record movies, shows, wrestling PPVs, concerts; the only thing we didn't get on tape were real life events since we never had a camcorder. Our entertainment center was full of recorded stuff and we even had a separate drawer for blank tapes to use later.

Once movies were released on home video, we would buy our favorites and record over the ones we had with another film to save space. We used to do this so much that my brother and I got our own VCRs for Christmas so we would leave our parents alone.

In fact, I still have that VCR from 30-something years ago. It still works but I think it's about to bust. I was still using it to play old Bear in the Big Blue House tapes to my youngest daughter and it didn't sound well. I finally retired the old thing since we got a Roku TV now.

[triplexxx]

One thing probably remembered a lot about the VHS era is all the promos, logos, and trailers that came on the tapes before the show/movie, and maybe post-credits scenes or behind-the-scenes programs at the end, maybe not all of which available on the DVD formats. Also, in terms of VHS recording, a lot of classic commercials people love and remember, and probably see on YouTube, may have been preserved that way.

[Storm Eagle]

Originally Posted by triplexxx

One thing probably remembered a lot about the VHS era is all the promos, logos, and trailers that came on the tapes before the show/movie, and maybe post-credits scenes or behind-the-scenes programs at the end, maybe not all of which available on the DVD formats. Also, in terms of VHS recording, a lot of classic commercials people love and remember, and probably see on YouTube, may have been preserved that way.

I'd cut the commercials out if I was home to record shows. Once I got two VCRs, I'd record something on one tape if I wasn't going to be home, and then copy it to the main tape so I can omit the commercials.

After I got a DVD player, there were still a couple of movies that I bought on VHS since they weren't on DVD. Both have since gotten DVD releases, and one of them got a Blu-ray release. I only kept the tape of one of those movies since even though it made it to DVD, it was actually DVD-R, and it didn't work on the main DVD player I had at the time. It's the only means of playing DVDs that I had that couldn't seem to play it though. Now the tape doesn't seem to play so well anymore. I might as well just get rid of it.

[TheCanadiandrome]

I still have a rather substantial physical media collection of VHS, DVD, Blu-Ray and 4K Blu-Ray

[Antoniocafe]

I've got a TMNT specific VHS/VCR memory. So this was before you had to have a cable box. I taped an episode of the original TMNT cartoon. But I was watching something different on the television while it was taping. The VCR was on the channel that TMNT aired on. But I had the TV on a different channel. For some reason the recorded episode ended up taping in black and white. It didn't really bother me. But whenever I would watch the episode on tape, it was in black and white. If I remember correctly it was the season 2 episode Teengers From Dimension X.

[IMJ]

Originally Posted by Storm Eagle

I'd cut the commercials out if I was home to record shows.

We would do that too.....
I remember we'd record movies - I remember telling my Dad I wanted to record "Ewoks: Battle For Endor" and sitting there watching it and he'd scramble to hit pause at the fade in anticipation of a commercial.

Dad life.

[Coola Yagami]

Man.... my dad was right. "You might want to skip the commercials now, but down the line you're gonna wanna look back and remember what commercials were around back then'.

Of course that before our VCR died and whatnot. Man, I used to have tapes recording all of Dragonball Z and Saint Seiya back then....

[Prowler]

Originally Posted by Coola Yagami

Man.... my dad was right. "You might want to skip the commercials now, but down the line you're gonna wanna look back and remember what commercials were around back then'.

Of course that before our VCR died and whatnot. Man, I used to have tapes recording all of Dragonball Z and Saint Seiya back then....

Once in a blue moon I check some older commercials on youtube. And not just of Portuguese TV, but of all over the world for some reason. There's something charming about 80s and 90s TV commercials.

Nowadays, we have those unskippable ads on YouTube's mobile app which are just annoying as hell. In browser you can at least get some sort of adblocking extension in order not to see them.

[ranger_scout]

I would constantly replay my VHS copies of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Cowabunga Shredhead and Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers: Lord Zedd's Monstead Heads until they finally wore out.