We've just got rid of the last of ours, barring a few documentary videos and one of myself as a nipper. Actually we got rid of most of them years ago, but then I decided to get more of the buggers.
Now we've got rid of those too, as well as the remaining ones from before. We managed to give them away which feels better than throwing them out.
Is anyone still clinging on to the old VCR? It seems a shame to think that there are probably millions of perfectly good units as well as tapes which have been sent to landfill.
It wont be long before CD\DVD player\recorders go the same way
There will come a time when the vast majority of us access our music, video etc. via various cloud storage mediums and streaming sites.
I don't think physical media will be here forever, but it will still last a long time though. It wont really be killed off completely until everyone has access to, and can afford, very high speed internet access at home, at work, via our mobile devices etc. And that is still many years away, maybe even another decade or more given our government have only fully committed to offering 2Mb to everyone by 2015 (or was it pushed back to 2017, can't remember).
The various restrictions in the form of DRM certainly don't help either, they make it much more difficult in fact and there's always the risk that you can lose everything you have paid for if a cloud service goes out of business, you change devices or your device suffers a catastrophic hardware failure as has happened in the past.
But it's likely there will always be some form of physical media, even if it is confined to niche markets or the second hand market eventually.
I stream everything from a couple of servers in my house, so could easily do away with my BD player as it hardly ever gets used. I can't be arsed with non-skippable blu-rays where I have to sit through trailers and being forced to watch anti-piracy ads (kind of ironic given I have bought the disc), only then to be subjected to long loading times before getting into a plethora of menus. I now rip the disc to a 1080p format with a hd audio soundtrack and dump them on there, which can then be watched on every TV in the house in an instant and which remembers not just where I left off on one film, but every single one of them.
I still use VHS for recording video and for music playback, I still have an ancient Philips n1502 that uses square tapes with the spools on top of each other.
I don't but I still have my Sharp VCR alongside my V+ box and my DVD recorder. I got rid of most of my VHS tapes but I still have a few, promo music videos etc. I used to have my Sony Handicam camcorder footage transferred to VHS tapes but I got my DVD recorder back around about 2007 and I digitised them onto DVD disks then.
Coincidentally, I saw blank VHS tapes, a set of 4 I think, on sale in a shop the other day.
I don't but I still have my Sharp VCR alongside my V+ box and my DVD recorder. I got rid of most of my VHS tapes but I still have a few, promo music videos etc. I used to have my Sony Handicam camcorder footage transferred to VHS tapes but I got my DVD recorder back around about 2007 and I digitised them onto DVD disks then.
Coincidentally, I saw blank VHS tapes, a set of 4 I think, on sale in a shop the other day.
My local Tesco store still sells blank VHS tapes for some reason.
My local Tesco store still sells blank VHS tapes for some reason.
I could have sworn I've seen a resurgence of blank VHS tapes being sold in shops over the last 6 months to a year or so. I think I might have seen some for sale in Wilkinsons, as well as Tesco and Asda. Blue Maxell ones, I think.
There will come a time when the vast majority of us access our music, video etc. via various cloud storage mediums and streaming sites.
I don't think physical media will be here forever, but it will still last a long time though. It wont really be killed off completely until everyone has access to, and can afford, very high speed internet access at home, at work, via our mobile devices etc. And that is still many years away, maybe even another decade or more given our government have only fully committed to offering 2Mb to everyone by 2015 (or was it pushed back to 2017, can't remember).
The various restrictions in the form of DRM certainly don't help either, they make it much more difficult in fact and there's always the risk that you can lose everything you have paid for if a cloud service goes out of business, you change devices or your device suffers a catastrophic hardware failure as has happened in the past.
But it's likely there will always be some form of physical media, even if it is confined to niche markets or the second hand market eventually.
I think they should start using flash drives for films/series etc. Discs take too long to load and scratch very easily. I'm hoping they start using these tiny storage drives though, it will mean much faster loading times. Just think, when a flash drive's capacity gets large enough the industry will then be able to place the complete 1- whatever series on it. They might even put AVI files on them, unless of course MP4 players start becoming a lot more popular. I think (and hope) solid state storage becomes the standard to store things on.
Hello there NR . Yes I have a VCR/DVD player and still keep all the old Disney films my girls loved growing up. Also for my old Buffy tapes if I'm feeling nostalgic. It's really not worth replacing them.
Hi Sofes, nice to see you back.
Funnily enough some of the tapes I just got rid of were old Disney films I watched as a kid. It was quite sad seeing them go but it's nice to have the extra storage space. Swings and roundabouts I suppose.
VHS were so much better than DVDs. You could press stop, take it out and put it back in a week later and it would still be at the same place you left it.
I don't have any vhs tapes anymore, and have not had any of them for some time now - but, I do know people who are still using it to record from a sky box (older, sky box without the Plus recording feature), and just use it to record whats their seeing on the screen using One touch record button (which I always thought was a bit daft - recording what your seeing).
I have a bit of an *ahem* VCR collection. Not so much now, but 1 or 2 years ago there was a spate of top quality VCR's hitting the shelves in our BHF. Most S-VHS like Panasonic NV-S200 and NV-HS960 in good nick for a tenner. They were >£500 new!
So encouraged by the nice machines I have been buying some charity films ('Phenomenon' tonight) and good they are too. The widecreen James Bond set...£10! Some still sealed. Records from FreeView just fine on some Fuji cassettes too.
You could say I am 'not with it' or 'slightly mad' but I'm happy and thats all that matters.
Yep, I have quite a few pre-recorded films and TV shows on VHS too, and two old VCRs to watch them on...mostly stuff that the inventory-holders haven't yet (maybe never will!) flashed onto DVD.
Comments
To be replaced by what?
Cloud media.
It's already happening.
There will come a time when the vast majority of us access our music, video etc. via various cloud storage mediums and streaming sites.
I don't think physical media will be here forever, but it will still last a long time though. It wont really be killed off completely until everyone has access to, and can afford, very high speed internet access at home, at work, via our mobile devices etc. And that is still many years away, maybe even another decade or more given our government have only fully committed to offering 2Mb to everyone by 2015 (or was it pushed back to 2017, can't remember).
The various restrictions in the form of DRM certainly don't help either, they make it much more difficult in fact and there's always the risk that you can lose everything you have paid for if a cloud service goes out of business, you change devices or your device suffers a catastrophic hardware failure as has happened in the past.
But it's likely there will always be some form of physical media, even if it is confined to niche markets or the second hand market eventually.
Now, does anybody here still use Betamax? :cool:
Coincidentally, I saw blank VHS tapes, a set of 4 I think, on sale in a shop the other day.
never ever gonna stop
neeeeeeever gonna stop
using them
still tape movies with them
I could have sworn I've seen a resurgence of blank VHS tapes being sold in shops over the last 6 months to a year or so. I think I might have seen some for sale in Wilkinsons, as well as Tesco and Asda. Blue Maxell ones, I think.
I think they should start using flash drives for films/series etc. Discs take too long to load and scratch very easily. I'm hoping they start using these tiny storage drives though, it will mean much faster loading times. Just think, when a flash drive's capacity gets large enough the industry will then be able to place the complete 1- whatever series on it. They might even put AVI files on them, unless of course MP4 players start becoming a lot more popular. I think (and hope) solid state storage becomes the standard to store things on.
Hi Sofes, nice to see you back.
Funnily enough some of the tapes I just got rid of were old Disney films I watched as a kid. It was quite sad seeing them go but it's nice to have the extra storage space. Swings and roundabouts I suppose.
I can do that on my Blu-Ray player.
Why not , you can still buy new VHS video recorders
Same here although I need another lead to connect the video player up to the TV so it's not plugged in atm.
I DON'T KNOW
I HAVEN'T THOUGHT THAT FAR AHEAD
LEAVE ME ALONE
So encouraged by the nice machines I have been buying some charity films ('Phenomenon' tonight) and good they are too. The widecreen James Bond set...£10! Some still sealed. Records from FreeView just fine on some Fuji cassettes too.
You could say I am 'not with it' or 'slightly mad' but I'm happy and thats all that matters.