by Richard
Ladies (hopefully) and gentlemen (almost assuredly), let us all take a moment to here and now be silent to better appreciate the one-year anniversary approaching rapidly. Yes, it was almost a year ago (approximately Dec. 23, 2008) that the last truckload of VHS tapes was sent out of a distribution office. On that day, VHS officially died.
It’s odd. I never even knew about this until about two weeks ago. Video tape has long been out of the buying range for our family. We’ve been DVD folks for a long while. I think the last VHS tape we bought was the second Harry Potter movie. We got a VHS so the little dudes could watch the movie at home and a DVD so they could watch it on an upcoming car trip. We had just bought a portable DVD player for some appalling price and we wanted stuff to play on it.
At that time, we had, I’m guessing, maybe four DVDs.
Now, of course, it’s all digital. In the main room with a TV we don’t even have a tape player. We’ve got one in the room where the little dudes mainly watch shows, but I don’t think they’ve used the VHS for a long time. In fact, it’s not even a VHS player. It’s a DVD/VHS combo, and probably one of the last of those made as well.
Just looking at our entertainment storage area, we’ve got more VHS taps of (mostly) Disney movies than I thought possible. All sitting there, gathering dust. It’s not like I can just store them on a hard drive. I’m not sure what to do with them. I know I’m not coughing up the Benjamins to replace them with digital copies. Maybe I’ll just get a new DVD player (Blue-ray? DVD?) for the little dudes and then store the tapes and VHS player somewhere air conditioned so they survive a couple more years.
Our quickly changing times. We’re living through so many different revolutions in our lifetimes and we’re not even halfway done yet. I’m still hoping for a revolution in anti-senescence medication myself.
So, let’s raise a glass of Lowenbrau, tug on the parachute pants and get the Thriller jacket out of storage and shout out a toast to the last of the VHS fun times. It lasted for almost 30 years. It had a good run, but the world moves on.
Tags: A Dude's Guide to Life, Benjamins, Blue Ray, buy, Car Trip, Couple More Years, Digital Copies, Disney Movies, Distribution Office, dude, Dude's, Dvds, Entertainment, Entertainment Storage, evolution, family, Gathering Dust, Hard Drive, Harry Potter, Lifetimes, little dude, little dudes, Man, men, mom, movie, movies, Parachute Pants, Portable Dvd Player, Revolutions, richard, Storage Area, Tape Player, Truckload, Vhs Player, Vhs Tape, Vhs Tapes, video, Video Tape
Dear Dude,
I understand the issue of VHS tapes collecting dust. We had a few as well. When the VHS player died over a year ago, we purchased a VHS to DVD machine from a big box store. Thhis allowed us to convert all our old VHS tapes to DVD all for about $150 for the machine and some change for the DVD’s. Afterward, we sent the machine to each of our children (all grown with their own little dudes), who in turn, copied the VHS tapes to DVD. This saved the old movies we liked. Then the VHS tapes went to the library down town for thier collection.
ANyway, just a suggestion if you have tapes that you would like to convert. SOme of ours were old family movies as well. But we have preserved “The God’s Must be Crazy” now on DVD for a MUCH later date.
All the best,
Dr. Abby
The Gods Must Be Crazy. I thought I was the only person who remembered that movie. Yeah, that sounds like a great idea to convert. I have been doing that with my Mac on a lot of our non-digital movies and suchlike, but I didn’t know about the VHS to DVD thing. I’ve seen services on the Internet, but they were expensive. Thanks for the tip, Dr. Abby.
Ive been researching this field lately and I have to agree