VHS In Amber

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My Dad keeps a lot of stuff. Receipts going back decades. And manuals too.Even if the item is long gone from existence. Here’s a scan of one such manual he’s kept dutifully in a draw for safe keeping. It’s their/our first ever video recorder.It was a rental model circa 1980 I think. I believe it’s basically a generic re-badging of a JVC model. My memory of it was that it was a very heavy clunky affair. Certainly no remote control. Dad also has a receipt for the first blank tape purchased for this which cost a whopping £13 from W H Smith.

Video Hedgehog System(VHS)

Old tech re-used

The hedgehog hotel that I DIYed a couple of years ago needed it’s inner wall bolstering too keep out the inquisitive cats of the neighbourhood. An old shelf bracket and a couple of old gutted VHS tapes that seem made to slot in that rigid groove make for a handy damp proof modular inner wall that stops those cats getting to the extra food we leave out for our annual nocturnal garden hedgehog visitors. One day I might even get a wireless web camera in there who knows.

Previous hedgehog related posts

Calling Time On VHS

Recycling or more accurately reusing old tech is something that always intrigues me. I still have way to many VHS (& Betamax) tapes that have as yet not been digitized. This VHS tape turned clock is one suggestion if you’re reasonably handy with making such things. Typically my own imagination is beyond my practical DIY abilities which has me thinking that the other cassette window could have been utilised for an additional sweeping second hand (I know picky picky picky).

Now could I do this with a huge old U-Matic tape I still have lying around?

Via Instructables

The Format Is Dead Long Live The Format

‘HD DVD, the beloved (Video)format of Toshiba and three Hollywood studios, died Friday after a brief illness. The cause of death was determined to be the decision by Wal-Mart to stock only high-definition DVDs and players using the Blu-ray format.There are no funeral plans, but retailers and industry analysts are already writing the obituary for HD DVD.’

The New York Times announces the death of the HD-DVD high definition video format after a string of backers including Time Warner, Best Buy and video rental firm Netflix publicly side with Sony’s Blu-Ray format exclusively. Reuters are already reporting that Toshiba will cease production of HD-DVD players.

Format wars are rarely about the best technology winning out. We’re all familiar with the now classic video format war of the late 70′s and 80′s, namely VHS vs Betamax . Back then JVC , the inventor of VHS shrewdly openly licensed VHS hardware and bought into the film distributors thus starving Sony’s Betamax of the needed pre pre-recorded software.Toshiba was then one of the few licensed Betamax recorder makers.

Sony only officially pronounced Betamax dead in 2002 but had modified the format for Broadcast use way back in the early 80′s (Betacam) but losing that consumer war and many subsequent attempts to launch proprietary formats on the electronics world (mini disc, memory stick, Digital 8, Micro DV) have dented Sony’s image over the years so to win this current war so quickly and so decisively may show that Sony may have finally learned some expensive lessons from past mistakes.

Picture by [José Manuel - Viper] under this creative common license

 

Random post__Blogs I Read

Goodbye my analogue friends

I’m having another go at archiving some older analogue recording that I still keep.Being a Cancerian means that i’m one of life’s hoarders but having said that it’s been good to unearth some things and share them with the world whether on old VHS or cassette tape.Today it’s so much easier with PVR’s ,DVD recorders and online radio with listen again and podcasting but back in the day it was a tough job recording radio if you couldn’t listen to it at the time.I remember having to use fragile C120 tapes to catch radio shows and a Heath Robinson kitchen timer arrangement to get my trusty cassette tape to start recording at pre-set time while I was working, only to return home and find little more than mangled or broken tape spewed around the cassette mechanism. When HiFi video recorders came in it was easier as we could use those to record audio only from an external source easily for as much as 8 hours at a time (hurray for LP HiFi).

Indeed I rarely overplayed my old vinyl records, just transferred to HiFi Video to save wear and tear so I’m used to archiving. Many of those HiFi videos still play so I’ve archived them again to my Mac (quick external how-to and here too) and will no doubt be doing the same when the current audio bette noir is replaced.
I’m hopeful of tracking down a working Betamax video player to re-archive a clutch of beta tapes that still lay in draws at my parents. I’ve managed to put the old gems from old VHS tapes up on YouTube but it’ll be a pain if the plug gets pulled on that outlet one day. So it’s back to archiving those treasured old cassette recordings. Amazingly most play like they were recorded yesterday so I say thanks and farewell to my old analogue cassette friends. You’ve lasted longer than most things in a throwaway world.