Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello everyone,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. My name is Chris Poulette
Speaker 1: and I am an editor and how stuff works dot
Speaker 1: Com with a cold. Excuse me sitting across from me
Speaker 1: as always his senior writer Jonathan Strickland behind every Man
Speaker 1: Now a Live stand. Thirty ghosts for that is the
Speaker 1: ratio by which the dead outnumber the living. That sounds ominous, Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: it's it's totally ominous because I also have a cold.
Speaker 1: So we would like to apologize to our listeners beforehand
Speaker 1: for all the awkward pauses, coughs, clearing of throats, sneezes,
Speaker 1: and other shenanigans that are going to happen as a
Speaker 1: result of both of us having a cold at the
Speaker 1: same time, and the one juvenile joke because you may
Speaker 1: think it's funny, but it's not anyway, and Jonathan's giving
Speaker 1: me an now he's beating his head on the microphone again.
Speaker 1: So yes, um, today we're going to talk about the
Speaker 1: video cassette recorder. Why, Chris, why would we ever talk
Speaker 1: about the video cassette recorder, a technology that is almost
Speaker 1: forgotten about today. Yeah, that's the problem. Uh yeah. A
Speaker 1: while back, Uh my father uhs VCR. He he had
Speaker 1: it to uh plugged in and during a summer thunderstorm
Speaker 1: or as we call it in the South, a week day, Yes, um,
Speaker 1: a power surge atomized the transformer inside the VCR. Sadly,
Speaker 1: this did not give the VCR superpowers where it then
Speaker 1: went on to fight villains and you know, various locations
Speaker 1: around the world. That's what happens in the comics, right,
Speaker 1: lightning atomization superpowers. Really real life lightning atomization computers and
Speaker 1: or people don't work very anymore. Yeah. So, so basically,
Speaker 1: the the power, the thing that makes the power work,
Speaker 1: and the VCR is now gone. And I said, you
Speaker 1: know what, it would be cheaper to get a new
Speaker 1: VCR than it would be to fix this one, which
Speaker 1: is very likely true, which is which is often true
Speaker 1: with electronics. So I recycled it. And my my father
Speaker 1: has a lot of old videotapes that he wants to
Speaker 1: be able to watch. I thought, oh, I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: get him a VCR. I'll just go down to the
Speaker 1: department store and pick one up. As it turns out, no,
Speaker 1: I won't because you can't find them anymore on most
Speaker 1: store shelves. Um even even electronics stores. Yeah they they
Speaker 1: If you find one, you're you're not going to have
Speaker 1: your choice. Yeah, I mean, well one or two maybe.
Speaker 1: But but it's not like it was where like say
Speaker 1: you go look for a smartphone, you have a display
Speaker 1: of smartphones to choose from, You have different carriers to
Speaker 1: choose from. Even even looking for something like a Blu
Speaker 1: ray player or or even a DVD player, there's there
Speaker 1: are a hand full of them to choose from. If not,
Speaker 1: uh you know, pretty good sized display. But where that
Speaker 1: used to be the case with VCRs, uh, it is
Speaker 1: not so much the case. And I was thinking, he
Speaker 1: you know, I'm they're so they're so disposable. I'm sure
Speaker 1: there's gonna be a tiny little VCR that I can
Speaker 1: I can get. It doesn't have to be Hi Fi,
Speaker 1: you know. No, No, they're gone. And I was started thinking,
Speaker 1: who when did they stop making these things? Because I
Speaker 1: just figured that everybody there are enough videotapes out there
Speaker 1: that somebody would still make one. I mean, hey, they
Speaker 1: do it with turntables and people don't. People are starting
Speaker 1: to collect vinyl again. But you know, it almost disappeared
Speaker 1: for a long time there after the CD became popular.
Speaker 1: So I started thinking, and we should look at the
Speaker 1: VCR and and see if we can uncover what happened
Speaker 1: to it. Um. But I think first we sort of
Speaker 1: need to get it back into the technology. And uh,
Speaker 1: it's something that again, uh is something that I thought
Speaker 1: if it went back to a certain point maybe in
Speaker 1: the early eighties, uh, mid seven and needs, but it
Speaker 1: really goes back, uh decades before into the nine really. Yeah,
Speaker 1: now to really set the scene back at this time,
Speaker 1: the way that that you would capture images was using film.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and we've talked about film quite a bit
Speaker 1: in this podcast even recently where we talked about, yeah,
Speaker 1: to use using a chemical reaction where exposing a a
Speaker 1: a film that's coated in chemicals to light activates those chemicals.
Speaker 1: You then process that film with other chemicals to make
Speaker 1: a negative image, not one that is you know, bad
Speaker 1: or ugly, but is negative in this anyway. You've heard
Speaker 1: those podcasts, so right, So even capturing film motion picture
Speaker 1: film was done through this way, and the way you
Speaker 1: would capture sound is you would use, through various means,
Speaker 1: a magnetic tape, and in the way motion picture film
Speaker 1: was working was that you would have a strip of
Speaker 1: magnetic tape that ran down the side of the film
Speaker 1: that was arranged in such a way so that the
Speaker 1: sound you were hearing and the images you were seeing
Speaker 1: were synchronized. So someone came up came up with the
Speaker 1: idea and said, hey, wait a minute, we were putting
Speaker 1: sound on magnetic tape, what if we put pictures on
Speaker 1: magnetic tape too? And that became the quest to create
Speaker 1: the the what would become the VCR. But really at
Speaker 1: first it was just getting video onto magnetic tape, and
Speaker 1: there were a lot of challenges associated with that. One
Speaker 1: of the big ones being that that video information, the
Speaker 1: the image information, took up a lot more space than
Speaker 1: audio information did. So you had to find a new
Speaker 1: way to encode that information and put it onto tape
Speaker 1: so it wasn't going to take up too much space. Otherwise,
Speaker 1: what you would have is a mile long tape that
Speaker 1: would be maybe oh a couple of minutes worth of
Speaker 1: video because it had it quared so much space to
Speaker 1: record all that information. Well, people shouldn't be too terribly
Speaker 1: unfamiliar with this this problem. I mean, uh we deal
Speaker 1: with that every day. In the internet. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: broadband connections can give you full motion video. You can
Speaker 1: uh play games with very low latency where you can
Speaker 1: uh count on being able to round a corner and
Speaker 1: get a shot off at your opponent before uh, you know,
Speaker 1: you you freeze and then find out that you died
Speaker 1: because there wasn't anything you could do. Um, we have
Speaker 1: the same we have the same problem with uh, well,
Speaker 1: with DSL connections. You know that the voice uses a
Speaker 1: certain amount of of the uh telephone line's capacity, and
Speaker 1: that's how they use uh the telephone mine to carry
Speaker 1: the Internet is is there's this unused capacity and that's
Speaker 1: how um, that's how DSL works. And you know, kind
Speaker 1: of simplified sure, um, you know, but anybody who's looked
Speaker 1: at an audio cassette and a video cassette knows can
Speaker 1: see exactly what you're talking about, Jonath, because uh an
Speaker 1: audio cassette is uses a much narrower piece of tape
Speaker 1: um than a video cassette can. But there are other
Speaker 1: challenges too, I mean, uh, it sort of depends on
Speaker 1: how much video you want to capture a video cassette
Speaker 1: can be recorded in a number of different quality levels
Speaker 1: and UM to fit when once you've standardized on a
Speaker 1: cassette size, uh, and then you start adding time to it. Oh, well,
Speaker 1: this one can do eight hours instead of six hours
Speaker 1: if you recorded at the correct quality. Then you start
Speaker 1: having to talk about the tape's thickness because the tape
Speaker 1: won't fit in the cassette won't fit in the machine
Speaker 1: if you leave the tape at the same size, and
Speaker 1: it won't work the same way inside the cassette. So
Speaker 1: something has to give. UM. But we could talk about
Speaker 1: the mechanics of that in a moment. We were going
Speaker 1: to talk about the history and so back in the yes, yes,
Speaker 1: and before that of course, uh as as pretty much
Speaker 1: everyone knows we have live TV. UM. You know you
Speaker 1: burps and gaffs and things that fall over and all.
Speaker 1: You might have a a famous Hollywood actor think that
Speaker 1: what he's doing as a walk through rehearsal instead of
Speaker 1: the actual, uh, the actual program which did happen with
Speaker 1: I think it was a Lawn Cheney Jr. Really yeah,
Speaker 1: he was supposed to apparently, Um. Mr Cheney was somewhat
Speaker 1: the worse for wear because he had um had a
Speaker 1: little had a little little drinking pooh, and thought that
Speaker 1: he was going in for a rehearsal for something that
Speaker 1: he was doing, and there was a fight scene and
Speaker 1: in the fight scene he's supposed to pick up a
Speaker 1: chair and it's breakaway chair slammed across the back of
Speaker 1: someone and knocked them unconscious. He, thinking it was rehearsal,
Speaker 1: not realizing it was going out live, picked up the chair,
Speaker 1: went through the motion as if he was going to
Speaker 1: swing the chair, then very gingerly set the chair back
Speaker 1: down where it was supposed to be. And I actually
Speaker 1: have this on DVD somewhere, so I'll have to see
Speaker 1: if I can dig that up. But anyway, yeah, it
Speaker 1: was live TV. It wasn't It was and something that
Speaker 1: people could mess with and edit things out, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know it went out warts and all. Well. A
Speaker 1: couple of guys working for Ampex, which is again a
Speaker 1: familiar name for people who've worked with professional recording equipment
Speaker 1: UM named Charles Ginsberg and Ray Dolby, UH worked on
Speaker 1: the first commercial real to real video tape recorder and
Speaker 1: that would be Uh. It looks very similar to a
Speaker 1: real to real audio recorder. This was around nineteen six
Speaker 1: and uh completely revolutionized the TV industry because at this
Speaker 1: point you could record a TV broadcast to be played
Speaker 1: at a later time. So if you had something like
Speaker 1: Mr Mr Cheney's gaff, uh happened and you know, you
Speaker 1: could go back and do it again if you needed to. UM.
Speaker 1: But before that everything was live and this this really
Speaker 1: changed things for the industry. Of course, these machines were
Speaker 1: were not inexpensive. Uh, they were not any as they
Speaker 1: later became UM. And so it was really sort of
Speaker 1: the exclusive world of uh, you know, professional TV people
Speaker 1: who are using this kind of equipment, and that would
Speaker 1: that would remain the case for decades. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: in uh it was nine one Sony came up with
Speaker 1: the first inexpensive VCR. Expensive again meaning industry not consumer. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy one, Sony had the U Matic system
Speaker 1: right right, U M A T I C. And that
Speaker 1: was almost exclusively restricted to commercial use. Yeah. They used
Speaker 1: the wider tape and had had the advantage of being
Speaker 1: very high quality. UM. But it was it was much
Speaker 1: larger than what we use today. Uh. You know, those
Speaker 1: of us who still have working videotape players. Um, but
Speaker 1: it was it was really the mid seventies when the
Speaker 1: equipment became inexpensive enough. Yeah, yeah, I actually have something
Speaker 1: kind of fun fun to say before we get the
Speaker 1: mid Sea yea in nine. This is the first time
Speaker 1: we have a consumer video cassette recorder of This is
Speaker 1: not a VHS or BETA. It's using the same basic
Speaker 1: technology but different format. So the very first consumer VCR
Speaker 1: from my research, was a Phillips Model fifteen hundred, which
Speaker 1: came out in the United Kingdom, of all places, in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy two. Phillips is a British company. Our pals
Speaker 1: in the United Kingdom. Do you get that? Pal? Ah? Nice,
Speaker 1: thank you. There's nothing you can do with NTSC No, no,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about that in a minute. But um yeah.
Speaker 1: They managed to get their hands on one in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy two, and it cost the Princely some of six
Speaker 1: hundred forty nine pounds in nineteen seventy two. And I
Speaker 1: know what you're thinking, Chris, You're thinking, gosh, Jonathan, how
Speaker 1: much would that be in today's dollars? So you would
Speaker 1: have to convert pounds into dollars and then used an
Speaker 1: inflation calculator. Who has time to do that? Will? Sir?
Speaker 1: I tell you I had time to do that this morning.
Speaker 1: Anyone with Wolf from Alpha, which will do it for
Speaker 1: you automatically. I didn't use Wolf from So the answer
Speaker 1: Wolf from Alpha gives may be different from the one
Speaker 1: I have, but based upon the historical currency Conversion website,
Speaker 1: sixty nine pounds in nineteen seventy two would be equivalent
Speaker 1: to nine thousand, eighty seven dollars today. So just shy
Speaker 1: of ten grand the very first consumer video cassette recorder. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Chriss is looking at Wolf from Alpha as we record
Speaker 1: this to see how how far apart the two conversions are.
Speaker 1: Do you have an answer from Wolf from Alpha? Why
Speaker 1: did I get six? Okay? Six? This is good radio
Speaker 1: right here? Oh? I know it is. Well, that's the thing,
Speaker 1: is it? It shows you how expensive this device was
Speaker 1: at the time. I mean, it's not something that everybody
Speaker 1: had in there. Tim Grhant to drop on a VCR. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: do you have an answer? No? Because I did it wrong.
Speaker 1: So all right, we'll just have to ignore it. I'm
Speaker 1: sure some listener will be very helpfully let us know. Anyhow, So, um,
Speaker 1: so yeah, it wasn't until the mid seventies when VHS
Speaker 1: made its debut. Yeah. Actually, uh. In well, in Japan
Speaker 1: it came out in seventy six, but in the United
Speaker 1: States we had to wait till seventy seven before it
Speaker 1: came over here. And before that, Sony had come out
Speaker 1: with a competing standard, the Beta standard. Yes, so Beta
Speaker 1: had been on the market for a year before VHS
Speaker 1: managed it to come to store shelves. Uh. And so
Speaker 1: there were there was the videotape wars, which I think
Speaker 1: we've actually talked about in a previous episode we have.
Speaker 1: And and of course Beta as short as someone else
Speaker 1: will point out as short for Beta max UM and uh,
Speaker 1: but you really didn't compete for for quite a while. Um.
Speaker 1: Of course Uh. Beta max is still used or was
Speaker 1: used for a long time in um TV work, even
Speaker 1: after it failed as a standard that you would see
Speaker 1: on the store shelves at your local video rental place. Right.
Speaker 1: The biggest differentiator between the two, at least early on,
Speaker 1: was that well, Beta had a slightly better resolution than VHS,
Speaker 1: but only slightly. I mean, the difference wasn't as dramatic
Speaker 1: as say VHS to DVD, but it was there, it
Speaker 1: did have a higher quality image, and also it could
Speaker 1: only record up to two hours, and VHS the big
Speaker 1: thing about that was it could record up to four hours,
Speaker 1: so that that really helped push VHS over Beta, even
Speaker 1: though since Beta had been on the market for a year,
Speaker 1: they had managed to bring their prices down, so when
Speaker 1: VHS first launched, it was actually more expensive, right right. Well, um,
Speaker 1: here again, the the average consumer is is going to
Speaker 1: look at it and go, well, I can I can
Speaker 1: buy blank video cassettes for a VHS machine and record
Speaker 1: more video on it. Uh to allow me to record
Speaker 1: more myself, and therefore this is a better value for me,
Speaker 1: even though the marginal difference in quality might make me
Speaker 1: think about a Beta max machine. And the VHS standard
Speaker 1: was introduced by j VC, yes, and that's also going
Speaker 1: to be important in a little bit. But j v
Speaker 1: C the first model they introduced in the United States
Speaker 1: was the hr Dash thirty three hundred, which cost one
Speaker 1: thousand dollars in nineteen which in today's money three thousand
Speaker 1: five dollars. Yeah, that's a that's a healthy chunk of
Speaker 1: change to drop on the VCR. Yeah, and it's it's
Speaker 1: amazing too, because a lot of these machines were top loaders.
Speaker 1: I remember that, Yeah, you'd popped the door open, slide
Speaker 1: the cassette in, and then pushed the top of the
Speaker 1: door down back into the video player. I had one
Speaker 1: of the yeah, and this was um. You know, it's
Speaker 1: interesting to think of that because I think the last
Speaker 1: time I actually went shopping for a VCR, I was
Speaker 1: just looking for for one to because I've got tapes
Speaker 1: I wanted to be able to play them. This was
Speaker 1: years ago, but I remember running across models that were
Speaker 1: like thirty or forty dollars. So to think of it
Speaker 1: as being almost well, thirty five bucks in today's money
Speaker 1: back then. Uh, that's kind of kind of mind blowing
Speaker 1: right there. And of course, uh you might say, okay,
Speaker 1: so what happened between nineteen fifty six and nineteen seventy six, Uh, well,
Speaker 1: one of the there were there were several things that happened.
Speaker 1: Of course, the like all technology, it seems like people
Speaker 1: find out better ways to achieve the same effect. So
Speaker 1: you know, gradually these machines are getting smaller, they're getting lighter, Uh,
Speaker 1: the qualities going up. They're getting more affordable as as
Speaker 1: people can mass produce them in greater quantities. But there
Speaker 1: was also something else, uh that that is common with
Speaker 1: this kind of technology, and there were people that just
Speaker 1: didn't want VCRs on on people's home entertainment shelves. Are
Speaker 1: you talking about organizations like the Motion Picture Association of America. Yes,
Speaker 1: so you've got these organizations that were legitimately concerned that
Speaker 1: home access to this kind of technology would mean a hit.
Speaker 1: It would take the organization. Organization would take a hit,
Speaker 1: the whole movie industry would take a hit, as people
Speaker 1: would refrain from going out to the movies and instead
Speaker 1: watch things from their homes. Same sort of concern was
Speaker 1: from the television industry. If you didn't require people to
Speaker 1: be at a certain place at a certain time, then
Speaker 1: how can you guarantee that your advertisers are spending the
Speaker 1: right amount of money for advertisements during that slot on TV? Oh?
Speaker 1: Oh but what but what? But what happens? I ask
Speaker 1: you when when your favorite one of your favorite movies
Speaker 1: comes on on the local station, you could record it
Speaker 1: yourself and then never have to go see it again.
Speaker 1: You could watch it again any time you want it.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's not cool. Yeah, So these were real arguments
Speaker 1: that were brought up against it. That was one of
Speaker 1: the reasons why it took a while for this stuff
Speaker 1: to get to market, was just because there was a
Speaker 1: big resistance on the part of the content providers. So
Speaker 1: it seems like that happens every time there's there's something
Speaker 1: that's one of these revolutions in technology. If this episode
Speaker 1: we're all about digital video recorders, it would be the
Speaker 1: same story. Or audio cassettessettes. I mean, really, any any
Speaker 1: time you get to any kind of medium where you're
Speaker 1: permanently putting something down. Yeah, yeah, there there are people
Speaker 1: who are saying, wait a minute, how are we going
Speaker 1: to make money now? Well? Yeah, I mean that it
Speaker 1: gave rise to uh to these industries. They were able
Speaker 1: to record it the first time and then they could
Speaker 1: show it to you or play it for you any
Speaker 1: other time for a fee. Yeah. They were the two
Speaker 1: major industries popped up because of this. You had the
Speaker 1: rental industry. Yes, so companies like Blockbuster and all the
Speaker 1: other rental agencies out there that could rent out video tapes.
Speaker 1: They would not exist without this. And then secondly you
Speaker 1: had just the home theater market industry, people who were
Speaker 1: purchasing tapes so that they could own these movies that
Speaker 1: they loved in a more permanent fashion, instead of being like, oh,
Speaker 1: I saw this great movie in the theater five years ago.
Speaker 1: It's called Star Wars. I really wish that I could
Speaker 1: watch it again, but no theater is showing it, and
Speaker 1: there's no I mean, why would a theater release it again. Well,
Speaker 1: suddenly this created a whole new market for these old films.
Speaker 1: So once the industries realized this, they started to reverse
Speaker 1: their decision. Oh now, I get it, and they made
Speaker 1: stupid amounts of money on Oh. I remember buying UH movies,
Speaker 1: movies when they first came out on video cassette, and
Speaker 1: they were exorbitant for a film. Well, and in a
Speaker 1: lot of cases that was because those movies were priced
Speaker 1: for rental agencies, so that you would have a cup
Speaker 1: any like Blockbuster. I always use that one because that's
Speaker 1: the one that most people are familiar with. But Blockbuster
Speaker 1: would say, all right, we'll pay a hundred dollars per
Speaker 1: UH copy of this film, and then we'll make it
Speaker 1: up by renting it out to X number of customers,
Speaker 1: and so it will take us, you know, a certain
Speaker 1: number of times before we make our money. Back. But
Speaker 1: after that, it's all profit as long as that tape
Speaker 1: is undamaged, you know, as long of that tape is
Speaker 1: is is lendable. Yeah, so, uh yeah. There were a
Speaker 1: lot of videotapes that never went on sale for a
Speaker 1: price that the average consumer would consider reasonable because it
Speaker 1: was never meant for the mass market. It was meant
Speaker 1: for the rental agency market. One of the movies, there's
Speaker 1: a movie that I talk about among my friends all
Speaker 1: the time called Blood Salvage. The tagline is if Jake
Speaker 1: can't fix it, it's been dead too long. It was
Speaker 1: a gothic Southern horror movie about a a guy who
Speaker 1: runs a wrecking facility. He Um. He has drives an
Speaker 1: old tow truck and he um salvages parts from from
Speaker 1: vehicles and people. Anyway, I was an extra in this film.
Speaker 1: Don't even bother trying to find it if you want
Speaker 1: to look for me, because you first you don't know
Speaker 1: what I looked like when I was twelve and two.
Speaker 1: You would have to have eagle eyes and your hand
Speaker 1: on the pause because it's gone in a flash. But anyway,
Speaker 1: I wanted to copy this movie because I actually enjoyed it.
Speaker 1: It's a goofy horror movie, can't be tongue in cheek
Speaker 1: kind of gross, you know, right up my alley. Right,
Speaker 1: So I went looking for it the only place. Finally
Speaker 1: I got it on eBay when someone got it from
Speaker 1: like a fire sale from some rental company. But yeah,
Speaker 1: that's why those those tapes were that expensive. Soe alright,
Speaker 1: So the VHS has been on the market for just
Speaker 1: four years or so, in VHS made up sev of
Speaker 1: all cassette sales. By then Beta had dropped down to
Speaker 1: and it was all VHS from there on out until
Speaker 1: really the late nineties nineties, and it didn't really start
Speaker 1: dropping off until the two thousand's. But we'll get into
Speaker 1: that after we talk about how this stuff works. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's one of the important things too,
Speaker 1: is UM in general, these machines all kind of work
Speaker 1: the same. We're talking about Beta max and U uh,
Speaker 1: you know three quarter for the television industry, UM, three
Speaker 1: quarter inch UM for VHS. There basically, they're all a
Speaker 1: reel of magnetic tape inside a cassette. And that's one
Speaker 1: of the cool things about video cassette recorders is that
Speaker 1: these devices, I mean, and I talked about the cassettes.
Speaker 1: The cassettes themselves are designed to protect the tape, which
Speaker 1: is necessary because uh, certain young people I know would
Speaker 1: gladly reach in and grab the tape and pull it
Speaker 1: right out of the cassette if it was possible to
Speaker 1: do so easily. Um, it is if you know what
Speaker 1: you're doing. But it's got protections on it to keep
Speaker 1: it from getting stuff spilled on it or getting spooked
Speaker 1: on something by accident. Um, So it's very wise of
Speaker 1: the people who made these cassettes to build in some protections.
Speaker 1: It's got a little door and if you hit a cassette,
Speaker 1: if you hit the little button, springloaded button, you can
Speaker 1: pull the door open and actually look at the tape. Um.
Speaker 1: But it's got, you know, two reels the tape. The
Speaker 1: tape starts on one side, moves to the other side,
Speaker 1: but it's the cassette also has some features to to
Speaker 1: prevent that from being done casually. Yeah, there's some spring
Speaker 1: loaded uh brakes on there that have to be engaged
Speaker 1: in order for them to release the tape. And the
Speaker 1: VCR actually has a little pin or a pair of
Speaker 1: pins relate that that insert into the bottom of the
Speaker 1: tape that releases that spring loaded brake. Otherwise it's much
Speaker 1: more difficult. If you've ever tried to manually wind a
Speaker 1: v A chest tape, you realize this isn't moving very
Speaker 1: easily at all. It doesn't work like an audio cassette
Speaker 1: where you can take a pencil and yeah and rewind
Speaker 1: it that like, especially if if the tape had come
Speaker 1: out a little bit. Yeah, boy, I've had fun with those.
Speaker 1: Um So. Also, the the information that stored on this
Speaker 1: magnetic tape is not recorded linearly left to right or
Speaker 1: right to left. It's if you did that, the tape
Speaker 1: would have to be enormous because, like we said that,
Speaker 1: that visual information takes a lot of space. So this
Speaker 1: was one of the clever ideas that the video cassette
Speaker 1: industry came up with early on, was instead of recording
Speaker 1: it like a straight line, like imagine you have a
Speaker 1: really wide sheet of paper, all right, So it's like
Speaker 1: a roll of paper maybe yeah, like a roll of paper,
Speaker 1: and you've you've rolled it out from left to right
Speaker 1: and you're going to write a message. Well you cut
Speaker 1: off cut off at ten feet, all right, So at
Speaker 1: ten feet you're writing and you can only write one
Speaker 1: line from left to right. You can't you can't go
Speaker 1: back down underneath after you get to the end. There's
Speaker 1: a limited amount of information you can write on there.
Speaker 1: But let's say that instead of writing it directly left
Speaker 1: to right, you tilt the paper. Okay, so you're writing
Speaker 1: at a diagonal from the let's say the the the
Speaker 1: top the bottom edge to the top edge, you know,
Speaker 1: and at a at a slant, right, all right, And
Speaker 1: then you write one little bit of information, and then
Speaker 1: you go take a little space and you write again
Speaker 1: in a diagonal from the from the bottom edge to
Speaker 1: the top edge. Uh. And then you go a little
Speaker 1: bit further down you write from bottom edge to the
Speaker 1: top edge. And again you're doing this at an at
Speaker 1: an angle, so it's maybe like a forty five degree
Speaker 1: angle across the paper. You can fit more information on
Speaker 1: that same sheet of paper by recording it at that slant.
Speaker 1: That's true. That's what is going on with VHS tapes there.
Speaker 1: The information is recorded at a bias on the tape.
Speaker 1: It's not a direct horizontal line of information. It's several
Speaker 1: diagonal lines of information arranged in a horizontal row. And
Speaker 1: the way the the VCR copes with this is that
Speaker 1: the device that reads and writes to the U to
Speaker 1: the tape itself is tilted. It's it's it's not uh,
Speaker 1: it's not perfectly vertical. That the drumhead that does this,
Speaker 1: it's actually at a tilted an angle so that it
Speaker 1: can read and write this information at this angle. So
Speaker 1: I guess we need to kind of dive into what
Speaker 1: a VCR looks like if you were to open one up. Okay,
Speaker 1: all right, um, well of course, uh, we were just
Speaker 1: talking about the the information recorded on the tape and
Speaker 1: the drum. Uh. When you pop a video cassette inside
Speaker 1: a VCR, um, what it's going to do is it's
Speaker 1: going to engage all the pins and things to get
Speaker 1: the tape ready to play, and it actually pulls the
Speaker 1: tape outside the case of the cassette. Yes, yes, the
Speaker 1: the little protective door lifts up, the brakes are released,
Speaker 1: and a couple of of guides which are inserted behind
Speaker 1: the tape inside the cassette itself. When you push it down.
Speaker 1: It's part of the VCR. These two guides pop up
Speaker 1: inside the tape the cassette itself behind the tape, the
Speaker 1: door releases up and the guides pull the tape like
Speaker 1: a ribbon up to the innards of the VCR itself.
Speaker 1: So if you've ever popped a tape in and you
Speaker 1: hear that that mechanical were as it as a tape
Speaker 1: gets ready to play, that's what it is. It's the
Speaker 1: the the mechanics inside engaging that tape. And then there's
Speaker 1: that that big drum that you said, uh was at
Speaker 1: an angle, Yeah, the rotating head drum. This is this
Speaker 1: is the all the visual information stuff is all based
Speaker 1: off of this drum. The ones I've seen are silver
Speaker 1: in color and it's it's charge you can It's probably
Speaker 1: the easily most identifiable part of the inside of the VCR.
Speaker 1: I would say this is the piece that that rotates
Speaker 1: and will drive the helps drive the the progression of
Speaker 1: the tape from one reel to the other reel. There
Speaker 1: are other rollers that are in there too that will
Speaker 1: also help move the tape along. It's not just the
Speaker 1: rotating head drum that that propels the tape through uh.
Speaker 1: There's a pinch roller that also does this through uh
Speaker 1: through um uh. There's a a stationary roller called a
Speaker 1: cap stand yes, and a pintroller that's on the opposite side.
Speaker 1: Of the cap stand. The tape moves between the two
Speaker 1: and the pressure that the tow create against each other
Speaker 1: that's what allows it to pinch and pull that tape through.
Speaker 1: So you've got the rotating head drum and the pintroller
Speaker 1: that are helped propelling this tape through the system. You
Speaker 1: also have a couple of different UM while they're called
Speaker 1: heads inside the device that are that have specific purposes. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: the rotating head drum is there to to read the
Speaker 1: video information, but there is an audio head as well,
Speaker 1: UM which is located over off to the side. It's
Speaker 1: not right next to it UM generally, but what it
Speaker 1: does is it reads the audio track on there. And uh,
Speaker 1: you know, a VCR is designed to record UM video tapes.
Speaker 1: And if you've ever had a video tape, let's say
Speaker 1: you you recorded UM a show that you wanted to watch.
Speaker 1: For a while before I had a d v R,
Speaker 1: I used to record shows that I wasn't going to
Speaker 1: be available to watch, and I would uh you know,
Speaker 1: I had a couple of tapes that I used over
Speaker 1: and over again. Well, there's an e race head inside
Speaker 1: of v c R that will erase the information on
Speaker 1: the tape. So that you can rerecord it with additional
Speaker 1: tape without there being interference or otherwise you would just
Speaker 1: have stuff overlaid on top of each other over and
Speaker 1: over and over again, and it would be unviewable unless
Speaker 1: you were you know, David Lynch or something. Now they're
Speaker 1: just like with an audio cassette. There is a tab,
Speaker 1: a little plastic tab on a v VC AR cassette
Speaker 1: that tells the VCR whether it's allowed to engage the
Speaker 1: race head or not. Um. If you went out to
Speaker 1: buy a copy of your a movie that you liked
Speaker 1: from the shelves, that tape, that tab would be gone. Um.
Speaker 1: And you know if you tried to hit record, you
Speaker 1: could not accidentally record over it. Now as most of
Speaker 1: us with a long history of these things. Now, uh,
Speaker 1: you could put a piece of tape over it and
Speaker 1: it would allow you to do this, but you would
Speaker 1: have to actually do something yourself to allow the tape
Speaker 1: to be replaced. So that way you would Let's say,
Speaker 1: let's say that you've got that that Sweating to the
Speaker 1: Oldies eight and you're like, this is not nearly as
Speaker 1: good as my Sweating to the Oldies seven. You know what,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to have this debate with you again.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, anyway you might think I want to
Speaker 1: be able to record over this, and then you would
Speaker 1: use a piece of tape to do that because otherwise,
Speaker 1: like you were saying, it would prevent you from doing
Speaker 1: that excidentally, because there's nothing like the panic you experience
Speaker 1: when you put a tape in and then you realize
Speaker 1: that you accidentally just hit play and record and not
Speaker 1: just play, and you want to and it's a tape
Speaker 1: that you did not want to erase. There's a there's
Speaker 1: a special level of panic. Yes, I'm not sure that
Speaker 1: I have a word for it, but I have definitely
Speaker 1: felt that more than once. Yes, yes, um. It also
Speaker 1: has a VCR also has the ability to read additional
Speaker 1: information about the tape. Uh, if you will, it's metadata,
Speaker 1: it's on the tape itself. Um. That tells the VCR
Speaker 1: some important things like um, uh when we were talking
Speaker 1: about it just a few minutes ago. There there three
Speaker 1: typically three modes that a VHS tape can be played
Speaker 1: in SP, LP and EP. UM. Basically, uh, there we
Speaker 1: won't get into I won't get into that just yet.
Speaker 1: Let's let's but um, you can it tells this information
Speaker 1: is along the tape UM that tells the VCR what
Speaker 1: speed to play the video back at. This is a
Speaker 1: low the control track, and it also UM you know,
Speaker 1: the it also has a sensor the VCR does UM
Speaker 1: that tells it has some clear leader tape UM that
Speaker 1: they put before and after the the brown colored magnetic
Speaker 1: tape that tells it basically, hey, there, you're either at
Speaker 1: the beginning or at the end of the tape. Go
Speaker 1: ahead and prepare to shut down. This is actually start
Speaker 1: the movie. A very simple sensor because all it is
Speaker 1: is trying to detect light. So if the regular tape
Speaker 1: is passing through, it's dark enough so that the light
Speaker 1: does not hit the sensor, and the sensor says, yep,
Speaker 1: it's still good. But then once it gets to the
Speaker 1: clear tape at the end, it says, WHOA got to
Speaker 1: the end of the tape? It actually does not say anything.
Speaker 1: By the way, is there light? No? Is there light? No?
Speaker 1: Is there a light? No? Is there a light? Now?
Speaker 1: I keep hearing voices coming out of my VCO and
Speaker 1: that's a totally different problem and not covered under our podcast.
Speaker 1: But yeah, for the for the most part, opening up
Speaker 1: a VCR, uh, there's not a lot of a glamour
Speaker 1: to it. There are rollers and some pins and pins
Speaker 1: basically being there to hold the cassette in place and
Speaker 1: guide the tape so that it doesn't just you know,
Speaker 1: start snarling on things and then then you've got a
Speaker 1: mess on your hands. The rotating head drum is probably
Speaker 1: the most interesting feature. I mean, first of all, it's
Speaker 1: it's one of the largest parts of the and if
Speaker 1: you if you were to look at one and not yeah,
Speaker 1: and if you were to look at one and not
Speaker 1: know what it was, you might think, my VCR is broken.
Speaker 1: This thing is it's tilted. It's supposed to be like
Speaker 1: that because, like I said, it's it's because of the
Speaker 1: direction of the information being stored on that tape. Uh,
Speaker 1: the whole rotating head thing. Uh, it's called helical scanning
Speaker 1: helical Yeah, because of the way that the information is
Speaker 1: encoded along the the tape. It's almost like a helix. Now. Um,
Speaker 1: we were talking a moment ago about the speeds. Uh.
Speaker 1: The an SP mode that's the highest quality mode that
Speaker 1: have VHS tape can can use, and it uses uh
Speaker 1: it goes by at about one point three one linear
Speaker 1: inches or thirty three point three five millimeters per second UM.
Speaker 1: LP is the medium it allows you. Oh that that's
Speaker 1: a that's not only about two hours. LP runs about
Speaker 1: four hours UM. And in order to do that, it
Speaker 1: runs the tape about uh point sixty six um inches
Speaker 1: per second and uh are linear inches per second and
Speaker 1: uh that's sixteen point seven millimeters per second, and EP
Speaker 1: gives you about six hours on an average cassette UM
Speaker 1: when it's running up at about point four four linear
Speaker 1: inches per second or eleven point one two millimeters per second.
Speaker 1: The thing is, uh, you know, as you increase or
Speaker 1: actually as you decrease the speed, you're getting poorer quality. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which might sound strange too to uh to people who
Speaker 1: are just listening to this and like, wait, what do
Speaker 1: you mean? How how is it that going slower means
Speaker 1: poor quality? And it's because you're using you're using a
Speaker 1: less space to store all that information. Yes, that's the thing.
Speaker 1: Is that deal. If you're if you're going faster, then
Speaker 1: you're using up all that tape to store a smaller
Speaker 1: amount of information then you would be if you're going slower.
Speaker 1: It's it's almost counterintuitive when you first think about it,
Speaker 1: but then when you actually sit there and say, oh wait,
Speaker 1: if I have a piece of paper that's going past
Speaker 1: me at a certain speed and I'm I'm I'm able
Speaker 1: to write really really fast. Uh, you know, it's I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna get as much Um, I'm not gonna get
Speaker 1: as much quality craned in there. It's just weird. Man.
Speaker 1: I sit there and try and think about it, and
Speaker 1: then my brain breaks. Yeah. But no, Yeah, the slower
Speaker 1: it goes the less the lower the quality. It's not
Speaker 1: able to to store as much information and um uh
Speaker 1: as you would if you were running it faster. True.
Speaker 1: And and some VCRs to have a flying a race head,
Speaker 1: which is not what happens when you get really fed
Speaker 1: up because your VCRs open and you fling it across
Speaker 1: the room. Nice. Um the race head that we were
Speaker 1: talking about before, UH found in uh the less expensive
Speaker 1: VCRs is basically just gonna erase the entire tape um.
Speaker 1: But a flying erase head is is you can find
Speaker 1: it on the rotating drum itself, and it actually can
Speaker 1: take individual bands and erase them. And uh that allows
Speaker 1: you to be more precise when you erase material from
Speaker 1: the VCR tape um. Also, if you're going to use
Speaker 1: the two faster speeds. Uh, you're going to need a
Speaker 1: forehead VCR. UM. Again, this is not some sort of mutant. Uh.
Speaker 1: The sp tape only needs two heads, but a forehead
Speaker 1: VCR can run the other speeds. Basically, the other heads uh,
Speaker 1: play heads need to be there so that they can
Speaker 1: run the other speeds. Um. So it's just one of
Speaker 1: those technological things that needs to take place in order
Speaker 1: to do that. But if you've ever wondered what that
Speaker 1: meant when you saw it on on the cards, because
Speaker 1: because you aren't going to see it now at your
Speaker 1: local department store, I can tell you, um, you know
Speaker 1: that that was That was one of the marks of
Speaker 1: a more sophisticated VCR because you had more flexibility to
Speaker 1: record other other speeds with that. And there are multiple
Speaker 1: standards for encoding information onto cassettes. And anyone who has
Speaker 1: tried to bring back a tape from another country into
Speaker 1: their home country and then realize that doesn't play on
Speaker 1: their machine has experienced this joy. Because the VHS tapes
Speaker 1: from from various countries tend to be the same size.
Speaker 1: I mean physically, there doesn't appear to be anything different
Speaker 1: about them. It's convenient, right, they don't have to make
Speaker 1: a new size cassette, right, But the the saves money.
Speaker 1: The encoding process is different, and the playback process is different.
Speaker 1: The speeds are different and uh, and they're not compatible.
Speaker 1: So we could lead to a flying race head. So
Speaker 1: our folks overhead, our friends in in in the UK
Speaker 1: they used the the Powell standard PL which was also
Speaker 1: very popular throughout Europe and other countries as well, and
Speaker 1: then the United States and then a few other countries
Speaker 1: and cluing Japan in TSC was the standard. And these again,
Speaker 1: we're not compatible. So if you went over, like if
Speaker 1: I hopped on the plane and flew over to Old
Speaker 1: Blighty and decided that I wanted to pick up the
Speaker 1: full series of Doctor Who from the classic era and
Speaker 1: then come back and watch them, I would be very
Speaker 1: much disappointed when I tried to play those in my
Speaker 1: my United States VCR because it would not play back.
Speaker 1: You would really need to buy a VCR there and
Speaker 1: bring it back with you, and then possibly adapters as well. Yes,
Speaker 1: and and and and then eventually someone would show up
Speaker 1: at my door and asked me if I had my
Speaker 1: television license, and I'd say, why do you talking about Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm sure customs would love that they're to bring back
Speaker 1: a trunk full of electronics and plastic. Yeah. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: they didn't say a thing when I brought back the
Speaker 1: police call box, so UM, I thought the police call
Speaker 1: box brought you back. Let's rune a bypass customs. I
Speaker 1: just got on another list. That was a joke. But
Speaker 1: all of those things were jokes. So yeah, the different standards,
Speaker 1: but that's that's why they're not compatible. Um. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: that control track also holds the information necessary like usually
Speaker 1: the tracking is is fairly automatic. You know that that
Speaker 1: tape over time warps. Yes, you can stretch. UM. The
Speaker 1: more you know, you're putting we think about it, you're
Speaker 1: putting stress on it. You. UM, let's say you uh
Speaker 1: fast forward and rewind the tape over and over again,
Speaker 1: and then there's that sudden stop. I remember, UM, I
Speaker 1: got a the VCR I have now, which is thankfully
Speaker 1: still working. UM has a mechanism in it to determine
Speaker 1: when it's getting close to the end of the tape,
Speaker 1: and it starts to slow down when you're rewinding or
Speaker 1: fast forwarding the entire tape. UM to prevent it from
Speaker 1: getting that sudden stop, which could potentially make the tape snap. Yes,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know the tape is the tape is
Speaker 1: very thin. It's made of essentially it's plastic, which is
Speaker 1: known to stretch over time. Uh and uh yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean you've spent the money on a movie or or
Speaker 1: something a show that let's say you've recorded your wedding
Speaker 1: or you noted it and you don't own it. Yes,
Speaker 1: be kind please rewind. Um. So yeah, I mean you
Speaker 1: want to take care of the tape because otherwise, uh,
Speaker 1: it could get out of whack. That's um if you
Speaker 1: have to mess with the tracking control. You know about
Speaker 1: this because the tracking basically controls how the tape is
Speaker 1: reading it. When you start to see uh static little
Speaker 1: lines in the in the video playback, you realize that
Speaker 1: the tape has started to warp or stretch. It's not
Speaker 1: quite aligned properly, so the the drumheads having trouble reading
Speaker 1: the information. So with the tracking. Some of some of
Speaker 1: the VCRs, especially the later ones, have automatic tracking, where
Speaker 1: it just a text that that's the things are not
Speaker 1: quite right and it will start making adjustments. Others have
Speaker 1: manual tracking. Others have manual tracking where you have to
Speaker 1: change a little dial or whatever and try and get
Speaker 1: it as closely aligned as possible so that you have
Speaker 1: the best possible picture. I remember doing that a lot
Speaker 1: with stuff that we had taped off television back when
Speaker 1: I was a kid. Yeah. Yeah, Well, especially if you
Speaker 1: use it over and over again, the more the more
Speaker 1: likely you uh, the more you use it, the more
Speaker 1: likely it is to you start to stretch and and
Speaker 1: uh and warp. So well, let's talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about what has happened to the VCR and VHS. DVDs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was a big one. Okay, Yeah, so DVDs when
Speaker 1: they premiered, well, first, it wasn't a huge blow to
Speaker 1: VHS at all. Well, for the same reasons we were
Speaker 1: talking about earlier in the podcast. They were the machines
Speaker 1: were expensive, DVDs were expensive, and there weren't nearly as
Speaker 1: many I mean, you know, you could find the odds
Speaker 1: of finding a popular movie in those days on VHS
Speaker 1: pretty high, but finding that same film on DVD could
Speaker 1: be really a challenge because there just wasn't as much
Speaker 1: content available and that form factor at that point, so
Speaker 1: stop DVD players from selling very quickly. Now they had
Speaker 1: a pretty relatively fast ramp up. I mean it. I
Speaker 1: do remember that it was a couple of years before
Speaker 1: I got a DVD player because they were they were,
Speaker 1: you know, luxury items for a long time. But you
Speaker 1: did start to notice things like if you went to
Speaker 1: one of those rental stores like Blockbuster, you started noticing
Speaker 1: that the VHS section was getting smaller and the DVD
Speaker 1: section was getting larger. Same thing in retail stores. You
Speaker 1: would go to a retail store that would sell movies,
Speaker 1: and you notice that the vhs would get smaller and smaller.
Speaker 1: But DVDs started to really take over. Uh. Well, I
Speaker 1: mean DVDs have some advantages. You know, there is no
Speaker 1: warping or stretching. Well, I mean there's there's the possibility
Speaker 1: that you could scratch them. Um, but even even depending
Speaker 1: on how they scratch, they may not they may not
Speaker 1: be damaged enough to affect the playback significantly. Plus you
Speaker 1: have a lot more control of over where you can
Speaker 1: start and end. The resolution was far better than vhs.
Speaker 1: You can you can watch them in computers and even
Speaker 1: include extras that allow you to interact with them. Uh
Speaker 1: you know, games and other things tracks, yeah, and and
Speaker 1: things like that that you couldn't do with a with
Speaker 1: a videotape. Yeah, if I ever wanted to, uh to
Speaker 1: watch a movie like let's say Indiana Jones and Raises
Speaker 1: the Lost Ark. I never wanted to watch Rails Lost
Speaker 1: Ark and and have a commentary track while I was
Speaker 1: watching it on VHS. I had to kidnap Steven Spielberg
Speaker 1: and and tie him up and have him sit next
Speaker 1: to me as I watched it. And that only works once, folks.
Speaker 1: Thanks to the restraining order, he won't be doing that again. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They they recognize you even if you dramatically change your look.
Speaker 1: It's amazing. Steven Spielberg has this ability if he does
Speaker 1: not forget a face. Yeah. So, Uh, DVDs really became
Speaker 1: popular quickly enough that it started to put a It
Speaker 1: started to clue the movie studios in. And of course
Speaker 1: at this point they were a little less likely to
Speaker 1: be upset about the DVDs, which were Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: when you buy a DVD from the store, you can't
Speaker 1: record over it like you could with a VHS tape. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, all it takes a little piece of tape,
Speaker 1: ladies and gentlemen. For a long time. Uh, the the
Speaker 1: ability to record to DVD at all was even greater
Speaker 1: luxury than a DVD player. Yeah, so they you know,
Speaker 1: the movie studios, I don't remember them making as big
Speaker 1: a fuss about DVD as they did for some of
Speaker 1: the other stuff, and so, uh they people adopted it
Speaker 1: fairly quickly. It still took a while, though, before VHS
Speaker 1: started really tapering off in popularity. In two thousand three,
Speaker 1: that was when DVD rentals began to finally outpace VHS
Speaker 1: rentals and rental agencies. And in two thousand five, DVD
Speaker 1: sales hit twenty two billion with a B dollars and
Speaker 1: VHS was down to one point five billion with a
Speaker 1: B dollars. So the writing was on the wall at
Speaker 1: that point. But the real blow came in two thousand eight. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's when j v C, which if you recall, was
Speaker 1: the company that introduced the VHS format, stopped producing standalone
Speaker 1: VCRs and that was that prompted a lot of people
Speaker 1: to say that two thousand and eight marked the death
Speaker 1: of the VCR. Yeah, although I think it's as dead
Speaker 1: as any of these other technologies are, like, uh, the
Speaker 1: vinal turntable, UM, the laser disc and some of these
Speaker 1: other the other for us there. And the thing is,
Speaker 1: I mean you've you told me too before the podcast
Speaker 1: that you have some movies that you have on on
Speaker 1: VHS cassettes that you can't find on dv Blood Salvage,
Speaker 1: it's been dead too long, so it's not available on DVD.
Speaker 1: So there you go. Um, there are reasons that that
Speaker 1: you that people are still going to want to make
Speaker 1: them available. Of course, libraries and other people who have
Speaker 1: uh large who spent money on these have to find
Speaker 1: a way to either convert them or maintain the equipment
Speaker 1: long enough to keep it out there. So uh, I
Speaker 1: think it's um, it's sort of turned into a zombie
Speaker 1: technology at this point. But I just hadn't realized how
Speaker 1: far I had gone until a few days ago when
Speaker 1: I went to find one. Yeah, I was thinking I'll
Speaker 1: probably be able to get one for twenty dollars or so.
Speaker 1: Seen it recorded that the last major supplier of VHS
Speaker 1: tapes in the United States shifted its final truckload in
Speaker 1: December eight. Wow. Well see that it shows you how
Speaker 1: long it's been since I've tried to find a movie
Speaker 1: from h Yeah and well, and a couple of films
Speaker 1: have come out on VHS, but it's been more like
Speaker 1: a gimmick, like especially films that are uh kind of
Speaker 1: an homage to to certain genres that were really that
Speaker 1: came to prominence in the nineteen eighties, which you know,
Speaker 1: that's sort of the same thing we saw with bands
Speaker 1: and vinyl for a while, because the Vinyl was kind
Speaker 1: of a gimmick like saying, hey, look, we're this cool
Speaker 1: independent group and we're supporting this what some would call
Speaker 1: obsolete form factor. But you know, although Vinyl managed to
Speaker 1: to have a second gasp, I'm not sure that VHS will.
Speaker 1: And the big reason behind that DVDs definitely were a
Speaker 1: blow to VCRs. Digital video recorders was like that was
Speaker 1: the death blow. The DVR was a death blow to
Speaker 1: the VCR because now you had DVDs where you could
Speaker 1: get a better quality picture and experience from the content providers,
Speaker 1: and you have DVRs, which that's what took care of
Speaker 1: the time shifting element of VCRs. Yes, definitely, because I
Speaker 1: actually had um VHS or VCR Plus, which was this
Speaker 1: technology that people came out with that would allow you
Speaker 1: too if you knew a code and your VCR was
Speaker 1: equipped with it, you could enter that code in your
Speaker 1: VCR and it would pick the right channel on the
Speaker 1: right date. Of course, some my VCR didn't have the
Speaker 1: ability to change channels like my DVR does because it's
Speaker 1: built in so it can change that. It knows what
Speaker 1: channel to change it too, it knows when, and I
Speaker 1: can subscribe to an entire series, so I can say
Speaker 1: I want you to record this show which comes on
Speaker 1: Tuesdays at eight, and the network makes a decision, no,
Speaker 1: we're going to move that to Thursdays at nine thirty. Well,
Speaker 1: the DVR can handle that. And again there's meta data
Speaker 1: there that the DVR can follow. I can say I
Speaker 1: want to record new episodes only don't record reruns, and
Speaker 1: it goes, Okay, this one's a rerun, I'm skipping it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: whereas your v c R would just be like, Nope,
Speaker 1: I'm going to record at this channel at this time
Speaker 1: because that's what he told me to Yeah. And it's
Speaker 1: it's so much more. The DVR is so much more flexible,
Speaker 1: much more versatile that then a VHS recorder is. And
Speaker 1: it's just once between the two of those. Once the
Speaker 1: move to digital happened, VHS really had no hope. And
Speaker 1: then on top of that if that weren't enough, even
Speaker 1: the DVR at this point I think is starting to
Speaker 1: have a bit of a slowdown. You know, people aren't
Speaker 1: buying DVRs as as frequently as they were before, and
Speaker 1: part of that is because the time shifting has gone
Speaker 1: even more dramatic with services like Netflix Incidant or Hulu
Speaker 1: Plus or Hulu Hulu in general, or the Amazon Video
Speaker 1: where people now have access to huge libraries of content
Speaker 1: that don't require a DVR necessarily. A lot of them
Speaker 1: have access to it through stuff they already own, video
Speaker 1: game consoles or just on on a computer. So we've
Speaker 1: even seen the DVR have a meteoric eyes and then
Speaker 1: I think I wouldn't say that it's gone or anything,
Speaker 1: but stuff, I think it's in decline. I think companies
Speaker 1: like TiVo are finding it harder to make products that
Speaker 1: consumers are finding really compelling that they feel they have
Speaker 1: to go out and get because the the internet delivery
Speaker 1: method has taken off pretty dramatically over the last two years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't think they'll they'll die out like some of
Speaker 1: the other technologies simply because of well, actually live TV
Speaker 1: um things like awards shows and sports and things like
Speaker 1: that that, um, you you won't be able to get
Speaker 1: later on from one of the streaming shows you want
Speaker 1: to watch. Uh, um, let's say the the Oscars. She
Speaker 1: wouldn't be able to You're not gonna say, watch the
Speaker 1: Oscars from last week on Netflix. Yeah, those of us
Speaker 1: on the East Coast are sick of the Oscars coming
Speaker 1: on so late at night for us. Yeah, it's the
Speaker 1: afternoon for everyone in California. But for us, we're like,
Speaker 1: can you move it along? I have work tomorrow. It
Speaker 1: But you're right, like the standalone stuff, it's it's it's
Speaker 1: not a thing anymore. It's something you sort of expect, um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's it's kind of amazing that VCRs really
Speaker 1: have moved off the map. I guess the store shelf
Speaker 1: such a it had such a huge impact on consumer behavior,
Speaker 1: on the industry itself. I mean, it was one of
Speaker 1: those pieces of technology that really was a game changer,
Speaker 1: and that multiple I don't really care, Yeah exactly, yes,
Speaker 1: And so you know, to see it kind of disappear now,
Speaker 1: it's again a reminder that just because something is popular
Speaker 1: doesn't mean it always will be that way. That's right.
Speaker 1: It's it's a lesson that we've had to learn multiple times,
Speaker 1: and yet people still forget about it, and they'll still say,
Speaker 1: oh no, I can't see it. I cannot imagine a
Speaker 1: time when this will not be important. Well, there may
Speaker 1: come a time, is all I'm saying. And with that
Speaker 1: in mind, the only thing I think you can count
Speaker 1: on is that tech stuff will always be amazing popular
Speaker 1: and you should always listen to it, depending on what
Speaker 1: format it's and uh, no matter we transcend, we transcend formats,
Speaker 1: we transcend platforms, we are freaking amazing. All right, So
Speaker 1: just you can in fact that I think that's gonna
Speaker 1: be our new slogan, tech stuff. We are freaking amazing. Um.
Speaker 1: So yeah, you know you heard it from me first.
Speaker 1: All right, guys, that is our story about the VCR
Speaker 1: and UH and how it works and it's impact on
Speaker 1: technology in general. If you guys have a particular type
Speaker 1: of technology you would like us to talk about, or
Speaker 1: any other kind of topic in general, let us know.
Speaker 1: You can contact us through Facebook or Twitter or handle
Speaker 1: at both of those it's text stuff hs W, or
Speaker 1: you can send us an email and our address is
Speaker 1: tech stuff at Discovery dot com. And Chris and I
Speaker 1: will tell to you again really soon. Be sure to
Speaker 1: check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Few.
Speaker 1: Sure join House Staffork Staff as we explore the most
Speaker 1: promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The Houstuff Works iPhone
Speaker 1: app has arrived. Download it today on iTunes, brought to
Speaker 1: you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready,
Speaker 1: are you