Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I am your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer
Speaker 1: with How Stuff Works, and I heart radio and I
Speaker 1: love all things tech. And it is time, my friends,
Speaker 1: for a classic episode. And we look back into the
Speaker 1: archives of tech Stuff and the more than one thousand
Speaker 1: episodes that we have recorded, and we pick out the gems,
Speaker 1: polished them up, and serve them up to you, because
Speaker 1: I bet most of you weren't listening way back in
Speaker 1: two thousand twelve. That's when this episode originally aired March twelve,
Speaker 1: two thousand twelve, is called tech Stuff sets its VCR.
Speaker 1: It's time to talk about video cassette recorders. So Chris
Speaker 1: Pilette and I sit down chat about it. I hope
Speaker 1: you enjoy today. We're going to talk about the video
Speaker 1: cassette recorder. Why, Chris, why would we ever talk about
Speaker 1: the video cassette recorder, a technology that is almost forgotten
Speaker 1: about today. Yeah, that's the problem. Uh yeah. A while back,
Speaker 1: uh my father uh VCR he he had it uh
Speaker 1: plugged in and during a summer thunderstorm or as we
Speaker 1: 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 well 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 VCRY.
Speaker 1: It would be to fix this one, which is very
Speaker 1: likely true, which is which is often true with electronics.
Speaker 1: So I recycled it. And my my father has a
Speaker 1: lot of old videotapes that he wants to be able
Speaker 1: to watch. I thought, oh, I'm gonna go get him
Speaker 1: a VCR. I'll just go down to the department store
Speaker 1: and pick one up. As it turns out, no, I won't,
Speaker 1: because you can't find them anymore on most store shelves, um,
Speaker 1: even even electronics stores. Yeah, they they If you find one,
Speaker 1: you're you're not going to have your choice your Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, well, one or two maybe, but it's not
Speaker 1: like it was where like say you go look for
Speaker 1: a smartphone, you have a display of smartphones to choose from,
Speaker 1: you have different carriers to choose from. Even even looking
Speaker 1: for something like a Blu ray player or even a
Speaker 1: DVD player, there's they're a handful of them to choose from.
Speaker 1: If not, uh, you know, a pretty good sized display.
Speaker 1: But where that used to be the case with VCRs, uh,
Speaker 1: it is not so much the case. And I was thinking,
Speaker 1: he you know, I'm there, so they're so disposable. I'm
Speaker 1: sure there's gonna be a tiny little VCR that I
Speaker 1: can I can get. It doesn't have to be Hi fi,
Speaker 1: you know. No, now 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 see if we can uncover what happened to it.
Speaker 1: Um but I think first we sort of need to
Speaker 1: get it back into the technology. And uh, it's something
Speaker 1: that again, uh is something that I thought if it
Speaker 1: went back to a certain point maybe in the early eighties, uh,
Speaker 1: mid seventies, but it really goes back, uh decades before
Speaker 1: into the nineteen fifties. Really. Yeah, Now to really set
Speaker 1: the scene back at this time, the way that that
Speaker 1: you would capture images was using film. Oh yeah, and
Speaker 1: we've talked about film quite a bit in this podcast
Speaker 1: even recently, where we talked about, yeah, to use using
Speaker 1: a chemical reaction where exposing a a a film that's
Speaker 1: coded in chemicals to light activates those chemicals. You then
Speaker 1: process that film with other chemicals to make a negative image,
Speaker 1: not one that is you know, bad or ugly, but
Speaker 1: as negative in this anyway you've heard those podcasts so
Speaker 1: so negative. Right. So even capturing film, motion picture film
Speaker 1: was done through this way. And the way you would
Speaker 1: capture sound, as you would use through various means a
Speaker 1: magnetic tape, and in the way motion picture film was
Speaker 1: working was that you would have a strip of magnetic
Speaker 1: tape that ran down the side of the film that
Speaker 1: was arranged in such a way so that the sound
Speaker 1: you were hearing and the images you were seeing were synchronized.
Speaker 1: So someone came up came up with the idea and said, hey,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, we were putting sound on magnetic tape. Yes,
Speaker 1: what if we put pictures on magnetic tape too? And
Speaker 1: that became the quest to create the the what would
Speaker 1: become the VCR. But really at first it was just
Speaker 1: getting video onto magnetic tape. And there were a lot
Speaker 1: of challenges associated with that. Yeah, one of the big
Speaker 1: ones being that that video information, the the image information,
Speaker 1: took up a lot more space than audio information did.
Speaker 1: So you had to find a new way to encode
Speaker 1: that information and put it onto tape so it wasn't
Speaker 1: going to take up too much space. Otherwise what you
Speaker 1: would have is a mile long tape that would be
Speaker 1: maybe oh a couple of minutes worth of video because
Speaker 1: it had it required so much space to record all
Speaker 1: that information. Well, people shouldn't be too terribly unfamiliar with this,
Speaker 1: this problem. I mean, uh, we deal with that every
Speaker 1: day in the internet. Uh, you know, broadband connections can
Speaker 1: give you full motion video. You can uh play games
Speaker 1: with very low latency where you can count on being
Speaker 1: able to round a corner and get a shot off
Speaker 1: at your opponent before uh, you know, you you freeze
Speaker 1: and then find out that you died because there wasn't
Speaker 1: anything you could do. Um, we have the same we
Speaker 1: have the same problem with uh, well, with DSL connections.
Speaker 1: You know that the voice uses a certain amount of
Speaker 1: of the uh telephone line's capacity and that's how they
Speaker 1: use uh, the telephone mine to carry the Internet is
Speaker 1: is there's this unused capacity and that's how um, that's
Speaker 1: how DSL works, and you know, and kind of simplified. Sure, um,
Speaker 1: you know, but anybody who's looked at an audio cassette
Speaker 1: and a video cassette knows can see exactly what you're
Speaker 1: talking about, Jonathan, because uh, an audio cassette is uses
Speaker 1: a much narrower piece of tape um than a video
Speaker 1: cassette can. But there are other challenges to I mean, uh,
Speaker 1: it sort of depends on how much video you want
Speaker 1: to capture. A video cassette can be recorded in a
Speaker 1: number of different quality levels and to fit when once
Speaker 1: you've standardized on a cassette size, uh, and then you
Speaker 1: start adding time to it. Oh, well, this one can
Speaker 1: do eight hours instead of six hours. If you recorded
Speaker 1: at the correct quality, then you start having to talk
Speaker 1: about the tape's thickness, because the tape won't fit in
Speaker 1: the cassette, won't fit in the machine if you leave
Speaker 1: the tape at the same size, and it won't work
Speaker 1: the same way inside the cassette. So something has to give.
Speaker 1: But we could talk about the mechanics of that in
Speaker 1: a moment. We were going to talk about the history
Speaker 1: and so back in the nineteen yes, yes, and before
Speaker 1: that of course, uh as as pretty much everyone knows
Speaker 1: we have live TV. Um you know, you burps and
Speaker 1: gaffs and things that fall over and all. You might
Speaker 1: have a a famous Hollywood actor think that what he's
Speaker 1: doing is a walk through rehearsal instead of the actual,
Speaker 1: uh the actual program which did have been with I
Speaker 1: think it was a Lawn Cheney Jr. Really yeah, he
Speaker 1: was supposed to apparently, Um Mr Cheney was somewhat the
Speaker 1: worse for wear because he had had a little had
Speaker 1: a little little drinking pooh and thought that he was
Speaker 1: going in for a rehearsal for something that he was doing,
Speaker 1: and there was a fight scene and in the fight
Speaker 1: scene he's supposed to pick up a chair and it's
Speaker 1: breakaway chair slamming across the back of someone and knocked
Speaker 1: them unconscious. He, thinking it was rehearsal, not realizing it
Speaker 1: was going out live, picked up the chair, went through
Speaker 1: the motion as if he was going to swing the chair,
Speaker 1: then very gingerly set the chair back down where it
Speaker 1: was supposed to be. And I actually have this on
Speaker 1: DVD somewhere, so I'll have to see if I can
Speaker 1: dig that up. But anyway, yeah, it was live TV.
Speaker 1: It wasn't It wasn't something that people could mess with
Speaker 1: and edit things out, and uh, you know, it went
Speaker 1: out warts and all. Well. A couple of guys working
Speaker 1: for AMPEX, which is again a familiar name for people
Speaker 1: who've worked with National Recording Equipment UM, named Charles Ginsberg
Speaker 1: and Ray Dolby UH worked on the first commercial real
Speaker 1: to real video tape recorder, and that would be UH.
Speaker 1: It looks very similar to a real to real audio recorder.
Speaker 1: This was around nine six, and UH completely revolutionized the
Speaker 1: TV industry because at this point you could record a
Speaker 1: TV broadcast to be played at a later time. So
Speaker 1: if you had something like um Mr Mr Cheney's gaff,
Speaker 1: uh happened and you know, you could go back and
Speaker 1: do it again if you needed to. UM. But before
Speaker 1: that everything was live and this this really changed things
Speaker 1: for the industry. Of course, these machines were were not inexpensive. Uh,
Speaker 1: they were not tiny as they later became. UM. And
Speaker 1: so it was really sort of the exclusive world of uh,
Speaker 1: you know, professional TV people who are using the kind
Speaker 1: of equipment and that would that would remain the case
Speaker 1: for decades. Yeah, I mean in uh, it was ninety
Speaker 1: nine when Sony came up with the first inexpensive VCR.
Speaker 1: Expensive again meaning industry not consumer. Yeah. In nineteen seventy one,
Speaker 1: Sony had the umatic system right right, U M A
Speaker 1: T I C. And that was almost exclusively restricted to
Speaker 1: commercial use. Yeah. They used the wider tape and had
Speaker 1: had the advantage of being very high quality. UM. But
Speaker 1: it was it was much larger than what we use today. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know those of us who still have working videotape players. UM.
Speaker 1: But it was it was really the mid seventies when
Speaker 1: the equipment became inexpensive enough. Yeah. Yeah, I actually have
Speaker 1: something kind of fun fun to say before we get
Speaker 1: the mid Yeah, in ninete, this is the first time
Speaker 1: we have a consumer video cassette recorder of this is
Speaker 1: not VHS or BETA right, it's it's using the same
Speaker 1: basic technology but different format. So the very first consumer
Speaker 1: VCR from my research was a Phillips Model fifteen hundred,
Speaker 1: which came out in the United Kingdom, of all places,
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy two. Well, Phillips is a British company.
Speaker 1: Our pals 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 yeah, they
Speaker 1: managed to get their hands on one in nineteen seventy two,
Speaker 1: and it cost the princely some of six hundred forty
Speaker 1: nine pounds in nineteen seventy two. And I know what
Speaker 1: you're thinking, Chris. You're thinking, gush, Jonathan, how much would
Speaker 1: that be in today's dollars? So you would have to
Speaker 1: convert pounds into dollars and then used an inflation calculator.
Speaker 1: Who has time to do that, will, sir? I tell
Speaker 1: you I had time to do that this morning. Anyone
Speaker 1: with Wolf from Alpha, which will do it for you automatically.
Speaker 1: I didn't use Wolf from PA. So the answer Wolf
Speaker 1: from Alpha gives may be different from the one I have,
Speaker 1: but based upon the historical currency conversion website, sixty nine
Speaker 1: pounds in nineteen two would be equivalent to nine thousand,
Speaker 1: eighty seven dollars today. So just shy of ten grand
Speaker 1: the very first consumer video cassette recorder. Meanwhile, Chris is
Speaker 1: is looking at Wolf from Alpha as we record this
Speaker 1: 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? Okay, sixty nine? That's good radio right here? Oh?
Speaker 1: I know it is. Well, that's the thing, is it?
Speaker 1: It shows you how expensive this device was at the time.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's not something that everybody had in there,
Speaker 1: no tin grand 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: or some listener will be very helpfully let us know anyhow.
Speaker 1: So um, so, yeah, it wasn't until the mid seventies
Speaker 1: when VHS made its debut. Yeah. Actually, uh, in well,
Speaker 1: in Japan it came out in seventy six, but in
Speaker 1: the United States we had to wait till seventy seven
Speaker 1: before it came over here. And before that Sony had
Speaker 1: come out with a competing standard, the Beta standard. Yes,
Speaker 1: so Beta had been on the market for a year
Speaker 1: before VHS managed to come to store shelves. UH. And
Speaker 1: so there were there was the videotape wars, which I
Speaker 1: think we've actually talked about in a previous episode we have,
Speaker 1: and and of course Beta short, as someone else will
Speaker 1: 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 or
Speaker 1: was used for a long time in um TV work,
Speaker 1: even after it failed as a standard that you would
Speaker 1: see on the h store shelves at your local video
Speaker 1: rental place. Right. The biggest differentiator between the two, at
Speaker 1: least early on that size, was that well it Beta
Speaker 1: had a slightly better resolution than VHS, but only slightly.
Speaker 1: I mean, the difference wasn't as dramatic as say VHS
Speaker 1: to DVD, but it was there. It did have a
Speaker 1: higher quality image and also they could only record up
Speaker 1: to two hours, and VHS the big thing about that
Speaker 1: was they could record up to four hours, so that
Speaker 1: that really helped push VHS over Beta, even though since
Speaker 1: Beta had been on the market for a year they
Speaker 1: had managed to bring their prices down, so when VHS
Speaker 1: 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 v C. Yes, and that's also
Speaker 1: going to be important in a little bit. But j
Speaker 1: v C the first model they introduced in the United
Speaker 1: States was the hr Dash thirty three hundred, which cost
Speaker 1: one thousand dollars in nineteen seventy, which in today's money
Speaker 1: three thousand, five fifty five dollars. Yeah, that's a that's
Speaker 1: a healthy chunk of change to drop on the v
Speaker 1: C R. Yeah. And it's it's amazing too because a
Speaker 1: lot of these machines were top loaders. I remember that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you'd topped the door open, slide the cassette in, and
Speaker 1: then pushed the top of the door down back into
Speaker 1: the video play. I had one of those. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: this was you know, it's interesting to think of that
Speaker 1: because I think the last time I actually went shopping
Speaker 1: for a v c R, I was just looking for
Speaker 1: for one to because I've got tapes I wanted to
Speaker 1: be able to play them. This was years ago, but
Speaker 1: I remember running across models that were like thirty or
Speaker 1: forty dollars. So to think of it as being almost
Speaker 1: well thirty bucks in today's money back then, Uh, that's
Speaker 1: kind of kind of mind blowing right there. And of course, uh,
Speaker 1: you might say, okay, so what happened between nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: six and nineteen seventy six, Uh, well, one of the
Speaker 1: there were there were several things that happened. Of course
Speaker 1: that like all technology, it seems like people find out
Speaker 1: better ways to achieve the same effects. So you know,
Speaker 1: 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. There was
Speaker 1: also something else that that is common with this kind
Speaker 1: of technology, and there were people that just didn't want
Speaker 1: VCRs on on people's home entertainment shelves. Are you talking
Speaker 1: about organizations like the Motion Picture Association of America. Yes, yeah,
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? Oh,
Speaker 1: but what but what? But what happens I ask you
Speaker 1: when when your favorite one of your favorite movies comes
Speaker 1: on on the local station, you could record it yourself
Speaker 1: and then never have to go see it again. You
Speaker 1: could watch it again any time you want it. Yeah
Speaker 1: that's not cool. Yeah, So these were real arguments that
Speaker 1: were brought up against it. That was one of the
Speaker 1: reasons why it took a while for this stuff to
Speaker 1: get to market, which because there was a big resistance
Speaker 1: on the part of the content providers. So it seems
Speaker 1: like that happens every time there's something that's one of
Speaker 1: these revolutions in technology. If this episode we're all about
Speaker 1: digital video recorders, it would be the same story. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or audio cassettessettes. Really any any time you get to
Speaker 1: any kind of medium where you're permanently putting something down. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there there are people who are saying, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: how are we going to make money now? Well? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that it gave rise to uh to these industries.
Speaker 1: They were able to record it the first time, and
Speaker 1: then they could show it to you or play it
Speaker 1: for you any other time for a fee. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: were had. They were losing their money. Two major industries
Speaker 1: popped up because of this. You had the rental industry. Yes,
Speaker 1: so companies like Blockbuster and all the other rental agencies
Speaker 1: out there that could rent out videotapes. They would not
Speaker 1: exist without this. And then secondly, you had just the
Speaker 1: home theater market industry. People who were purchased seeing tapes
Speaker 1: so that they could own these movies that they loved
Speaker 1: 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 they reverse
Speaker 1: their decisions. Oh now I get it, and they made
Speaker 1: stupid amounts of money on this. I remember buying UH
Speaker 1: movies movies when they first came out on video cassette.
Speaker 1: They were exorbitant eighty dollars for a film. Well, and
Speaker 1: in a lot of cases that was because those movies
Speaker 1: were priced for rental agencies, so that you would have
Speaker 1: a company like Blockbuster. I always use that one because
Speaker 1: that's the one that most people are familiar with. But
Speaker 1: Blockbuster would say, all right, we'll pay a hundred dollars
Speaker 1: per uh copy of this film, and then we'll make
Speaker 1: get 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's 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. So all right,
Speaker 1: So the VHS has been on the market for just
Speaker 1: four years or so. In VHS made up seventy of
Speaker 1: all video cassette sales by then Beta had dropped down
Speaker 1: to and it was all VHS from there on out
Speaker 1: until really the late ninety nineties, and it didn't really
Speaker 1: start dropping off until the two thousand's. But we'll get
Speaker 1: into 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 uh uh
Speaker 1: you know three quarter for the television industry, UM three
Speaker 1: quarter inch UM for VHS. They're 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 talk 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 cooled
Speaker 1: on something by accident. Um. So it was very wide
Speaker 1: of the people who made these cassettes to build in
Speaker 1: some protections. It's got a little door and if you
Speaker 1: hit a cassette, if you hit the little button springloaded button,
Speaker 1: you can pull the door open and actually look at
Speaker 1: the tape. Um. But it's got you know, two reels
Speaker 1: that the tape starts on one side, moves to the
Speaker 1: other side, but it's the cassette also has some features
Speaker 1: to to prevent that from being done casually. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: some springloaded uh brakes on there that have to be
Speaker 1: engaged in order for them to release the tape. And
Speaker 1: the VCR actually has a little pin or a pair
Speaker 1: of pins really that that insert into the bottom of
Speaker 1: the tape that releases that spring loaded brake. Otherwise it's
Speaker 1: much more difficult. If you've ever tried to manually wind
Speaker 1: a VHS tape, you realize this isn't moving very easily
Speaker 1: at all, it doesn't work like an audio cassette where
Speaker 1: you can take a pencil and yeah and rewindedly winded back,
Speaker 1: like especially if if the tape had come out a
Speaker 1: little bit and yeah, boy, I've had fun with those.
Speaker 1: Um So, Also, the the information that's 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 it's
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 in and you can only write
Speaker 1: one line from left to right. You can't you can't
Speaker 1: go back down underneath after you get to the end.
Speaker 1: There's a limited amount of information you can write on there.
Speaker 1: But let's say that instead of writing it to directly
Speaker 1: left to right, you tilt the paper. Okay, so you're
Speaker 1: writing at a diagonal from the let's say the the
Speaker 1: the top the bottom edge to the top edge, you know,
Speaker 1: and at a slant right, all right, And then you
Speaker 1: write one little bit of information, and then you go
Speaker 1: take a little space and you write again in a
Speaker 1: diagonal from the from the bottom edge to the top edge. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then you go a little bit further down you
Speaker 1: write from the bottom edge to the top edge. And
Speaker 1: again you're doing this at a at an angle, so
Speaker 1: it's maybe like a forty five degree angle across the paper.
Speaker 1: You can fit more information on that same sheet of
Speaker 1: paper by recording it at that slant. That's true. That's
Speaker 1: what is going on with VHS tapes. The the information
Speaker 1: is recorded at a bias on the tape. It's not
Speaker 1: a direct horizontal line of information. It's several diagonal lines
Speaker 1: of information arranged in a horizontal row. And the way
Speaker 1: the the VCR copes with this is that the device
Speaker 1: that reads and writes to the uh, to the tape
Speaker 1: itself is tilted. It's it's it's not uh, it's not
Speaker 1: perfectly vertical. That the drumhead that does this. It's actually
Speaker 1: at a tilted an angle so that it can read
Speaker 1: and write this information at this angle. Well, sorry, guys,
Speaker 1: this is John from two thousand nineteen. Looks like I
Speaker 1: accidentally hit pause on the VCR right there. Well, while
Speaker 1: I try and figure out how this remote works, let's
Speaker 1: take a quick break and thank our sponsor. So I
Speaker 1: guess we need to kind of dive into what a
Speaker 1: 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, the little
Speaker 1: protective door lifts up, the brakes are released, and a
Speaker 1: couple of of guides which are inserted behind the tape
Speaker 1: inside the cassette itself when you push it down. It's
Speaker 1: part of the VCR. These two guides pop up inside
Speaker 1: the tape the cassette itself behind the tape the door
Speaker 1: releases up and the guides pull the tape like a
Speaker 1: ribbon up to the innerds of the VCR itself. So
Speaker 1: if you've ever popped a tape in and you hear
Speaker 1: that that mechanical were as it as a tape gets
Speaker 1: ready to play, that's what it is. It's the the uh,
Speaker 1: the mechanics inside engaging that tape. And then there's that
Speaker 1: that big drum that you said was at an angle, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the rotating head drum. This is this is the all
Speaker 1: the visual information stuff is all based off of this drum.
Speaker 1: The ones I've seen are silver in color and it's
Speaker 1: it's large. You can it's probably the easily most identifiable
Speaker 1: part of the inside of the VCR. I would say
Speaker 1: this is the piece that that rotates and will drive
Speaker 1: the helps drive the the progression of the tape from
Speaker 1: one reel to the other reel. There are other rollers
Speaker 1: that are in there too that will also help move
Speaker 1: the tape along. It's not just the rotating head drum
Speaker 1: that that propels the tape through uh. There's a pinch
Speaker 1: roller that also does this through uh through um uh.
Speaker 1: There's a a stationary roller called a cap stand yes,
Speaker 1: and a pintroller that's on the opposite side of the
Speaker 1: cap stand. The tape moves between the two and the
Speaker 1: pressure that the to create against each other that's what
Speaker 1: allows it to pinch and pull that tape through. So
Speaker 1: you've got the rotating head drum and the pintroller that
Speaker 1: are helped propelling this tape through the system. You also
Speaker 1: have a couple of different UM well they're called heads
Speaker 1: inside the device that 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. I'm
Speaker 1: us you were you know, David Lynch or something. Now
Speaker 1: they're just like with an audio cassette. There is a tab,
Speaker 1: a little plastic tab on a v vc R 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 it. Let's
Speaker 1: say let's say that you got that that Sweating to
Speaker 1: the Oldies eight and you're like, this is not nearly
Speaker 1: as good as my Sweating to the oldies seven. You
Speaker 1: know what, I'm not going to have this debate with
Speaker 1: you again. All right. Well, anyway, you might think I
Speaker 1: want to be able to record over this, and then
Speaker 1: you would use a piece of tape to do that
Speaker 1: because otherwise, like you were saying, it would prevent you
Speaker 1: from doing that accidentally. Because nothing like the panic you
Speaker 1: experience when you put a tape in and then you
Speaker 1: realize that you accidentally just hit play and record and
Speaker 1: not just play and you want to and it's a
Speaker 1: tape that you did not want to erase. There's a
Speaker 1: there's a special level of panic. Yes, I'm not sure
Speaker 1: that I have a word for it, but I have
Speaker 1: definitely felt that more than once. Yes, yes, um it
Speaker 1: also has a VCR also has the ability to read
Speaker 1: additional information about the tape. Uh, if you will, it's
Speaker 1: metadata just on the tape itself. UM that tells the
Speaker 1: VCR some important things like UMU. 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 hell's the VCR what
Speaker 1: speed to play the video back at? Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: along the control track and it also, um, you know,
Speaker 1: it also has a sensor the VCR does UM that
Speaker 1: tells it has some clear leader tape UM that they
Speaker 1: put before and after the the brown colored magnetic tape
Speaker 1: that tells it basically, hey, there, you're either at the
Speaker 1: beginning or at the end of the tape. Go ahead
Speaker 1: and prepare to shut down. Yeah, this is actually start
Speaker 1: the movie. A very simple sensory 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 that 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 it a light? No? Is it 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 podcasts.
Speaker 1: But yeah, for the for the most part opening up
Speaker 1: a VCO are. Uh, there's not a lot of a
Speaker 1: glamour to it. There are rollers and some pins and
Speaker 1: then basically being there to hold the cassette in place
Speaker 1: and 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 what and not
Speaker 1: know what it was, you might think, my VCR is broken.
Speaker 1: This thing is sideways, it's tilted. It's supposed to be
Speaker 1: like that, Yeah, because like I said, it's it's because
Speaker 1: of the direction of the information being stored on that tape. Uh,
Speaker 1: the whole rotating head thing. Uh, it's called helical scanning helical, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because of the way that the information is encoded along
Speaker 1: 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 n SP mode that's the highest quality mode that
Speaker 1: of 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 know that that's
Speaker 1: a definitely about two hours. LP runs about four hours UM,
Speaker 1: and in order to do that, it runs the tape
Speaker 1: about UH point sixty six um inches per second and
Speaker 1: UH are linear inches per second and uh that's sixteen
Speaker 1: point seven millimeters per second, and EP gives you about
Speaker 1: six hours on an average cassette UM when it's running
Speaker 1: up at about point four four linear inches per second
Speaker 1: or eleven point one two millimeters per second. The thing is, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, as you increase or actually as you decrease
Speaker 1: the speed, you're getting poorer quality, which might sound strange
Speaker 1: too to uh to people who are just listening to
Speaker 1: this and like, wait, what do you mean? How how
Speaker 1: is it that going slower means poorer quality? And it's
Speaker 1: because you're using you're using a less space to store
Speaker 1: all that information. Yes, that's the thing, is that deal.
Speaker 1: If you're if you're going faster, then you're using up
Speaker 1: all that tape to store you know, a smaller amount
Speaker 1: 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 if I have a piece of paper that's going
Speaker 1: past me at a certain speed and I'm I'm I'm
Speaker 1: able to write really really fast. Uh, you know, it's
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna get as much um, I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: get as much quality crammed 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. But no, Yeah, the slower it goes,
Speaker 1: the less the lower the quality. It's not able to
Speaker 1: store as much information and um uh as you would
Speaker 1: if you were running it faster. True, and some of
Speaker 1: the drs to have a flying race head, which is
Speaker 1: not what happens when you get really fed up because
Speaker 1: your VCR is broken and you fling it across the room. Nice. Um.
Speaker 1: The race head that we were talking about before, UH
Speaker 1: found in uh the less expensive VCRs is basically just
Speaker 1: gonna erase the entire tape. Um. But a flying race
Speaker 1: head is is you can find it on the rotating
Speaker 1: drum itself, and it actually can take individual bands and
Speaker 1: erase them and uh that allows you to be more
Speaker 1: precise when you erase material. From the VCR tape. UM. Also,
Speaker 1: if you're going to use the two faster speeds, uh,
Speaker 1: you're going to need a forehead VCR. UM. Again, this
Speaker 1: is not some sort of mutant Uh. The sp tape
Speaker 1: only needs two heads, but a forehead VCR can run
Speaker 1: the other speeds. Basically, the other heads uh play heads
Speaker 1: need to be there so that they can on the
Speaker 1: other speeds. UM. So it's just one of those technological
Speaker 1: things that needs to take place in order to uh
Speaker 1: do that. But if you've ever wondered what that meant
Speaker 1: when you saw it on on the cards, because because
Speaker 1: you aren't going to see it now at your local
Speaker 1: department store, I can tell you, um, you know that
Speaker 1: that was that was one of the marks of a
Speaker 1: more sophisticated VCR because you you had more flexibility to
Speaker 1: record other other speeds with that. Yeah. And there are
Speaker 1: multiple standards for encoding information onto cassettes. And anyone who
Speaker 1: has tried to bring back a tape from another country
Speaker 1: into their home country and then realize that doesn't play
Speaker 1: on their machine has experienced this joy. Because the VHS
Speaker 1: tapes 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 you 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: including 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 I 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, what are you talking about? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm sure customs would love that. You know, they're to
Speaker 1: bring back a trunk full of electronics and plastic. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, they didn't say a thing when I brought
Speaker 1: back the police call box. So, um, I thought the
Speaker 1: police call box brought you back. Let's rune a bypass customs.
Speaker 1: I just got on another list. That was a joke.
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. You
Speaker 1: know the more you know, you're putting when we think
Speaker 1: about it, you're putting stress on it. You. Um let's
Speaker 1: say you uh fast forward and rewind the tape over
Speaker 1: and over again, and then there's that sudden stop. I remember, Um,
Speaker 1: I got a VC or I have now which is
Speaker 1: thankfully still working. UM has a mechanism in it to
Speaker 1: determine 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 potently 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. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: not quite aligned properly, so the the drumheads having trouble
Speaker 1: reading the information. So with the tracking. Some of some
Speaker 1: of the VCRs, especially 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 start to stretch and and uh
Speaker 1: and warp. I hope you guys are enjoying this rewind
Speaker 1: episode of text stuff on VCRs. I'm running out of
Speaker 1: VCR puns, but let's take a quick break to thank
Speaker 1: our sponsor. Well, let's talk a little bit about what
Speaker 1: has happened to the VCR and VHS DVDs. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: was a big one. Okay, So DVDs when they premiered,
Speaker 1: well first, it wasn't a huge blow to VHS at all. Well,
Speaker 1: for the same reasons we were talking about earlier in
Speaker 1: the podcast. They were the machines were expensive, DVDs were expensive,
Speaker 1: and there weren't nearly as many I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: you could find the odds of finding a popular movie
Speaker 1: in those days on VHS were pretty high, but finding
Speaker 1: that same film on DVD could be really a challenge
Speaker 1: because there just wasn't as much content available and that
Speaker 1: form factor at that point. So stop DVD players from
Speaker 1: selling very quickly. Now they had a pretty relatively fast
Speaker 1: ramp up. I mean it. I do remember that it
Speaker 1: was a couple of years before I got a DVD
Speaker 1: player because they were they were, you know, luxury items. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for a long time. But you did start to notice
Speaker 1: things like if you went to one of those rental
Speaker 1: stores like Blockbuster, you started noticing that the VHS section
Speaker 1: was getting smaller and the DVD section was getting larger.
Speaker 1: Same thing in retail stores. You would go to a
Speaker 1: retail store that would sell movies, and you know that
Speaker 1: the VHS would get smaller and smaller. But DVDs started
Speaker 1: to really take over. Uh Well, I mean DVDs have
Speaker 1: some advantages. You know, there is no warping or stretching. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, there's there's the possibility that you could scratch them. Um,
Speaker 1: but even even depending on how they scratch, they may
Speaker 1: not uh they may not be damaged enough to affect
Speaker 1: the playback significantly. Plus you have a lot more control
Speaker 1: of over where you can start and end. The resolution
Speaker 1: was far better than vhs. If you can, you can
Speaker 1: watch them in computers and even include extras that allow
Speaker 1: you to interact with them. Uh, you know, games and
Speaker 1: other things the tracks, Yeah, and and things like that
Speaker 1: that you couldn't do with a with a videotape. Yeah.
Speaker 1: If I ever wanted to, uh to watch a movie
Speaker 1: like let's say Indiana Jones and Raised the Lost Ark,
Speaker 1: I never wanted to watch Rails Lost Ark and and
Speaker 1: have a commentary track while I was watching it on VHS.
Speaker 1: I had to kidnap Steven Spielberg and and tie him
Speaker 1: up and have him sit next to me as I
Speaker 1: watched it. And that only works once, folks. Thanks to
Speaker 1: the restraining order, he won't be doing that again. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they recognize you even if you dramatically change your look.
Speaker 1: It's amazing Steven Spielberg has this ability. And if he
Speaker 1: does not forget a face. Yeah. So, Uh. DVDs really
Speaker 1: became popular quickly enough that it started to put a
Speaker 1: It started to clue the movie studios in and of
Speaker 1: course at this point they were a little less likely
Speaker 1: to 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 VHS tape. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, all it takes a little piece of tape,
Speaker 1: ladies and gentlemen. For for a long time, Uh, the
Speaker 1: the ability to record to DVD at all was even
Speaker 1: greater 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 they people adopted it fairly quickly.
Speaker 1: It still took a while though, before VHS started really
Speaker 1: tapering off in popularity. In two thousand three, that was
Speaker 1: when DVD rentals began to finally outpace VHS rentals and
Speaker 1: rental agencies. And in two thousand five, DVD sales hit
Speaker 1: twenty two billion with a B dollars and VHS was
Speaker 1: down to one point five billion with a B dollars.
Speaker 1: So the writing was on the wall at that point.
Speaker 1: 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 VCRs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that was that prompted a lot of people to
Speaker 1: say that two thousand and eight marked the death of
Speaker 1: the VCR. Yeah, although I think it's as dead as
Speaker 1: any of these other technologies are, like uh, the final turntable, UM,
Speaker 1: the laser disc and some of these other the other
Speaker 1: formats there. And the thing is, I mean you you
Speaker 1: told me too before the podcast that you have some
Speaker 1: movies that you have on on VHS cassettes that you
Speaker 1: can't find on dv Blood Salvage, fix It. It's been
Speaker 1: dead too long, so it's not available on DVD. So
Speaker 1: there you go. Um, there are reasons that that you
Speaker 1: that people are still going to want to make them available.
Speaker 1: Of course, libraries and other people who have uh large
Speaker 1: who spent money on these have to find a way
Speaker 1: to either convert them or maintain the equipment long enough
Speaker 1: to keep it out there. So uh, I think it's Um,
Speaker 1: it sort of turned into a zombie technology at this point.
Speaker 1: But I just hadn't realized how far I had gone
Speaker 1: until a few days ago when I went and then
Speaker 1: tried to find one. Yeah, I was thinking I'll probably
Speaker 1: be able to get one for twenty dollars or so.
Speaker 1: He seen that recorded that the last major supplier of
Speaker 1: VHS tapes in the United States shifted its final truckload
Speaker 1: in December eight Well, see that shows you how long
Speaker 1: it's been since I've tried to find a movie on VHS. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and when, And a couple of films have come out
Speaker 1: on VHS, but it's been more like a gimmick, like
Speaker 1: especially films that are uh, kind of an homage to
Speaker 1: to certain genres that were really that came to prominence
Speaker 1: in the nineteen eighties. Yeah, which you know, that's short
Speaker 1: of the same thing we saw with bands and vinyl
Speaker 1: for a while, because the Vinyl was kind of a
Speaker 1: gimmick like saying, hey, look, we're this cool independent group
Speaker 1: and we're supporting this what some would call obsolete form factor.
Speaker 1: But you know, although Vinyl managed to to have a
Speaker 1: a second gasp, I'm not sure that VHS well, and
Speaker 1: the big reason behind that. DVDs definitely were a blow
Speaker 1: to VCRs. Yes, 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 had DVRs, which that's what took care of
Speaker 1: the time shifting element of vc rs. Yes, definitely, because
Speaker 1: I actually had um VHS or VCR plus, which was
Speaker 1: this technology that people came out with that would allow
Speaker 1: you too. If you knew a code and your VCR
Speaker 1: was equipped with it, you could enter that code in
Speaker 1: your VCR and it would pick the right channel in
Speaker 1: the right date. Of course, some my VCR didn't have
Speaker 1: the ability to change channels like my DVR does, because
Speaker 1: it's built in so it can change that. It knows
Speaker 1: what channel to change it too, it knows when, and
Speaker 1: I can subscribe to an entire earies. So I can
Speaker 1: say I want you to record this show which comes
Speaker 1: on two days 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 because and again there's meta
Speaker 1: data there that the DVR can follows. I can say
Speaker 1: I want to record new episodes only don't record reruns,
Speaker 1: and it goes, okay, this one's a rerun. That's kipping it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: whereas your VCR would just be like, nope, I'm going
Speaker 1: to record at this channel at this time. Because that's
Speaker 1: what he told me to. Yeah, and it's it's so
Speaker 1: much more. The DVR is so much more flexible, much
Speaker 1: more versatile that then a VHS recorder is, and it's
Speaker 1: just one between the two of those. Once the move
Speaker 1: to digital happened, VHS really had no hope. And then
Speaker 1: on top of that, if that weren't enough, even the DVR,
Speaker 1: at this point I think is starting to have a
Speaker 1: bit of a slowdown. You know, people aren't buying DVRs
Speaker 1: as as frequently as they were before. And then part
Speaker 1: of that is because the time shifting has gone even
Speaker 1: more dramatic with Serve. This is like Netflix Incident, or
Speaker 1: Hulu Plus or Hulu Hulu in general, or the Amazon
Speaker 1: Video where people now have access 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 rise, and then
Speaker 1: I think I wouldn't say that it's gone or anything,
Speaker 1: but still 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, um,
Speaker 1: things like awards shows and sports and things like that
Speaker 1: that uh um, you you won't be able to get
Speaker 1: it later on from one of the streaming shows you
Speaker 1: want to watch. Uh Um, let's say the the Oscars.
Speaker 1: She wouldn't be able to You're not gonna say, watch
Speaker 1: the Oscars from last week on Netflix. Yeah, those of
Speaker 1: us on the East Coast are sick of the Oscars
Speaker 1: coming on so late at night for us, Yeah, or
Speaker 1: it's the afternoon for everyone in California. But for us,
Speaker 1: we're like, can you move it along? I have work tomorrow.
Speaker 1: But but you're right, like the standalone stuff, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's not a thing anymore. It's something you sort of
Speaker 1: expect um. But yeah, it's it's kind of amazing that
Speaker 1: VCRs really have moved off the map. I guess I'm
Speaker 1: just not tune with what's on the store shelf. Such
Speaker 1: 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: That's multiple I don't really care. Yeah, exactly, yes, And
Speaker 1: 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 and
Speaker 1: popular and you should always listen to it, depending on
Speaker 1: what format it's and uh, no matter we transcend, we
Speaker 1: transcend formats, we transcend platforms, we are freaking amazing, all right.
Speaker 1: So just you can in fact that, I think that's
Speaker 1: gonna be our new slogan, tech stuff. We are freaking amazing.
Speaker 1: You know. I am pretty sure that the VCR is
Speaker 1: largely thought of as an obsolete piece of technology now.
Speaker 1: They haven't been produced in a few years. But without it,
Speaker 1: we wouldn't have the wonderful series Half in the Bag
Speaker 1: from Red Letter Media, where they are consistently and perpetually
Speaker 1: not repairing an old man's VCR. That's a great series.
Speaker 1: I hope you guys enjoyed this classic episode of tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: If you guys have any episode ideas, or comments or
Speaker 1: questions or anything like that, send them to me. The
Speaker 1: email addresses tech Stuff at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: You can pop on over to our website that's tech
Speaker 1: stuff podcast dot com and check out the older episodes.
Speaker 1: Don't forget the head over to our merchandise store that's
Speaker 1: t public dot com slash tech stuff, and I'll talk
Speaker 1: to you again really soon for more on this and
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics. Because it how stuff works dot
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