I love their simplicity. I love the clicking and whirring when the VCR accepts a tape. I love how this discarded ("eewwww oldd") technology is so cheap.
I am not crazy. I know Blu-Ray is technically superior. I have 3 Blu-ray players and more discs then I care to admit. I know that streaming video a-la Netflix is the norm now ("why would you want to own discs"?? Why not just torrent??) yah yah yah.
But I still love VHS.
A friend of mine made fun of me once because I am obsessed. I don't see what is wrong with having 6 VCR's in a 2 person household. Or what is wrong with being thrilled about finding a 10-hour blank videotape at the Value Village in Maui on vacation (10 whole hours!!!!).
Motion picture has always fascinated me. Ever since I was a little boy I was thrilled that I could watch people that were so far away through a window in a box. That I could learn about people, technology, animals, you name it. That what I was watching could make me laugh, make me cry, or make me scared! I have many fond memories of sitting on the living room floor of my parent's house, watching all my shows on their RCA XL-100 console TV. It was a big beast with a faux-oak cabinet, turn dial switch for changing channels and a state of the art 25 inch screen! (25 inches!!) It was amazing. My mom was always after me for watching too much TV. She always said (and still maintains to this day) that if she wanted to punish me, she'd force me to "disconnect" or shut the TV off. If she wanted to punish my brother, she'd make him stay indoors. :)
I thought that having a big colour TV was the height of sophistication, until 1989, when we got our first VCR. Little did I realize what effect this little gem would have on my life.
We had a VCR in the house before, so I knew what they were, their awesomeness and how they worked. We used to go to a rental place not far from our house where we would get not only movies, but a VCR itself. I remember fondly renting movies like "Beetlejuice" and "Gremlins", and watching them again and again. I was in heaven.
One day, I remember my mom and dad bringing home a package from Sears and leaving it on top of our dishwasher. Me, being the snoopy kid I was, pestered and pestered my parents to tell me what it was. I remember my dad telling me "nevermind what it is, you'll find out later". I must've been persistent because after bothering them constantly, I think I was told it was furnace filters, or something equivalent to that, which would be boring to a kid. Later on that evening, I found out I had been had.
Upon entering the living room, I noticed, sitting on top of our TV was a shiny, beautiful, GLORIOUS, VCR of our own. It was a state of the art Sanyo, 2-head and mono with a digital tuner and a remote! I squealed with delight :) I was going to be the coolest kid on the street. Most of my friends already had VCR's of their own, but they were top-loading (ewwwww, old!) and had the manual channel buttons on the front you had to program (only 13 channels to record off? yuck! Ours could go to 69 whopping channels!). Also, we no longer needed to get up and turn the knob to change the channel! I was consumed by sheer unadulterated bliss!
I remember the first movies we rented with our own VCR were "Batteries Not Included" and "Jaws". I wasn't allowed to watch the latter of the two, but happily watched BNI three times before we had to return it the next day. I think my mom almost had to pry it out of my hot little hands. Ceremoniously, every weekend, like most families in the area, we'd go to the local video store to pick out movies to watch on the weekend. Our limit was usually 2, but sometimes, (especially if the kids couldn't agree) we'd get 3. We'd rush to the video store as soon as Dad was home from work with the car (because heaven forbid someone should rent Beetlejuice before I did without my permission!!). We'd make popcorn in our air popper (a Lemieux family staple) and bond over (sometimes wholesome) family entertainment.
My love affair with video tapes was enhanced even further when my parents bought me my first blank video tape for my birthday. It was a Kodak T120 video tape, and could record a WHOLE SIX HOURS of my shows!! (In EP mode of course). I went absolutely nuts. I wanted to record everything! Every episode I could squeeze of Square One or Gummi Bears went on to that tape. I watched and recorded incessantly. Movies would come on TV and I would diligently try to pause the tape when recording to save precious space. Through gifts and allowances, I continued to grow my stock of TV and movie goodness. I even went as far as pestering my neighbours (who had Pay-TV) to record movies for me off First Choice Super Channel and Family Channel whenever we had the chance. (And I lived for the free preview weekends so I could do it myself at home). My mom got us Disney movies; I had my very own copy of "The Fox and The Hound" and my 3 sisters were given a copy of "The Little Mermaid" (very coveted at the time).
As I got older and grew into movies more and more, my collection grew as well. Once I had my first job, I joined Columbia House (forging my mom's signature of course!) and continued to grow my collection from there. Also, when the local video store started selling off previously viewed copies of movies, I was first in line. Jurassic Park, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Twister and Diabolique were my mainstays. I laughed, I cried, I hid my face under pillows when it got too scary. Cinema in the home was an obsession of mine. Friends and I would trade from each copies of movies with each other, and also recordings of TV shows when the others missed out.
This continued on for many years, and as technology improved (4 heads, wow! - Stereo Audio, Dolby Surround) I was always right there on board, wanting the next best thing. Life was great.
Then DVD appeared.
All of a sudden, I was bombarded with advertisements telling me that DVD was better than VHS. That it had menus, no rewinding, better picture and sound. Oh and widescreen. (Because we need to see the movie as the director intended, not formatted to fit your screen). I felt conflicted. I had spent all this time and money accruing my video library, and I was now being told it was crap. VHS felt like a faithful friend to me, and I had reservations about turning my back on it.
While I jumped on the DVD train (and eventually had no choice once VHS was discontinued in 2004) I always held a special place in my heart for video tapes. I continued to collect them and watch them. To this day, I still buy videotapes from Value Village (Savers for my American friends) and watch them at home. Sometimes it is just simple economics. An old movie that I want to see - .69c on used VHS, but 3.99 to rent in iTunes. Is it technically inferior to DVD/BD/Digital Download? Yes. Is the movie cropped and formatted to fit my screen? Yes. Does that matter to me? Not really. My argument is that if a movie is shitty, it doesn't matter if it is widescreen or crystal clear, or analog. It is still a shitty movie. (Yes Mariah Carey, I am looking at you.)
While Hollywood continues to evolve and tries to make you repurchase your video library on a new format every 5-10 years, I am going to kick back and enjoy some long forgotten gems off a videotape. If the movie is after 2004, then of course, on DVD. I do find however that alot of movies these days lack substance, use too much CGI and are generally unworthy of their predecessors; but that is a whole other blog post.
Viva la VHS!
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