Epic Win: VCR
Submitted by Justin B
VCRs are definitely a nostalgia win, but even today, you can probably find one for cheap at your local Salvation Army. Then you can buy tons of VHS tapes — they’re usually a buck or two at the thrift store or even cheaper at yard sales. Sure, the picture quality might not be nearly as good as DVDs, but who’s going to complain when you can get twenty great movies on VHS instead of one new DVD? Hit the tracking button!
Now I’m just waiting for somebody to submit “Laserdisc” to Once Upon a Win…
VHS? Hecks no.
Betamax Forever!
Hit the tracking button? Don’t you mean “adjust the tracking knob”.
Heck, I had an old top-loader VCR even more primitive than the one in the picture. The tuner was two knobs like on old televisions. One for the VHF channels (2 through 13) and another for the UHF (14 through ??).
i sit have a VCR, its about the size of an aircraft carrier. i got it from my friends grandma. i have a few things on VHS tapes that i’ll some day trasfer to dvd. we were alwasy to poor as kids to have one, so we got to rent one along with a few movies on fridays from the video store.
Betamax forever! I still have a big collection of LaserDiscs – they were so much better than VHS/Beta that it wasn’t even close.
Uh. *looks around* I still use my VCR. I refuse to get digital, so no DVR and my DVD-R always messes up. My trust VCR is the only thing that’s consistently worked!
I have two vcrs hooked up to my HDTV. They work just fine for non-hd programming.
Your “DVD-R always messes up”? Sorry SallySweet, you just fail at technology. :-p
Me too! Works great. No DRM, no subscriptions, etc. Only bad thing: Low quality. Who cares since I still use a 20″ 1996 CRT TV!
Bought a DVR last year (since they are now finally getting cheaper) but also kept my VCR. Hey, I need to play my over 750 movies that I got on VHS somehow.
always blinking “12:00″
I got a Laserdisc player. With Cool as Ice.
No DVR here. I still use my VCR to record TV shows.
I don’t keep them, though. If I’m out for the evening, I record my shows. After I watch the tape, I record over it. I’ve had the same tape in my VCR for two years.
Yaaaaaaa, don’t think VCR is quite to the nostalgia phase in it’s life yet. I still use mine somewhat regularly.
I hate VCRs. I have several and they are getting moldy in my basement. All of my VHS movies are boxed up and I sell them at my yard sales for $1 each. I started buying all my movies on DVD for a while now – VHS takes up way too much room. I find them for $1 or $2 at yard sales.
EPIC FAIL!
VCRs and VHS/Beta are a horrid stain on our world’s history.
Stop posting these nostalgia fails.
Incorrect. VHS VCRs are made of win (Beta, not so much).
I think you’re on the wrong board. FailBlog is that way –>
VCRs are indeed win. If i tried to completely go to DVDwhatever I would also be giving up my tape library. Even if I could get all of the shows on disc, why pay a second time.
Seriously dude, without VCR’s what would we have watched movies on once they came out of theatres years ago?
I love VCRs, I’m a total VHS nerd and use it pretty much everyday still. One fo the ones I have is this tank of a toploader. I could kill someone with that.
How about video disc? You know that was high tec because of the wood grain on the sides.
My first VCR didn’t have wood grain on the sides. It had actual wood. Things were classier then.
We have more videos that DVDs so, I think we’ll be keeping ours… plus I couldn’t live without some of the videos we’ve got…
Oooh, a toploader!
What about the days of renting VCRs?
I own a dual tape VCR and I remember when my dad rented a lot of sci-fi/thriller flicks and recorded them. Somebody had to teach me how to work a DVD player a few years back. Now I own a VHs/DVD converter that can work vice versa, suprizingly.
My mom recorded over my Predator, Terminator, The Thing, Robocop and Dune recordings for ice scating, er skating she never watches! It still ticks me off.
As Lynn said, the old days of rental VHS tapes is a nostalgia win. However, VCRs are an EPIC FAIL! Why?
…
Tape head cleaning.
Super Long Play (SLP) = Super sucky quality
Bad VCRs that eat the tape and spit it out like hairballs
Tracking… Tracking… almost! Tracking… crap, now the other edge is fuzzy.
Be kind, rewind.
…
I’m sorry, those days sucked. Plain and simple… suckage. So happy to be past that.
I have never once had a VCR eat a tape, and I’ve had 5 of them since the ’80s.
Clean the heads once every six or twelve months? Big hassle that was. /sarc
Tracking? My one old one was manual, all the others had auto-tracking. Never had a problem.
Rewinding? Again, pressing one button, or letting the tape run to the end was a massive issue for you?
VCRs are win; they’re inexpensive, and you didn’t have to pay the cable company to use it. Suck on that, DVRs!
You can get a DVR from the electronics store if you’re willing to pay a little more up front. There’s a little more to it to use them, but they exist, and you don;t have to pay an outrageous monthly fee to essentially rent the damn thing.
Still have one and use it along with a DVD player. Too many important home VHS tapes unconverted. Also no cable tv so no DVR.
I still own a VCR because I have to watch theatre and dance productions that were never transferred to DVD format.
[spam mode]
) but there’s no way of getting my hands on any other episodes or even the feature length season endings ecxept Youtube 
Anyone willing to share or sell, please reply or contact me on my profile! Thanks! 
By the way, since this is a blast-from-the-past website: I’m still desperately looking for the Original 1994 Series Biker Mice From Mars videos in English from the second season onwards – if they even exist. I know the first season was brought out on DVD (it’s awesome
[/spam mode]
We had the Betamax toploader! Man, it got harder and harder to find compatible tapes after a few years!!!
The parents did not make a wise choice in THAT department!
I have an uncle that had a BETA. When it became useless he consoled himself by listening to his 8 track.
I still have 2 VCRs… and a Laserdisc player.
I still own a VCR. I took it with me when I went off to college 9 years ago. Still have the tapes I recorded shows on. Some from up to 13 years ago. Unfortunately, my VCR now thinks it’s a zombie and eats the tapes instead of playing them. Oh well. I could set my parent’s VCR when I was five.
Laserdisc was *never* a win. VCRs were the best, though – piracy in its infancy!
We still have one that you put the tape in from the top. 20+ years old and still works. No DVD player will pull that off.
I just set up an old VCR and then went on this and saw it lol
We had laserdiscs when they first came out. I think we had about 75 of them. My brother still has some.
Oh yes, and when I watch some of the movies we had on laserdisc, I still remember at what part in the movie I had to get up to flip or change discs. XD
Ultimate Frisbees is way too much fun with Laserdiscs.
When my family decided to upgrade into the present and buy a DVD player, we bought a DVD/VCR hybrid, so it’s all good. All my good movies are on VHS; my okay movies are DVDs.
Not quite nostalgic here — I still tape my TV shows on VHS (even if I intend to sit down and watch the thing, I tape as my dog will invariably demand to go out in the middle of it …) And while most things are available on DVD now, a few movies are not, so I still have a small collection of films on tape. I will have one till those just up and die on me.
Beta: serious win.
Pretty buttons, and small tapes.
At one point my mother had a plan to stockpile VCRs so when one died she could just hook up another and never have to replace our extensive VHS tape collection on DVD. Can you even buy a new VCR these days? I am just glad my old one still works.
I owned an OMNIVISION/REGGIEVISION Panasonic VCR.
I paid a small fortune for it in ‘84, It recorded in stereo and make that click-click-click sounds when you went to slow motion during a porno.
I mean, during the football games I recorded.
Er, neither VCRs nor Laserdisks really qualify, IMHO. I learned about video from running a reel-to-reel (pre-videocassette) videotape machine.
I still have and use my VCR. It’s really old but there are some movies I haven’t been able to find on DVD and until I do that thing will stay in my house.
ah the humble VCR, still have a tonne of tapes around, however i’ve made myself a TV recorder using a PC and a rather large hard disk. getting all the tapes (movies mostly) on and editing them out on the computer can be a real pain though. as an electronics enthusiast older VCRs were built like a brick outhouse especially with die-cast aluminium and plastic, real solid things. DVD players and budget jobbie VCRs these days are made to a budget..
i also still have a working 486 and at least a 30 year old amp which to this day are working fine. heck i even have a vacuum tube radio in working order
I still have my VCR and I will never get rid of it! I just got an anime video tape from a garage sale so of course I’m going to keep it!
Alas, VCRs will forever be a relic of the past…
Dang Justin B. You really send some freakin awesome submissions, I mean Jethro Tull and White Men Cant Jump!
I still use my VCR. Hell, I learned to program one when I was 6 cause it was so old it would mess up.
I still use my VCR. I hate DVDs.
i still have and use my VCR! haha it’s in my room, and i love it very much, haha. even know how to set the date and clock, lmao. it’s a hitachi from, uhm 1998 or 1999 i believe. i think i’ve changed the batteries in the remote once. <3
We have a DVD/VCR combo so my parents can record shows they’ll never watch and transfer them. The only problem with DVD’s is, you can’t stop them at a place you want like VHS, unless you leave the DVD playa on.
I remember having a top-loader VCR when I was a kid that had a warning light on it if the humidity was too high. Nothing like planning ahead to watch atape so you can run the dehumidifier for an hour or two first.
My family always had a VCR, and we often used to record shows and movies, and opf couse my parents had their wedding taped on VCR tape too.
My dad had hooked up the VCR and TV to his hifi stereo stuff, so we could enjoy the good sound too.
In 1999, while I was living in Australia, I bought my own VCR (front loader, though) from a Cash Converters store for 70 AU$ (my parents didn’t bring their own, due to plugs and possible pal/ntsc stuff, luckily that wasnt to be a problem). I brought the VCR back to Denmark in 2000, and with a change of the wall plug, it ran smoothly for another two years until it refused to play anything.
Since then I got my parents’ VCR, since they had no use for it anymore (upgrade to DVD and 5.1 surround.)
What I found out, is that it’s still good to have a VCR when on a budget, since there are a lot of stores here that sell old movie tapes for cheap (about $2).
I’ve still got some of my old tapes with disney movies and even some looney toons tapes with episodes later banned (ie. the one where Daffy lands in Hitler’s face. SCHUUUUUULTZ
)