There was a period from the 1970s to the mid-2000s or so when a fixture underneath the family TV set was a VHS videocassette recorder. These were a masterpiece of cramming a color video signal into the restricted bandwidth of an affordable 1970s helical-scan tape deck, which was achieved by clever use of frequency shifting […]
You’ve likely at least heard of Marion Stokes, the woman who constantly recorded television for over 30 years. She comes up on reddit and other places every so often as a hero archivist who fought against disinformation and disappearing history. But who was Marion Stokes, and why did she undertake this project? And more importantly, […]
[VWestlife] purchased all kinds of USB video capture devices — many of them from the early 2000s — and put them through their paces in trying to digitize VHS classics like Instant Fireplace and Buying an Auxiliary Sailboat. The results were actually quite varied, but almost universally bad. They all worked, but they also brought […]
While it might not be accurate to say VHS is dead, it’s certainly not a lively format. It continues on in undeath thanks to dedicated collectors and hobbyists, some of whom may be tempted to lynch Reddit user [CommonKingfisher] for embedding a video player inside a VHS tape. Miniaturization in action. The video player probably […]
Redbox was a company with a moderately interesting business model—it let you rent DVDs from automated kiosks. It’s an idea so simple it’s almost surprising it didn’t appear sooner. Only, it did—all the way back in the VHS age! Meet the Video Vendor. YouTuber [SpaceTime Junction] was able to track down one of these rare […]
The back of the 2View VHS box. The instructions are all in Dutch, as its (sole) launch market. (Credit: Techmoan, YouTube) Over the decades the video and music industries have tried a wide range of ways to get consumers to buy ‘cheaper’ versions of albums and music, but then limit the playback in some way. […]