Oh boy, a topic I actually can talk about! VHS tapes. I had a pretty big VHS obsession going on in the 90s, both purchased tapes and recorded tapes. Hell it may have indirectly had an influence on why I work sort of indirectly with TV these days. It definitely is partly responsible for why I am such a digital packrat.
Once I started working, I took regular trips out once I got paid to buy movies on VHS. My friend and I would spend a ton of time.browsing around deciding just which movies we wanted to buy this week. Some US movies, but also Anime, which was a complicated choice at the time.
This wasn’t DVD, you got subtitles or dubbed. And among fans, there was a feud over which was better. So you had to hope the local Suncoast had your preference in stock. On top of that, the space is limited. Most tapes for series had like 2, maybe 3 episodes. So a longer series might be dozens of tapes. Plus, you had to really like a series, because the tapes were often expensive, more expensive than domestic movies. Like $25 – $30 a tape easy, which was a lot at the time.
I also used to have two VCRs in my room because I was obsessed with recording things and managing those recordings. I recorded all sorts of movies and shows. One I always caught was Sci-Fi channel (it was not Syfy yet), on Saturday mornings, showed anime. Why wouldn’t I record this? Anime was expensive!
Funny enough, I don’t think I ever recorded any Sailor Moon, else I may have made a Sailor Moon Fansite later in life.
But I would record shows and movies, then use the two VCRs to transfer the shows, in order to other tapes, butting the commercials out. A VHS tape holds like 6 hours of video. Your average “hour” show is only 40 minutes if you chop out the commercials, so one tape could hold 6 episodes, or, 9 episodes with a little effort.
I would often then make up labels and print them out and glue them on. But that is actually, tomorrow’s topic believe it or not.
I don’t really have most of those tapes anymore, many have been tossed or sold or given away. But it was a fun hobby while it lasted. Digital is so much nicer though. Better quality, easier to edit if wanted infinite space. I don’t need to go back to VHS.
One last note, this is just an image I found online, but this was my first VHS tape that I got for Christmas one year when I was very young.
