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I have 2000 old VHS tapes in my garage and don't know what to do with them

takes.jamesomalley.co.uk

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Re: I have 2000 old VHS tapes in my garage and don't know what to do with them

#41

Post by Sakos »

dangsux wrote: post #29
fallinditch wrote: post #21

It can become a compulsion to record and collect media. Seems like a male thing, normally it's blokes who create these archives. I met a bloke once in the 90's who made recordings on to C-90 tapes of anything interesting that was on BBC Radio 4 and 3, and he found most things interesting. He was surrounded by piles, thousands of tapes everywhere and he was desperately trying to catalog everything. As I spoke to him h…

[dead]

Why the BBC? It should go to archives like archive.org and publicly accessible "pirate" archives, so corporations like the BBC can't stick it in a vault and bury it.

Re: I have 2000 old VHS tapes in my garage and don't know what to do with them

#42

Post by Molitor5901 »

roywiggins wrote: post #13
Molitor5901 wrote: post #4

eBay! My brother used to tape bicycle races and has hundreds of them. He's been blanking them and selling them on eBay for about $5 each.

I somehow think that may be the exact opposite of what the author is going for...

True but at some point.. unless someone takes them off his hands he's going to have to face a decision. Better to recycle and sell them, than toss them in the bin.

Re: I have 2000 old VHS tapes in my garage and don't know what to do with them

#43

Post by QuadrupleA »

Probably an age-old theme, but as a guy now in my 40s, it's humbling and a little sad to see how many things that were so vital, alive, and relevant in my childhood (and past eras) that are now dead and almost gone from the collective memory.

As the Buddha said, all is impermanent.

Re: I have 2000 old VHS tapes in my garage and don't know what to do with them

#44

Post by dylan604 »

Molitor5901 wrote: post #4

eBay! My brother used to tape bicycle races and has hundreds of them. He's been blanking them and selling them on eBay for about $5 each.

I used to work in a VHS duplication facility, and spent plenty of time with a degausser to erase tapes. Not a fond memory. Plus, if you forgot about your wallet, you could ruin your credit cards and license.

Re: I have 2000 old VHS tapes in my garage and don't know what to do with them

#45

Post by dylan604 »

thfuran wrote: post #28
farias0 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why people are worried about storage. You can just store it on the cloud.

I know this guy Chad with nice shelves.

Chad's neighbor is looking pretty good at this point after Chad started enforcing retroactively added time limits that were not part of the original terms.

Re: I have 2000 old VHS tapes in my garage and don't know what to do with them

#47

Post by dylan604 »

urbandw311er wrote: post #8
agumonkey wrote: post #7

vhs to dvd drives are fun https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=m570.l1313...

I wonder if the conversion software would have the unwanted side effect of filtering out the teletext content.

I know at least the brands of NTSC units like this I had the misfortune of using that did not retain the line 21 data, so I'd be shocked if teletext was preserved. I could at least see some adventurous attempt of a VHS->DVD unit attempting to translate to embedded 601 captions to the MPEG streams. I guess that was way beyond the scope of what most users of these devices would want/need.

Re: I have 2000 old VHS tapes in my garage and don't know what to do with them

#48

Post by jacobgkau »

cortesoft wrote: post #30
fallinditch wrote: post #21

It can become a compulsion to record and collect media. Seems like a male thing, normally it's blokes who create these archives. I met a bloke once in the 90's who made recordings on to C-90 tapes of anything interesting that was on BBC Radio 4 and 3, and he found most things interesting. He was surrounded by piles, thousands of tapes everywhere and he was desperately trying to catalog everything. As I spoke to him h…

Luckily, hoarding digital media is a lot easier and doesn't take up much space.

Unluckily, that means there's no physical check on it to prompt you to stop like physical media has.

Re: I have 2000 old VHS tapes in my garage and don't know what to do with them

#49

Post by pessimizer »

fallinditch wrote: post #21

It can become a compulsion to record and collect media. Seems like a male thing, normally it's blokes who create these archives. I met a bloke once in the 90's who made recordings on to C-90 tapes of anything interesting that was on BBC Radio 4 and 3, and he found most things interesting. He was surrounded by piles, thousands of tapes everywhere and he was desperately trying to catalog everything. As I spoke to him h…

> Seems like a male thing, normally it's blokes who create these archives.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marion_Stokes

> Stokes bequeathed her son Michael Metelits the entire tape collection, with no instructions other than to donate it to a charity of his choice. After considering potential recipients, Metelits gave the collection to the Internet Archive one year after Stokes's death. Four shipping containers were required to move the collection to Internet Archive's headquarters in San Francisco, a move that cost her estate $16,000. It was the largest collection they had ever received. The group agreed to digitize the volumes, a process expected to run fully on round-the-clock volunteers, costing $2 million and taking 20 digitizing machines several years to complete. As of April 2019, the project is still active.

Re: I have 2000 old VHS tapes in my garage and don't know what to do with them

#50

Post by beerandt »

dylan604 wrote: post #37
stickfigure wrote: post #22

Maybe I'm wrong, but I would assume that in the 1990s to 2000s studios were better about archiving production data, and there aren't likely to be "lost episodes" in this stash?

you'd be not right. things happen. tapes get misplaced. tapes get lost. tapes get damaged. the people working at the studios are merely human. and at this point, there's even fewer humans working at the studios as they keep laying people off.

Tapes especially got recorded over.
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