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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

71–80 of 324 posts

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

#71

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…

Those stored things are your digital roots. Without them, you are nobody.

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

#72

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…

I went to a talk once from a man who collected antique magic props. He said when he moved he needed a 1 ton container for his stuff. At the end of the talk, someone asked if his wife objected to his collection. He said "She doesn't complain about my magic stuff, and I don't complain about her Teddy Bears."

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

#73

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.

It's a new world by inches every moment and one day we all wake up to find that the world has passed us by. To a greater or lesser degree we're all relics of an age that no longer exists and probably didn't exist in the first place, at least how we remember it.

It's bittersweet but probably a good thing.

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

#74
"my VCR has remained on standby mode, the tapes in their boxes, gathering dust."

At some point you just have to admit that they are useless and throw them away. Whatever it is, if it's been in the garage or basement for years and you don't use it and haven't dealt with it, get rid of it. Just knowing the stuff is there is a nagging mental irritant, and it won't go away until you get rid of the stuff.

Nobody wants old VHS tapes. Try to put them on eBay, it will just be another huge project you'll never finish and you'll maybe cover the shipping costs.

Throw them away.

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

#75

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.

“Eventually, all our graves go unattended.”

— Conan O'Brien

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

#76
2000 tapes at 6 hours each, 12,000 hours. You can record them for about a gig an hour, so it ought to fit in 12 terabytes.

Doing one tape a night, it'll take 6 years of calendar time. 3 years if you buy a dedicated computer to do it, at two tapes a day.

The good news is that's calendar time, not your time, which is pressing "record" on your computer and "play" on the VHS machine.

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

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tangent but I've huge collection of comics. I am waiting for AI to get good enough so that I can turn it into knowledgebase

yeah, I doubt you'll scan all that into your AI. Prove me wrong.

That's been my strategy with photos for the last couple of decades. I don't bother organizing them, figuring ML/image classification will do the trick eventually.

I'll probably never bother, but it has saved me the time of organizing it.

(Apple does let me search based on its object classification, and I have searched for tag that came on my apple tree based on a word that appears on it, so I guess that strategy has worked somewhat.)

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

#78

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…

I hoard interesting digital media a bit since stuff does disappear from the Internet, but don't hoard anything physical. Takes up too much space.

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

#79
post #64

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…

Not just a male thing! [1] It might be the case that men are more likely to be collectors/hoarders in general but there definitely are women who partake. I will also say that the type of thing being collected matters. Go to an estate sale for a woman (especially one born before 1960) and you may see collections of dolls, tea services, certain types of paintings, etc. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marion_Stokes

Dang! You beat me to it.

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

#80

2000 tapes at 6 hours each, 12,000 hours. You can record them for about a gig an hour, so it ought to fit in 12 terabytes. Doing one tape a night, it'll take 6 years of calendar time. 3 years if you buy a dedicated computer to do it, at two tapes a day. The good news is that's calendar time, not your time, which is pressing "record" on your computer and "play" on the VHS machine.

Having digitised a few VHS tapes, the (personal) time consumer was verifying whether the capture was successful and of acceptable quality. Is anyone aware of a way to automate the quality control?
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