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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

#311

Post by extraduder_ire »

andai wrote: post #274
pjc50 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So this is the "having stuff weighs you down thread", I guess tomorrow something people like will get deleted off streaming services and we'll have the "owning physical media is The Way" thread. The thing about archives is that it's never clear what will turn out to be important or valuable. You're buying and storing a pile of lottery tickets. Yes, they're probably worthless. But only probably. I suspect a lot of peo…

I've started saving web pages, since several of my favorite websites went offline, and some even self-deleted from WayBack Machine. The impression I get is that if I want something to continue existing, it's my responsibility to make that happen. On a darker note, this appears to be true of civilization in general...

I think archive.org holds onto copies of websites, even if they're no longer accusable on the wayback machine, as long as they don't get a direct deletion request.

If a domain gets parked and someone adds a robots.txt that disallows all, past versions become unavailable in most cases. Very annoying.

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

#312

Post by schwartzworld »

stewx wrote: post #230
schwartzworld wrote: post #228

I have a neighbor who has this problem with bootleg audio cassettes. Concert recordings mostly. I keep begging him to back them up to digital and even gave him a little usb interface he could do it with. He talks about this collection with such pride, it’s hard for me to imagine not future proofing at least your favorite ones, but there’s no convincing some people.

To be fair, hard drives are not necessarily more future-proof than audio cassettes. A hard drive typically lasts, what, 10 years, whereas a cassette tape is probably good for 50 years. You need to back up the digital copy onto different devices.

Once you have it digitized, making copies is trivial though. Every time you listen to a cassette the quality degrades slightly. You always run the risk of a machine eating a tape as well. Maybe the cassette will last 50 years in the box, but it won’t last 50 years of active use and you’ll want to make other copies, the earlier you make those digital masters the better.

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

#313

Post by nicolas_t »

MonkeyClub wrote: post #223
nicolas_t wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s rather disappointing. Expected more from the internet archive.

Expectations are free, actual work costs time and money though.

I mean I have donated $250 every year for the past 7 years so it's not like I don't put my money where my mouth is

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

#314

Post by nicolas_t »

lobsterthief wrote: post #260
nicolas_t wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s rather disappointing. Expected more from the internet archive.

Please donate to them if you want them to meet your expectations

I already do, I have donated $1750 so far. I have no way to see why this project is stalled or to specify where my donations go to (which makes sense, having donators specifying which subproject is likely to be a nightmare to manage)

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

#315

Post by meowster »

magicseth wrote: post #86

Just as shipwrecks before the advent of nuclear bombs are a source of low background radiation, troves of content like this are low-ai-contamination sources of guaranteed human media. I suspect they might someday be valuable :-)

Don't worry, AI can add a filter that makes new stuff look like old human media.

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

#316

Post by wwader »

getwiththeprog wrote: post #310
wwader wrote: post #164

Reminds me of the documentary Kim's video https://www.imdb.com/title/tt24132144/ recommended!

Great documentary, New York collector (Kim) gifts huge video library to an Italian town. When a former Kim's customer hunts it down, he finds water-damaged tapes in a disused store-room - and mafia overtones standing in his way!

Yeap love things like that, ex https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1787791/ and the mystery show podcast. Let me know if you know any!

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

#317

Post by Wistar »

Wistar wrote: post #79
chongli wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think I made this comment in error. Not sure to what I thought I was responding but it makes no sense.

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

#318

Post by actionfromafar »

Clamchop wrote: post #277
actionfromafar wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VHS was obsolete, but not everyone grabbed a new camera every year. Before digital VHS-C was the normal home camcorder. The first Digital consumer camcorder came out in 1995¹. Digital 8 came out in 1999. So people were definitely using a lot VHS up to early 2000s. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_DCR-VX1000

Video and Hi 8 enjoyed a significant fraction of the camcorder market as well. They were better in every way than VHS and S-VHS, respectively, but more expensive.

Late reply, but I agree, they were better. I had sort of forgotten about these. One drawback was this though: if you wanted your home video library to be on VHS tape (so you could use your VCR, and also more easily show your movie at friends and family), you dubbed from Hi 8 to VHS, with degraded picture as a result.

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

#319

Post by zeristor »

ozozozd wrote: post #141

I am shocked that no one is talking about Teletext! I am guessing it wasn’t a thing in US or I am the oldest person to comment so far? I had forgotten that Teletext existed until this post. And for those who know about BBSs, Teletext was the closest thing before modems. I don’t remember seeing the wild Teletext Ascii art etc. as seen in the post though. UK seems to have had mad Teletext.

I was surprised too, I am closing hundreds of open tabs, and nearly closed this until I read the original article and was amazed at how cool this is.

I have a few hundred VHS tapes from the eighties, mostly Saturday Morning Open University lectures, and whilst I'm intrigued to run these through, I'd need a VCR too.

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

#320

Post by zeristor »

YesBox wrote: post #94
uptown wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Eventually, all our graves go unattended.” — Conan O'Brien

A similar quote, paraphrased, is "Every one dies twice. The first time is when they stop breathing, and the second is when their name is spoken for the last time".

That was the strange thing about researching my family history, for me it felt a bit intense to go over the birth, marriage, and death of people in my family for hundreds of people in a week or so.

They're just dates, but each one made me pause for thought of the joy, and the despair of each of the family groups.

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