The Tribal Mind: Farewell old tape, we won't miss you

Wednesday May 9, 2007 04:08 PM

Who We Are

For further discussion of Australian attitudes, go to http://blogs.sunherald.com.au/whoweare.

by David Dale
When the VCR first came out in Australia, people joked that every home needed a 10 year old child to show their parents how to program it to record TV shows. This year those clever children will turn 40, and are asking their ten year olds to show them how to download TV shows off the internet.

We're about to celebrate the 30th birthday of the technology that transformed home entertainment. At the same time we celebrate the 10th birthday of the technology that killed it -- the DVD.

You should expect a tsunami of VCR nostalgia. The first ripple is in the form of a movie called Be Kind, Rewind. It is directed by Michel Gondry, who made some of the greatest music videos of the 1990s before directing strange and beautiful films such as Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind.

In Be Kind, Rewind, Jack Black accidentally erases all the tapes in a video store, and recruits his friends to make amateur versions of such classics as Ghostbusters, Lion King, Robocop, and Driving Miss Daisy. The videos become the hit of the neighbourhood -- until the copyright police arrive.
It sounds like fun, but really, what is there to be nostalgic about? Is there any way in which VHS beats DVD -- convenience of storage, ease of fast forward, clarity of sound and image, space for extra features? The video simply has age on its side.
Lets do the chronology: In 1975, Sony launched (in America) a recording and playback technology called Betamax. In 1977 another Japanese company, JVC, introduced a competing technology called VHS, which came with a remote control. Both made test appearances in Australia in 1978, and in 1980, The Sydney Morning Herald reported: "Relief is at hand for film buffs who want to watch at home movies uncut and uninterrupted by commercials. The one condition is that you have a video recorder. All the signs seem to indicate that 1981 will usher in the era of home video ... at present the VHS format seems to be the dominant one on a world basis."

By 1984, 26 per cent of Australian homes had VCRs. By 1997 the VCR had spread to 87 per cent of households. Then the DVD arrived (the first movie released on disc was Evita, with Madonna, but things improved rapidly).

In 2000 Australians spent $174 million buying videos and $48 million buying dvds. In 2007 we spent $1.5 million on videos and $1.2 billion on dvds.

What kind of people still buy their home entertainment on VHS? You'll get some impression from the top sellers of the past month, as measured by GfK Marketing: 10 Things I Hate About You, Volume 8 of the cartoon series Samurai, School of Rock, Scooby Doo, and two collections of the TV series Sleepover Club. Now that's weird: 30 years later, the main audience for videos is ten year olds.

David Dale is the author of Who We Are -- A snapshot of Australia today (Allen and Unwin). To join a daily discussion of Australian attitudes, go to http://blogs.sunherald.com.au/whoweare.

COMMENTS

There is one way in which the Video Cassette trumps the DVD still and that is home recording.
DVD recorders are either haphazard (the amount of times I have filled a disc with recordings only to see it fail to finalize resulting in a coaster I just wasted 6 hours of my life to make)
Or time consuming, labelling all the segments, titles, thumbnails, I don't even wanna know what happens with a Hard Drive recorder!
VCR's in contrast are intuitive, you don't have to finalise anything for it to work in a different player, if you record into the ad break you can quickly rewind and tape over it!
While for sell-thru entertainment DVD is my preference, for home recording I'll be keeping my VCR for a few years yet!

by Jason Oliver on February 25, 2008 at 08:21 AM

Actually, I was 6 when I had to do instruct my parents in how to programme the VCR and I'm STILL TRYING.

Tribal Mind replies: I'm glad to say I never learned, and now I don't need to know.

by genfie on February 25, 2008 at 09:05 AM

Really - the VCR is best for recording?? (@Jason Oliver) "Quick, I need to find a spare tape to record this show... what's on this one??? I don't know... hang on - it's not at the start, rewind it first so I don't cut it short." - meanwhile the show you want to tape is almost over...
I'm sure dvd recorders aren't great either - for home recording nothing beats the PVR (we have a topfield). There's nothing more to do that press record. And you can record two things at once...and watch what you are recording (starting from the beginning, while it records the end)....and record two things and watch something else. Nope, nothing to wax nostaglic about the VCR from me!

by LR on February 25, 2008 at 10:30 AM

The death of the VCR! Well, not quite yet in my home. I still record channel 7 on tape as they dont transmit on Foxtel IQ. But that is about all. I have replaced all my fav movies on DVD little by little. But tell me, what does a person do with old pre recorded tapes? No body wants them anymore. I suppose they will end up at the tip. How wasteful! Will St Vinnys take them?
And I am going to show my age and say that I remember getting my first VCR. I was so excited. Being able to tape a program when out so as not to miss it was such a wonderful feeling. Also taping my fav shows and keeping them to watch over and over. It was all such a thrill.
I dont think I had the same thrill over my first DVD player. I guess we are all so used to new technology coming along we just arent surprised or excited anymore.
Goodbye VCR. Thanks for the memories!

by em on February 25, 2008 at 10:41 AM

Two points in favour of the old VCR: one if there was a glitch on the tape - you simply fast forward through it - none of this riduclous problem of a spec of dust causing endless jumping and freezing of the picture in DVDs;
2 - they were a lot more reliable from the off because they were largely made in Japan. Yes it took longer for people to take them up because they were relatively more expensive, but many lasted a decade or more. Most DVD players a cheap $50 in woolies, and fail in less than a year.
As for recording - how many people who do record, actually use a DVD disc recorder - they take hours, while the hard disc recorders have only been around a couple of years and are still around $400. I'm sure most people recording are now either using the VCR or more likely saying "I missed it but the whole season will be on DVD in 6 months so why worry.

by the watcher on February 25, 2008 at 11:36 AM

Fast forwarding those pirated movie warnings. Being able to turn the player off then when you turn it back on the recorded show is already in the right spot.
I must say the PVR is quite good, but I miss the ease of VHS if someone wants a copy of what you've recorded.

by Jason on February 25, 2008 at 11:41 AM

Well, I am still a VCR fan (although probably too scarily organised about it). I read the TV guide at the beginning of the week and choose my shows. Then I programme them into the VCR for the whole week. Then I put in a tape, press 'timer' and Bob's your Uncle. Just have to check every now and then that the tape's not running out. If it is, I replace it with another. I have two drawers - one, in chronological order, of everything I've taped so far and the second with the ones I can tape over. My biggest problem is finding the time to watch all those intense ABS and SBS docos I've taped...

by genfie on February 25, 2008 at 01:30 PM

by genfie on February 25, 2008 at 09:05 AM
Had a good laugh about your post genfie- the first VCR we bought was so easy to use - pre remote controls etc that I could easily use it. Unfortunately, it died after about 15 years long service so we bought a new one and had to pay someone to tune it in - you know, TV, digital box, VCR, CD/DVD player - 4 remotes, plus my Nintendo ..... aaaaahhh!!!

by Shoopie on February 25, 2008 at 02:22 PM

Actually, the sound quality is not really better on DVD. DVD audio is over compressed (think FM radio) whereas video gives a truer replication of the original sound - allowing for a broader dynamic range. If you listen carefully to the soundtracks of older films particularly that are now on dvd you may notice some instruments missing - and other parts louder than originally intended. It's a bit like listening to an MP3 vs a CD or record.
Whilst I love DVDs for the bonus features - I just thought I'd point out that technically the sound quality of video is more accurate and dynamic.

by LB on February 25, 2008 at 02:47 PM

With the kid shows being the major sellers on VHS I think it is because not only are they cheaper than DVDs but parents know that kids are not particularly interested or appreciative in the picture quality and sound that DVDs have. So why spend the $30-40 on a DVD that is not going to be fully appreciated by a toddler...Besides most VCRs have been moved from the lounge room to the kid's room to make way for DVD players and big screen tvs!

by cc on February 25, 2008 at 03:12 PM

Let me be another in favour of the VCR. I like to watch the snooker on Fox Sport. Normally it is a 3-hour show but occasionally 6 hours. Even for a dedicated audience this is a bit much for one sitting. The VCR allows me to watch over a few days, always picking up from where I left off. Yes, I know the DVD allows markers but only with +RW disks - or is it only _RW? Whichever it is I have a stock of the wrong ones. One day I will open up the dreaded instruction manual in the hope of a solution but until then the VCR is the way to go.

by Bob Sutton on February 25, 2008 at 08:16 PM

My first VCR had a "remote" that had to be plugged in! It was a pain, and I was always tripping over it, but I still have tapes of music videos I made off the TV the mid 80s.
I'm still a VCR fan for recording TV programs I'd otherwise miss. I bought a Samsung DVD/VCR recorder and it died within months, and even before it did, the discs deteriorated much more quickly than tapes do. But yeah, Shoopie, I recently bought a VCR (for $80 from Good Guys!) and it was really hard to programï¿½and if I'm taping one show and watching another, I can hear both soundtracks. Grrr aargh.

by Misrule on February 25, 2008 at 10:25 PM

I agree PVR is ideal in it's ease of use but it's still inaccurate (seems to get portions of other shows caught up on either side and also with the commercial nets you take your chances)

Also a PVR lacks permanence, I like being able to have a copy of something to keep.
I mostly use the VCR (more than 10 years old, SHARP, has a small LCD Screen on the side so you can view your recording while watching another channel – avoided so many ad breaks that way!) for recording without notice, also I have a few NTSC tapes from US contacts back in the day (how else would I see Star Trek without waiting half a decade!) which I plan on keeping and DVD Recorder wont record (or watch) NTSC format.

I’ve moved the bulk of my Video Library to DVD but the format has it’s problems for recording. Chief among them is the ability of my DVD recorder to take 6 hours of recording and flush it down the toilet with one snap, I lost a whole chunk of 24 season 5 that way! It’s also time consuming as hell. Hopefully these new Hard Drive/DVD recorders are better – but I’ll be doing some research before splashing out again, cuz the earlier models at least – have a lot of problems.

by Jason Oliver on February 26, 2008 at 09:34 AM

The only DVD player that I have found that remembers at what point you had watched a disc to is a Sony. A Yamaha sort of does but you need to hit the play button at the correct time as the disc is loading.

by Tony O'Connor on February 27, 2008 at 04:43 AM

The Sun-Herald

Who We Are

The Tribal Mind: Farewell old tape, we won't miss you

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