Taping things off the TV: Classic or Dud?

What I used to do was have my friend with the TV and VCR tape all episodes of Babylon 5 while it was still on. I'd come over once a month, and we'd have an utter glut of it.

We also used to tape all episodes of Vampire Cop because we knew it'd never ever be repeated. But then they brought it back, and completely changed everything, and made it suck. So at least we still had the old episodes to watch. Ahhh... Vampire Cop. What the heck was the real name of it? Forever Knight or something... It was Canadian and the star was Welsh. But apart from that, it was amazingly bad-good.

Dud, because once you're committed to recording a series a little part of your life revolves around taping it, and the pain of having a whole series except for ONE EPISODE is just too great.

Classic, because finding an episode of the Simpsons at the end of a movie always gives me a warm feeling inside.

Dud, because finding an episode of Neighbours over the first half hour of a movie is the most annoying thing in the world.

Bill

However, when recordable DVD comes out I shall set about archiving the entire history of television.

new classic: taping using your computer cos encoding hardware, burners, and computers with sufficient horsepower are so affordable these days.

Do you have piles of unidentified tapes that, upon examination, contain old weather reports, ads, the last five minutes of Neighbours, half an episode of The SImpsons etc. etc.?

Oh God, yeah. Well, my parents do, it's mostly old murder mysteries and vaguely scientific documentaries and news reports featuring what was at the time fascinatingly new technology, all on top of each other, sliced up amongst each other with added bursts of noise. Personally, I have a drawer and two bookcase shelves full of C90s filled with random snippets of Peel shows in much the same style.

I hope my parents haven't taped over my video of Stereolab on TV six years ago, but I feel fairly sure that they will have done because I haven't watched it since three days after it was broadcast and doubtless the space was urgently needed for an ancient Morse episode that my mother had already seen and read the book of at least three times. I am happier not checking whether I'm right or not, really...

The main regret I have is that my parents didn't get a VCR until 1991, so we don't have any really fascinatingly dated stuff. Apart from what fellow anoraks have copied for me, of course.

all I used to tape were naughty bits of films . one time I taped Real Sex 18 and a special on american government on the same nights and accidentally turned in Real Sex 18 to my teacher for extra credit. but made up an excuse to get it back without her knowing .

That sounds like a porn movie synopsis.

Classic, I used to record music stuff I liked back in the day. Still have them but haven't watched in years, may well be unplayable now.

my dad used to yell at my brother and I for mislabeling shit or failing to update labels after we taped over things.

"If it says INDIANA JONES, it's CLUE? DON'T YOU KIDS THINK IT SHOULD SAY 'CLUE' IF IT'S CLUE?!!"

i still love watching the old random shit people taped and have now, you know, uploaded to youtube

i have a couple hours worth of those HBO film trailers from the '80s, for instance. it's the detritus, the ephemera, that i find myself missing the most

My sister and I used to tape the simpsons, using whatever tape was closest at hand. One summer vacation we spent a couple weeks going through all of our tapes, highlighting and numbering the label of each tape that had a simpsons somewhere on it, and making a paper list of which episodes were on which tapes that we could cross check against the highlighted labels.

Weirdly, we did not get invited to a lot of parties.

winner and still champion

https://recorderfilm.com/

Thanks Dad for taping Roeg’s Castaway and Ken Russell’s The Rainbow off the TV back in the day, for reasons I’m sure were completely innocuous and aesthetically sound