The Playgoer: VHS, R.I.P.

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Monday, August 29, 2005

VHS, R.I.P.

Yes, the Washington Post is declaring the old video hardware of choice officially expired. What a shame for a die-hard "taper" like myself. It's sad to go through the bins of "previously viewed" tapes now for sale in every video store. Exhilarating when you find Anthony Hopkins in A Doll's House or Eisenstein's October. But then you wonder, will anyone be around to repair my VCR when it finally breaks down?... One lament umentioned here is: what about taping??? I speak not just as a movie buff, but as one of those theatre geeks who's built a collection of theatre miscellany taped off PBS, CUNY-tv, C-Span interviews.. stuff I don't expect ever to be released on DVD, nor adequately preserved for the ages by Tivo.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I think The Playgoer needs to make friends with some tech-savvy video geek who can digitize his videotapes to hard disk, then compress the data and write them to DVDs. I don't know how to do that stuff myself and don't have the hardware, but I think that's basically what needs to be done. The situation is similar to the problem faced by people with vinyl records and aging phonograph players.