posted 2007/04/17 at 16:45
Just so my request doesn't get lost in the rest of my words below, I'll start with it and then do my storytelling in the paragraphs that follow: Björk is going to be the musical guest on Saturday Night Live this weekend, and I'd like to videotape her performance. The thing is, I honestly can't remember the last time I bought blank videotapes, so if anyone can recommend any good brands of videotapes for long-term archival purposes, I would be most appreciative.
Asking this question kind of takes me back about ten years ago, when I first got DirecTV. I remember getting it specifically because one of the networks our local cable company didn't carry then was going to carry this tremendous Bj&0246;rk special that had aired in the UK a few months prior and I'd heard all these great things about. In the years that followed I'd use rockontv.com to figure out when my favourite artists would be on TV and I'd tape pretty much every show they were on. Given that this was in the heyday of Lilith Fair and even MTV was watchable there for a while, this meant I went through a lot of videotapes. Heck, I still have over sixty tapes of stuff I recorded back then that I still haven't watched and labeled and shelved in my collection. Between these shows and the fact that I used to tape Mystery Science Theatre 3000 and Amp religiously, probably a good 90% of my VHS collection is stuff I taped off of cable or (when I had it) DirecTV.
That being said, Jeff mentioned to us recently how his friends kind of gasp when he mentions that he still has a VCR, and while I certainly understand the drive to keep using the newest and best technology, I don't understand why some people would consider VCRs so obsolete as to be unnecessary in a home entertainment setup. Even though I try to get stuff on DVD whenever I can these days, a lot of these old performances by my favourite musicians just won't be coming out on DVD anytime soon, unless shows like Live with Regis and the late-night talkies decide to suddenly make all of their past shows available to purchase, and I don't see the economics of that feasibly working out. I've seen some of the performances up on YouTube, but particularly with the loss of sound quality, it's just not the same.
I know that now I could get a hard disk recorder and just burn my own DVDs of stuff I record, but, well, I don't have the money for that right now. When I do, though, I'm probably going to want to take all of my old videotapes and burn them to DVDs just so I don't have to worry about the recording quality on the tapes degrading any more than they already have. Given how many tapes I have, though, that would probably take me years to accomplish, even if I set aside time to work on such a project every day. At times like these it's kind of a pain in the butt to be the packrat that I am.
If you got a ton of stuff on VCR, you're probably better off just saving them as files on your hard drive. There's plenty of free software to help you do this. There might be a one time expense involved in getting what you need to connect your VCR to your computer, but once you do you're good to go with no further expense.
There's even the Distributed Internet Backup System available now, so for the low price of $0, you can ensure that your files are safe forever.
http://web.mit.edu/~emin/www/source_code/dibs/
copyright © 2008 Sean Shannon