How many of you mastered VCR+

Posted by PsychologicalLab6637@reddit | GenX | View on Reddit | 41 comments

In 1995 my dad bought a new VCR with VCR + Plus. By the time we actually figured out the codes and the programming it was pretty dope but you still had to make sure you had plenty of blank VHS tapes for recording. While cleaning out our old house we had I'd say about 200 VHS tapes with recorded shows and movies. Straight to the dump. It's amazing how much waste obsolete technology makes.

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41 Comments

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bene_gesserit_mitch@reddit

Quickly abandoned when I couldn't start a recording 3 minutes early, or let it run 10 minutes late. They kept breaking in with OJ news.

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PsychologicalLab6637@reddit (OP)

The OJ NEWS ALL THE TIME!!! 😆😆😆

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BobSki778@reddit

The Juice is loose!

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MaximumJones@reddit

I will never forget that year. That is when I switched to pineapple juice because I learned that OJ will kill you.

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PsychologicalLab6637@reddit (OP)

Solid move.

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grptrt@reddit

I definitely lost the end of shows that ran long.

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evilJaze@reddit

We had a VCR that had a feature that would allow you to add time to both ends. I totally forgot about that feature!

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classicsat@reddit

Never had one.Only a handful of antenna channels, and of that only a handful of shows worth the effort to set up to record, which was very easy.

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S1nnah2@reddit

Worked well, the TV listings printed the codes. I remember a friend's dad having a remote with a barcode scanner of some sort.

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Sa7aSa7a@reddit

Dude, why would you throw out the 200 tapes? People buy them on ebay all the time. There are media conservationists out there that will buy them (i've done it before) and try to convert to digital to get old recordings of shows and commercials.

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PsychologicalLab6637@reddit (OP)

Really you think people would want me old school recordings of Beverly Hills 90210 and Melrose Place? I could have cleaned up I guess I bet I had those 2;whole series on VHS blanks 😆

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Sa7aSa7a@reddit

100% yes. Episodes of shows get edited all the time later on due to adding commercials or music rights being removed. Look up Marion Stokes. She had over 70,000 VHS recordings. She was a super early investor to Apple and used the money she made from those stocks to make it happen. The Internet Archive is now digitizing all of the recordings.

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PsychologicalLab6637@reddit (OP)

Holy shit! I would have never guessed. That's incredible.

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1stUserEver@reddit

Holy crap i never thought of rewatching old vhs recordings with commercials. That would be awesome

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Sa7aSa7a@reddit

There's a lot on YouTube.

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Ivotedforher@reddit

Oh, NOW you like the ads!

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1stUserEver@reddit

Nostalgia 😂

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evilJaze@reddit

To add another anecdote: Our local CTV affiliate station burnt down in the early 2000s and with it went the vault with almost all local programming in the station's history. If not for the conservationists, our local history would be lost forever.

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Enlightenment72@reddit

I remember this, but I never used it. Just programed the VCR. ![gif](giphy|AhvmkDdoQd8rM1CcI0)

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itwillmakesenselater@reddit

I used it to record every episode of Babylon 5 on TBS. I kept those tapes for way too long.

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eat_a_burrito@reddit

What a neat show tooZ

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RedditSkippy@reddit

We had one. It worked great. About a minute before the recording was supposed to start, it would flash a message to the VCR. I remember when the shows’ codes were in the TV listings.

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Alarming_Hippo_6035@reddit

How many of you got in trouble if you didn't use the special rewind machine? So you didn't wear down the heads.

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LoanDebtCollector@reddit

In the 90s my mom bought a Sansui VCR with VCR+. I tried using it. Nothing recorded. I tried the 'old' way of programming it. Still nothing. I nearly went nuts trying to record some shows with that thing. Finally year later I checked on the 'net to try to figure out how to use it. Guess what? Many people reported that those 'features' didn't work on that model.

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Shotgun_Mosquito@reddit

I remember the days of the TV Guide that had the code numbers printed next to each listing. When you entered the code, the VCR would automatically record that specific show (technically that specific channel on that specific date and time) https://www.reddit.com/r/whatisthisthing/s/cn4vq1Gpnn

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PsychologicalLab6637@reddit (OP)

Yep that's exactly how it worked.

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PsychologicalLab6637@reddit (OP)

It was pretty cool technology for it's time.

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W0gg0@reddit

I went through a couple of them and used it until tv guide and others stopped publishing the codes. By then I got a TiVo, and after that, a DVD recorder.