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Comment by andrewstuart | Hacker News Reader

There would be all sorts of weird stuff on them.

Young people probably would not know that watching VHS tapes anything could happen because they got reused.

So you'd be watching a movie and halfway through it would suddenly switch over to a shuttle launch or a music video or a documentary or something cause someone decided to record something else at that point.

I once recorded a three hour British detective show. I watched it for three hours and it got to the final scene to reveal whodunnit and the tape ran out.

It's great that they are archiving the old content but I don't miss VHS in the least.

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> I watched it for three hours and it got to the final scene to reveal whodunnit and the tape ran out.

I ran into one of these on Youtube just a couple of weeks ago. The reaction in the comments was something less than amused.

(Bittersweet memories of taping over some of Mom's seemingly non-important video in order to record...what was it, the first X-files episode? A _Wings_ episode about a favorite jet? Something like that. But man, she was not happy.)

You’re the first person in any forum online I’ve seen reference Wings. My dads friend used to call my dad to tell him it was on and he’d switch from whatever ninja turtles / golden girls / simpsons episode we were watching. We despised wings! But actually it’s a great show.

Funny. I hadn't searched for it online much but I can understand its lack of traction. It was like a lot of commercial promotional clips spliced together, in some ways. It left a lot of questions unanswered, too! But it was great for an overview and the theme music will be forever engraved in my memory, right next to the _Strike Commander_ theme. :-)

Why I miss that aspect of VHS: In '95 I took a VHS tape that was in a pile in a shared apartment with no label and recorded my friend joking about her bakery job and then she popped the tape in and we watched it and every time I paused the tape a few seconds of the porn underneath it showed through. It ended up launching my video art career and working with Colin Campbell, who invented video art working with FARC (Colombia) tapes artefacts recorded for secret communication.

  #!/usr/bin/python
  from random import choice
  c=["Miss Scarlet","Mr. Green","Colonel Mustard","Professor Plum","Mrs. Peacock","Mrs. White"]
  w=["candlestick","dagger","lead pipe","revolver","rope","wrench"]
  r=["kitchen","ballroom","conservatory","dining room","cellar","billiard room","library","lounge","hall","study"]
  print("%s did it with the %s in the %s."%(choice(c),choice(w),choice(r)))

> I watched it for three hours and it got to the final scene to reveal whodunnit and the tape ran out.

I felt this, hard. So many things I recorded ended up like that, or worse, turned into my mom's soap operas - Santa Barbara, in specific. Ugh.

http://watch.everythingisterrible.com/

http://www.foundfootagefest.com/

You can stream Midsomer Murders if you are still in the mood for 3-hour long British murder mysteries.

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