TechStuff Classic: Sets its VCR

for a classic episode. And we look back into the archives of tech Stuff and the more than one thousand episodes that we have recorded, and we pick out the gems, polished them up, and serve them up to you, because I bet most of you weren't listening way back in two thousand twelve. That's when this episode originally aired March twelve, two thousand twelve, is called tech Stuff sets its VCR. It's time to talk about video cassette recorders. So Chris Pilette and I sit down chat about it. I hope

you enjoy today. We're going to talk about the video cassette recorder. Why, Chris, why would we ever talk about the video cassette recorder, a technology that is almost forgotten about today. Yeah, that's the problem. Uh yeah. A while back, uh my father uh VCR he he had it uh plugged in and during a summer thunderstorm or as we call it, in the South a week day. Yes, um,

a power surge atomized the transformer inside the VCR. Sadly, this did not give the VCR superpowers, where it then went on to fight villains and you know, various locations around the world. That's what happens in the comics, right, lightning atomization superpowers. Really real life lightning atomization computers and or people don't work very well anymore. Yeah. So, so basically, the the power, the thing that makes the power work,

and the VCR is now gone. And I said, you know what, it would be cheaper to get a new VCRY. It would be to fix this one, which is very likely true, which is which is often true with electronics. So I recycled it. And my my father has a lot of old videotapes that he wants to be able to watch. I thought, oh, I'm gonna go get him a VCR. I'll just go down to the department store and pick one up. As it turns out, no, I won't, because you can't find them anymore on most store shelves, um,

even even electronics stores. Yeah, they they If you find one, you're you're not going to have your choice your Yeah, I mean, well, one or two maybe, but it's not like it was where like say you go look for a smartphone, you have a display of smartphones to choose from, you have different carriers to choose from. Even even looking for something like a Blu ray player or even a DVD player, there's they're a handful of them to choose from. If not, uh, you know, a pretty good sized display.

But where that used to be the case with VCRs, uh, it is not so much the case. And I was thinking, he you know, I'm there, so they're so disposable. I'm sure there's gonna be a tiny little VCR that I can I can get. It doesn't have to be Hi fi, you know. No, now they're gone. And I was started thinking, who when did they stop making these things? Because I just figured that everybody there are enough videotapes out there that somebody would still make one. I mean, hey, they

do it with turntables, and people don't. People are starting to collect vinyl again, but you know, it almost disappeared for a long time there after the CD became popular. So I started thinking, and we should look at the VCR and see if we can uncover what happened to it. Um but I think first we sort of need to

get it back into the technology. And uh, it's something that again, uh is something that I thought if it went back to a certain point maybe in the early eighties, uh, mid seventies, but it really goes back, uh decades before into the nineteen fifties. Really. Yeah, Now to really set the scene back at this time, the way that that

you would capture images was using film. Oh yeah, and we've talked about film quite a bit in this podcast even recently, where we talked about, yeah, to use using a chemical reaction where exposing a a a film that's coded in chemicals to light activates those chemicals. You then process that film with other chemicals to make a negative image, not one that is you know, bad or ugly, but as negative in this anyway you've heard those podcasts so

so negative. Right. So even capturing film, motion picture film was done through this way. And the way you would capture sound, as you would use through various means a magnetic tape, and in the way motion picture film was working was that you would have a strip of magnetic tape that ran down the side of the film that was arranged in such a way so that the sound you were hearing and the images you were seeing were synchronized. So someone came up came up with the idea and said, hey,

wait a minute, we were putting sound on magnetic tape. Yes, what if we put pictures on magnetic tape too? And that became the quest to create the the what would become the VCR. But really at first it was just getting video onto magnetic tape. And there were a lot of challenges associated with that. Yeah, one of the big ones being that that video information, the the image information, took up a lot more space than audio information did.

So you had to find a new way to encode that information and put it onto tape so it wasn't going to take up too much space. Otherwise what you would have is a mile long tape that would be maybe oh a couple of minutes worth of video because it had it required so much space to record all that information. Well, people shouldn't be too terribly unfamiliar with this, this problem. I mean, uh, we deal with that every day in the internet. Uh, you know, broadband connections can

give you full motion video. You can uh play games with very low latency where you can count on being able to round a corner and get a shot off at your opponent before uh, you know, you you freeze and then find out that you died because there wasn't anything you could do. Um, we have the same we have the same problem with uh, well, with DSL connections.

You know that the voice uses a certain amount of of the uh telephone line's capacity and that's how they use uh, the telephone mine to carry the Internet is is there's this unused capacity and that's how um, that's how DSL works, and you know, and kind of simplified. Sure, um, you know, but anybody who's looked at an audio cassette and a video cassette knows can see exactly what you're talking about, Jonathan, because uh, an audio cassette is uses a much narrower piece of tape um than a video

cassette can. But there are other challenges to I mean, uh, it sort of depends on how much video you want to capture. A video cassette can be recorded in a number of different quality levels and to fit when once you've standardized on a cassette size, uh, and then you start adding time to it. Oh, well, this one can

do eight hours instead of six hours. If you recorded at the correct quality, then you start having to talk about the tape's thickness, because the tape won't fit in the cassette, won't fit in the machine if you leave the tape at the same size, and it won't work the same way inside the cassette. So something has to give. But we could talk about the mechanics of that in

a moment. We were going to talk about the history and so back in the nineteen yes, yes, and before that of course, uh as as pretty much everyone knows we have live TV. Um you know, you burps and

gaffs and things that fall over and all. You might have a a famous Hollywood actor think that what he's doing is a walk through rehearsal instead of the actual, uh the actual program which did have been with I think it was a Lawn Cheney Jr. Really yeah, he was supposed to apparently, Um Mr Cheney was somewhat the worse for wear because he had had a little had a little little drinking pooh and thought that he was going in for a rehearsal for something that he was doing,

and there was a fight scene and in the fight scene he's supposed to pick up a chair and it's breakaway chair slamming across the back of someone and knocked them unconscious. He, thinking it was rehearsal, not realizing it was going out live, picked up the chair, went through the motion as if he was going to swing the chair, then very gingerly set the chair back down where it was supposed to be. And I actually have this on DVD somewhere, so I'll have to see if I can

dig that up. But anyway, yeah, it was live TV. It wasn't It wasn't something that people could mess with and edit things out, and uh, you know, it went out warts and all. Well. A couple of guys working for AMPEX, which is again a familiar name for people who've worked with National Recording Equipment UM, named Charles Ginsberg and Ray Dolby UH worked on the first commercial real to real video tape recorder, and that would be UH. It looks very similar to a real to real audio recorder.

This was around nine six, and UH completely revolutionized the TV industry because at this point you could record a TV broadcast to be played at a later time. So if you had something like um Mr Mr Cheney's gaff, uh happened and you know, you could go back and do it again if you needed to. UM. But before that everything was live and this this really changed things for the industry. Of course, these machines were were not inexpensive. Uh,

they were not tiny as they later became. UM. And so it was really sort of the exclusive world of uh, you know, professional TV people who are using the kind of equipment and that would that would remain the case for decades. Yeah, I mean in uh, it was ninety nine when Sony came up with the first inexpensive VCR. Expensive again meaning industry not consumer. Yeah. In nineteen seventy one, Sony had the umatic system right right, U M A T I C. And that was almost exclusively restricted to

commercial use. Yeah. They used the wider tape and had had the advantage of being very high quality. UM. But it was it was much larger than what we use today. Uh, you know those of us who still have working videotape players. UM. But it was it was really the mid seventies when

the equipment became inexpensive enough. Yeah. Yeah, I actually have something kind of fun fun to say before we get the mid Yeah, in ninete, this is the first time we have a consumer video cassette recorder of this is not VHS or BETA right, it's it's using the same basic technology but different format. So the very first consumer VCR from my research was a Phillips Model fifteen hundred, which came out in the United Kingdom, of all places,

in nineteen seventy two. Well, Phillips is a British company. Our pals in the United Kingdom. Do you get that? Pal? Ah? Nice? Thank you. There's nothing you can do with NTSC. No, no, we'll talk about that in a minute. But yeah, they managed to get their hands on one in nineteen seventy two, and it cost the princely some of six hundred forty nine pounds in nineteen seventy two. And I know what you're thinking, Chris. You're thinking, gush, Jonathan, how much would

that be in today's dollars? So you would have to convert pounds into dollars and then used an inflation calculator. Who has time to do that, will, sir? I tell you I had time to do that this morning. Anyone with Wolf from Alpha, which will do it for you automatically. I didn't use Wolf from PA. So the answer Wolf from Alpha gives may be different from the one I have, but based upon the historical currency conversion website, sixty nine pounds in nineteen two would be equivalent to nine thousand,

eighty seven dollars today. So just shy of ten grand the very first consumer video cassette recorder. Meanwhile, Chris is is looking at Wolf from Alpha as we record this to see how how far apart the two conversions are. Do you have an answer from Wolf from Alpha? Why did I get? Okay, sixty nine? That's good radio right here? Oh? I know it is. Well, that's the thing, is it? It shows you how expensive this device was at the time. I mean, it's not something that everybody had in there,

no tin grand to drop on a VCR. Yeah. Um, do you have an answer? No, because I did it wrong. So all right, we'll just have to ignore it. I'm or some listener will be very helpfully let us know anyhow. So um, so, yeah, it wasn't until the mid seventies when VHS made its debut. Yeah. Actually, uh, in well, in Japan it came out in seventy six, but in the United States we had to wait till seventy seven before it came over here. And before that Sony had

come out with a competing standard, the Beta standard. Yes, so Beta had been on the market for a year before VHS managed to come to store shelves. UH. And so there were there was the videotape wars, which I think we've actually talked about in a previous episode we have, and and of course Beta short, as someone else will point out, as short for Beta max UM and UH, but you really didn't compete for for quite a while. UM.

Of course UH. Beta max is still used or or was used for a long time in um TV work, even after it failed as a standard that you would see on the h store shelves at your local video rental place. Right. The biggest differentiator between the two, at least early on that size, was that well it Beta had a slightly better resolution than VHS, but only slightly. I mean, the difference wasn't as dramatic as say VHS

to DVD, but it was there. It did have a higher quality image and also they could only record up to two hours, and VHS the big thing about that was they could record up to four hours, so that that really helped push VHS over Beta, even though since Beta had been on the market for a year they had managed to bring their prices down, so when VHS first launched, it was actually more expensive, right right, Well, um, here again, the the average consumer is is going to

look at it and go, well, I can I can buy blank video cassettes for a VHS machine and record more video on it, uh to allow me to record more myself, and therefore this is a better value for me, even though the marginal difference in quality might make me think about a Beta max machine. And the VHS standard was introduced by j v C. Yes, and that's also

going to be important in a little bit. But j v C the first model they introduced in the United States was the hr Dash thirty three hundred, which cost one thousand dollars in nineteen seventy, which in today's money three thousand, five fifty five dollars. Yeah, that's a that's a healthy chunk of change to drop on the v C R. Yeah. And it's it's amazing too because a

lot of these machines were top loaders. I remember that. Yeah, you'd topped the door open, slide the cassette in, and then pushed the top of the door down back into the video play. I had one of those. Yeah, and this was you know, it's interesting to think of that because I think the last time I actually went shopping for a v c R, I was just looking for for one to because I've got tapes I wanted to

be able to play them. This was years ago, but I remember running across models that were like thirty or forty dollars. So to think of it as being almost well thirty bucks in today's money back then, Uh, that's kind of kind of mind blowing right there. And of course, uh, you might say, okay, so what happened between nineteen fifty six and nineteen seventy six, Uh, well, one of the there were there were several things that happened. Of course that like all technology, it seems like people find out

better ways to achieve the same effects. So you know, gradually these machines are getting smaller, they're getting lighter, Uh, the qualities going up, They're getting more affordable as as people can mass produce them in greater quantities. There was also something else that that is common with this kind of technology, and there were people that just didn't want VCRs on on people's home entertainment shelves. Are you talking

about organizations like the Motion Picture Association of America. Yes, yeah, so you've got these organizations that were legitimately concerned that home access to this kind of technology would mean a hit. It would take the organization, organization would take a hit, the whole movie industry would take a hit, as people would refrain from going out to the movies and instead watch things from their homes. Same sort of concern was

from the television industry. If you didn't require people to be at a certain place at a certain time, then how can you guarantee that your advertisers are spending the right amount of money for advertisements during that slot on TV? Oh? Oh, but what but what? But what happens I ask you when when your favorite one of your favorite movies comes on on the local station, you could record it yourself and then never have to go see it again. You could watch it again any time you want it. Yeah

that's not cool. Yeah, So these were real arguments that were brought up against it. That was one of the reasons why it took a while for this stuff to get to market, which because there was a big resistance on the part of the content providers. So it seems like that happens every time there's something that's one of these revolutions in technology. If this episode we're all about digital video recorders, it would be the same story. Yeah, or audio cassettessettes. Really any any time you get to

any kind of medium where you're permanently putting something down. Yeah. Yeah, there there are people who are saying, wait a minute, how are we going to make money now? Well? Yeah, I mean that it gave rise to uh to these industries. They were able to record it the first time, and then they could show it to you or play it for you any other time for a fee. Yeah, they were had. They were losing their money. Two major industries

popped up because of this. You had the rental industry. Yes, so companies like Blockbuster and all the other rental agencies out there that could rent out videotapes. They would not exist without this. And then secondly, you had just the home theater market industry. People who were purchased seeing tapes so that they could own these movies that they loved in a more permanent fashion instead of being like, oh, I saw this great movie in the theater five years ago.

It's called Star Wars. I really wish that I could watch it again, but no theater is showing it, and there's no I mean, why would a theater release it again. Well, suddenly this created a whole new market for these old films. So once the industries realized this, they started they reverse their decisions. Oh now I get it, and they made stupid amounts of money on this. I remember buying UH movies movies when they first came out on video cassette.

They were exorbitant eighty dollars for a film. Well, and in a lot of cases that was because those movies were priced for rental agencies, so that you would have a company like Blockbuster. I always use that one because that's the one that most people are familiar with. But Blockbuster would say, all right, we'll pay a hundred dollars per uh copy of this film, and then we'll make get up by renting it out to X number of customers. And so it will take us, you know, a certain

number of times before we make our money back. But after that, it's all profit as long as that tape is undamaged, you know, as long of that tape is is is lendable. Yeah, so uh yeah, there were a lot of videotapes that never went on sale for a price that the average consumer would consider reasonable because it was never meant for the mass market. It was meant for the rental agency market. One of the movies, there's a movie that I talk about among my friends all

the time called Blood Salvage. The tagline is if Jake can't fix it, it's been dead too long. It was a gothic Southern horror movie about a a guy who runs a wrecking facility. He Um. He has drives an old tow truck and he um salvages parts from from vehicles and people. Anyway, I was an extra in this film. Don't even bother trying to find it if you want to look for me, because you first you don't know what I looked like when I was twelve and two. You would have to have eagle eyes and your hand

on the pause because it's gone in a flash. But anyway, I wanted to copy this movie because I actually enjoyed it. It's a goofy horror movie, can't be tongue in cheek kind of gross, you know, right up my alley, right, So I went looking for it's the only place. Finally I got it on eBay when someone got it from like a fire sale from some rental company. But yeah, that's why those those tapes were that expensive. So all right, So the VHS has been on the market for just

four years or so. In VHS made up seventy of all video cassette sales by then Beta had dropped down to and it was all VHS from there on out until really the late ninety nineties, and it didn't really start dropping off until the two thousand's. But we'll get into that after we talk about how this stuff works. Yeah, I mean, that's that's one of the important things too, is UM in general, these machines all kind of work

the same. We're talking about Beta max and uh uh you know three quarter for the television industry, UM three quarter inch UM for VHS. They're basically they're all a

reel of magnetic tape inside a cassette. And that's one of the cool things about video cassette recorders is that these devices, I mean, and I talk about the cassettes, the cassettes themselves are designed to protect the tape, which is necessary because uh, certain young people I know would gladly reach in and grab the tape and pull it right out of the cassette, if it was possible to do so easily. Um, it is if you know what

you're doing. But it's got protections on it to keep it from getting stuff spilled on it or getting cooled on something by accident. Um. So it was very wide of the people who made these cassettes to build in some protections. It's got a little door and if you hit a cassette, if you hit the little button springloaded button, you can pull the door open and actually look at

the tape. Um. But it's got you know, two reels that the tape starts on one side, moves to the other side, but it's the cassette also has some features to to prevent that from being done casually. Yeah, there's some springloaded uh brakes on there that have to be engaged in order for them to release the tape. And the VCR actually has a little pin or a pair of pins really that that insert into the bottom of the tape that releases that spring loaded brake. Otherwise it's

much more difficult. If you've ever tried to manually wind a VHS tape, you realize this isn't moving very easily at all, it doesn't work like an audio cassette where you can take a pencil and yeah and rewindedly winded back, like especially if if the tape had come out a little bit and yeah, boy, I've had fun with those. Um So, Also, the the information that's stored on this magnetic tape is not recorded linearly left to right or

right to left. It's if you did that, the tape would have to be enormous because, like we said that that visual information takes a lot of space. So this was one of the clever ideas that the video cassette industry came up with early on, was instead of recording it like a straight line, like imagine you have a really wide sheet of paper, all right, so it's it's a roll of paper, maybe, Yeah, like a roll of paper, and you've you've rolled it out from left to right

and you're going to write a message. Well you cut off cut off at ten feet, all right, So at ten feet you're writing in and you can only write one line from left to right. You can't you can't go back down underneath after you get to the end. There's a limited amount of information you can write on there. But let's say that instead of writing it to directly

left to right, you tilt the paper. Okay, so you're writing at a diagonal from the let's say the the the top the bottom edge to the top edge, you know, and at a slant right, all right, And then you write one little bit of information, and then you go take a little space and you write again in a diagonal from the from the bottom edge to the top edge. Uh. And then you go a little bit further down you

write from the bottom edge to the top edge. And again you're doing this at a at an angle, so it's maybe like a forty five degree angle across the paper. You can fit more information on that same sheet of paper by recording it at that slant. That's true. That's what is going on with VHS tapes. The the information is recorded at a bias on the tape. It's not a direct horizontal line of information. It's several diagonal lines

of information arranged in a horizontal row. And the way the the VCR copes with this is that the device that reads and writes to the uh, to the tape itself is tilted. It's it's it's not uh, it's not perfectly vertical. That the drumhead that does this. It's actually at a tilted an angle so that it can read and write this information at this angle. Well, sorry, guys, this is John from two thousand nineteen. Looks like I

accidentally hit pause on the VCR right there. Well, while I try and figure out how this remote works, let's take a quick break and thank our sponsor. So I guess we need to kind of dive into what a VCR looks like if you were to open one up. Okay, all right, um, well of course, Uh, we were just talking about the the information recorded on the tape and

the drum. Uh. When you pop a video cassette inside a VCR, um, what it's going to do is it's going to engage all the pins and things to get the tape ready to play, and it actually pulls the tape outside the case of the cassette. Yes, the little protective door lifts up, the brakes are released, and a couple of of guides which are inserted behind the tape inside the cassette itself when you push it down. It's

part of the VCR. These two guides pop up inside the tape the cassette itself behind the tape the door releases up and the guides pull the tape like a ribbon up to the innerds of the VCR itself. So if you've ever popped a tape in and you hear that that mechanical were as it as a tape gets ready to play, that's what it is. It's the the uh, the mechanics inside engaging that tape. And then there's that that big drum that you said was at an angle, Yeah,

the rotating head drum. This is this is the all the visual information stuff is all based off of this drum. The ones I've seen are silver in color and it's it's large. You can it's probably the easily most identifiable part of the inside of the VCR. I would say this is the piece that that rotates and will drive the helps drive the the progression of the tape from one reel to the other reel. There are other rollers that are in there too that will also help move

the tape along. It's not just the rotating head drum that that propels the tape through uh. There's a pinch roller that also does this through uh through um uh. There's a a stationary roller called a cap stand yes, and a pintroller that's on the opposite side of the cap stand. The tape moves between the two and the pressure that the to create against each other that's what allows it to pinch and pull that tape through. So you've got the rotating head drum and the pintroller that

are helped propelling this tape through the system. You also have a couple of different UM well they're called heads inside the device that that have specific purposes. Yeah. Now, the rotating head drum is there to to read the video information, but there is an audio head as well, UM which is located over off to the side. It's not right next to it, UM generally, but what it does is it reads the audio track on there. And uh, you know, a VCR is designed to record UM video tapes.

And if you've ever had a video tape, let's say you you recorded UM a show that you wanted to watch. For a while, before I had a d v R, I used to record shows that I wasn't going to be available to watch, and I would, uh you know, I had a couple of tapes that I used over

and over again. Well, there's an e race head inside of v c R that will erase the information on the tape so that you can rerecord it with additional tape without there being interference or otherwise you would just have stuff overlaid on top of each other, over and over and over again, and it would be unviewable. I'm us you were you know, David Lynch or something. Now

they're just like with an audio cassette. There is a tab, a little plastic tab on a v vc R cassette that tells the VCR whether it's allowed to engage the race head or not. Um. If you went out to buy a copy of your a movie that you liked from the shelves, that tape, that tab would be gone. Um. And you know if you tried to hit record, you

could not accidentally record over it. Now as most of us with a long history of these things, now, uh, you could put a piece of tape over it and it would allow you to do this, but you would have to actually do something yourself to allow the tape to be replaced, so that way you would it. Let's say let's say that you got that that Sweating to the Oldies eight and you're like, this is not nearly as good as my Sweating to the oldies seven. You know what, I'm not going to have this debate with

you again. All right. Well, anyway, you might think I want to be able to record over this, and then you would use a piece of tape to do that because otherwise, like you were saying, it would prevent you from doing that accidentally. Because nothing like the panic you experience when you put a tape in and then you realize that you accidentally just hit play and record and not just play and you want to and it's a tape that you did not want to erase. There's a

there's a special level of panic. Yes, I'm not sure that I have a word for it, but I have definitely felt that more than once. Yes, yes, um it also has a VCR also has the ability to read additional information about the tape. Uh, if you will, it's metadata just on the tape itself. UM that tells the VCR some important things like UMU. When we were talking about it just a few minutes ago. There there three typically three modes that a VHS tape can be played

in SP, LP and EP UM. Basically, uh, there, we won't get into I won't get into that just yet. Let's let's but um, you can. It tells this information is along the tape. Um that hell's the VCR what speed to play the video back at? Yeah, this is along the control track and it also, um, you know, it also has a sensor the VCR does UM that tells it has some clear leader tape UM that they put before and after the the brown colored magnetic tape that tells it basically, hey, there, you're either at the

beginning or at the end of the tape. Go ahead and prepare to shut down. Yeah, this is actually start the movie. A very simple sensory because all it is is trying to detect light. So if the regular tape is passing through, it's dark enough so that the light does not hit the sensor, and the sensor says, yep, it's still good. But then once it gets to the clear tape at the end, it says, whoa that to the end of the tape, it actually does not say anything.

By the way, is there light? No? Is there light? No? Is it a light? No? Is it a light? Now? I keep hearing voices coming out of my VCO And that's a totally different problem and not covered under our podcasts. But yeah, for the for the most part opening up a VCO are. Uh, there's not a lot of a

glamour to it. There are rollers and some pins and then basically being there to hold the cassette in place and guide the tape so that it doesn't just you know, start snarling on things and then then you've got a mess on your hands. The rotating head drum is probably

the most interesting feature. I mean, first of all, it's it's one of the largest parts of the and if you if you were to look at one and not yeah, and if you were to look at what and not know what it was, you might think, my VCR is broken. This thing is sideways, it's tilted. It's supposed to be like that, Yeah, because like I said, it's it's because of the direction of the information being stored on that tape. Uh,

the whole rotating head thing. Uh, it's called helical scanning helical, Yeah, because of the way that the information is encoded along the the tape. It's almost like a helix. Now. Um, we were talking a moment ago about the speeds. Uh. The n SP mode that's the highest quality mode that of VHS tape can can use, and it uses uh it goes by at about one point three one linear inches or thirty three point three five millimeters per second UM. LP is the medium it allows you know that that's

a definitely about two hours. LP runs about four hours UM, and in order to do that, it runs the tape about UH point sixty six um inches per second and UH are linear inches per second and uh that's sixteen point seven millimeters per second, and EP gives you about six hours on an average cassette UM when it's running up at about point four four linear inches per second

or eleven point one two millimeters per second. The thing is, uh, you know, as you increase or actually as you decrease the speed, you're getting poorer quality, which might sound strange too to uh to people who are just listening to this and like, wait, what do you mean? How how is it that going slower means poorer quality? And it's because you're using you're using a less space to store all that information. Yes, that's the thing, is that deal.

If you're if you're going faster, then you're using up all that tape to store you know, a smaller amount of information then you would be if you're going slower. It's it's almost counterintuitive when you first think about it. But then when you actually sit there and say, oh wait, if if I have a piece of paper that's going past me at a certain speed and I'm I'm I'm able to write really really fast. Uh, you know, it's I'm not gonna get as much um, I'm not gonna

get as much quality crammed in there. It's just weird. Man. I sit there and try and think about it, and then my brain breaks. But no, Yeah, the slower it goes, the less the lower the quality. It's not able to store as much information and um uh as you would if you were running it faster. True, and some of the drs to have a flying race head, which is not what happens when you get really fed up because

your VCR is broken and you fling it across the room. Nice. Um. The race head that we were talking about before, UH found in uh the less expensive VCRs is basically just gonna erase the entire tape. Um. But a flying race head is is you can find it on the rotating drum itself, and it actually can take individual bands and erase them and uh that allows you to be more precise when you erase material. From the VCR tape. UM. Also, if you're going to use the two faster speeds, uh,

you're going to need a forehead VCR. UM. Again, this is not some sort of mutant Uh. The sp tape only needs two heads, but a forehead VCR can run the other speeds. Basically, the other heads uh play heads need to be there so that they can on the other speeds. UM. So it's just one of those technological things that needs to take place in order to uh

do that. But if you've ever wondered what that meant when you saw it on on the cards, because because you aren't going to see it now at your local department store, I can tell you, um, you know that that was that was one of the marks of a more sophisticated VCR because you you had more flexibility to record other other speeds with that. Yeah. And there are

multiple standards for encoding information onto cassettes. And anyone who has tried to bring back a tape from another country into their home country and then realize that doesn't play on their machine has experienced this joy. Because the VHS tapes from from various countries tend to be the same size. I mean physically, there doesn't appear to be anything different about them. It's convenient, right, they don't have to make a new size cassette, right, But the the saves money.

The encoding process is different, and the playback process is different, the speeds are different and uh, and they're not compatible, so you could lead to a flying race head. So our folks overhead, our friends in in in the UK they used the the Powell standard PL which was also very popular throughout Europe and other countries as well, and then the United States and then a few other countries including Japan. In TSC was the standard. And these again

we're not compatible. So if you went over, like if I hopped on the plane and flew over to Old Blighty and decided that I wanted to pick up the full series of Doctor Who from the classic era and then come back and watch them, I would be very much disappointed when I tried to play those in my my United States VCR, because I would not play back. You would really need to buy a VCR there and

bring it back with you, and then possibly adapters as well. Yes, and and and and then eventually someone would show up at my door and asked me if I had my television license, and I'd say, what are you talking about? Yeah, I'm sure customs would love that. You know, they're to bring back a trunk full of electronics and plastic. Yeah. Well, you know, they didn't say a thing when I brought back the police call box. So, um, I thought the police call box brought you back. Let's rune a bypass customs.

I just got on another list. That was a joke. All of those things were jokes. So yeah, the different standards, but that's that's why they're not compatible. Um. Yeah, and that control track also holds the information necessary. Like usually the tracking is is fairly automatic. You know that that tape over time warps. Yes, you can stretch. Um. You know the more you know, you're putting when we think

about it, you're putting stress on it. You. Um let's say you uh fast forward and rewind the tape over and over again, and then there's that sudden stop. I remember, Um, I got a VC or I have now which is thankfully still working. UM has a mechanism in it to determine when it's getting close to the end of the tape, and it starts to slow down when you're rewinding or fast forwarding the entire tape, um to prevent it from

getting that sudden stop, which could potently the tape snap. Yes, and uh, you know the tape is the tape is very thin. It's made of essentially it's plastic, which is known to stretch over time. Uh and uh, yeah, I mean you've spent the money on a movie or or something a show that let's say you've recorded your wedding or you noted it and you don't own it. Yes, be kind please rewind. Um. So, yeah, I mean you want to take care of the tape because otherwise, uh,

it could get out of whack. That's um, if you have to mess with the tracking control. You know about this because the tracking basically controls how the tape is reading it. When you start to see uh static little lines in the in the video playback, you realize that the tape has started to warp or stretch. Yeah, it's not quite aligned properly, so the the drumheads having trouble

reading the information. So with the tracking. Some of some of the VCRs, especially later ones, have automatic tracking, where it just a text that that's the things are not quite right, and it will start making adjustments. Others have manual tracking. Others have manual tracking where you have to change a little dial or whatever and try and get it as closely aligned as possible so that you have

the best possible picture. I remember doing that a lot with stuff that we had taped off television back when I was a kid. Yeah. Yeah, Well, especially if you use it over and over again, the more the more likely you uh, the more you use it, the more likely it is to start to stretch and and uh and warp. I hope you guys are enjoying this rewind episode of text stuff on VCRs. I'm running out of VCR puns, but let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor. Well, let's talk a little bit about what

has happened to the VCR and VHS DVDs. Yeah, that was a big one. Okay, So DVDs when they premiered, well first, it wasn't a huge blow to VHS at all. Well, for the same reasons we were talking about earlier in

the podcast. They were the machines were expensive, DVDs were expensive, and there weren't nearly as many I mean, you know, you could find the odds of finding a popular movie in those days on VHS were pretty high, but finding that same film on DVD could be really a challenge because there just wasn't as much content available and that form factor at that point. So stop DVD players from selling very quickly. Now they had a pretty relatively fast

ramp up. I mean it. I do remember that it was a couple of years before I got a DVD player because they were they were, you know, luxury items. Yeah, for a long time. But you did start to notice things like if you went to one of those rental stores like Blockbuster, you started noticing that the VHS section was getting smaller and the DVD section was getting larger. Same thing in retail stores. You would go to a retail store that would sell movies, and you know that

the VHS would get smaller and smaller. But DVDs started to really take over. Uh Well, I mean DVDs have some advantages. You know, there is no warping or stretching. Well, I mean, there's there's the possibility that you could scratch them. Um, but even even depending on how they scratch, they may not uh they may not be damaged enough to affect the playback significantly. Plus you have a lot more control of over where you can start and end. The resolution

was far better than vhs. If you can, you can watch them in computers and even include extras that allow you to interact with them. Uh, you know, games and other things the tracks, Yeah, and and things like that that you couldn't do with a with a videotape. Yeah. If I ever wanted to, uh to watch a movie like let's say Indiana Jones and Raised the Lost Ark, I never wanted to watch Rails Lost Ark and and have a commentary track while I was watching it on VHS.

I had to kidnap Steven Spielberg and and tie him up and have him sit next to me as I watched it. And that only works once, folks. Thanks to the restraining order, he won't be doing that again. Yeah, they recognize you even if you dramatically change your look. It's amazing Steven Spielberg has this ability. And if he

does not forget a face. Yeah. So, Uh. DVDs really became popular quickly enough that it started to put a It started to clue the movie studios in and of course at this point they were a little less likely to be upset about the DVDs, which were Uh. You know, when you buy a DVD from the store, you can't record over it like you could with VHS tape. Uh, you know, all it takes a little piece of tape, ladies and gentlemen. For for a long time, Uh, the the ability to record to DVD at all was even

greater luxury than a DVD player. Yeah, so they, you know, the movie studios, I don't remember them making as big a fuss about DVD as they did for some of the other stuff, And so they people adopted it fairly quickly. It still took a while though, before VHS started really tapering off in popularity. In two thousand three, that was when DVD rentals began to finally outpace VHS rentals and

rental agencies. And in two thousand five, DVD sales hit twenty two billion with a B dollars and VHS was down to one point five billion with a B dollars. So the writing was on the wall at that point. But the real blow came in two thousand eight. Yes, that's when j v C, which if you recall, was the company that introduced the VHS format, stopped producing standalone VCRs. Yeah, and that was that prompted a lot of people to say that two thousand and eight marked the death of

the VCR. Yeah, although I think it's as dead as any of these other technologies are, like uh, the final turntable, UM, the laser disc and some of these other the other formats there. And the thing is, I mean you you told me too before the podcast that you have some movies that you have on on VHS cassettes that you can't find on dv Blood Salvage, fix It. It's been dead too long, so it's not available on DVD. So

there you go. Um, there are reasons that that you that people are still going to want to make them available. Of course, libraries and other people who have uh large who spent money on these have to find a way to either convert them or maintain the equipment long enough to keep it out there. So uh, I think it's Um, it sort of turned into a zombie technology at this point. But I just hadn't realized how far I had gone until a few days ago when I went and then

tried to find one. Yeah, I was thinking I'll probably be able to get one for twenty dollars or so. He seen that recorded that the last major supplier of VHS tapes in the United States shifted its final truckload in December eight Well, see that shows you how long

it's been since I've tried to find a movie on VHS. Yeah, and when, And a couple of films have come out on VHS, but it's been more like a gimmick, like especially films that are uh, kind of an homage to to certain genres that were really that came to prominence

in the nineteen eighties. Yeah, which you know, that's short of the same thing we saw with bands and vinyl for a while, because the Vinyl was kind of a gimmick like saying, hey, look, we're this cool independent group and we're supporting this what some would call obsolete form factor. But you know, although Vinyl managed to to have a a second gasp, I'm not sure that VHS well, and the big reason behind that. DVDs definitely were a blow to VCRs. Yes, digital video recorders was like that was

the death blow. The DVR was a death blow to the VCR because now you had DVDs where you could get a better quality picture and experience from the content providers, and you had DVRs, which that's what took care of the time shifting element of vc rs. Yes, definitely, because I actually had um VHS or VCR plus, which was this technology that people came out with that would allow

you too. If you knew a code and your VCR was equipped with it, you could enter that code in your VCR and it would pick the right channel in the right date. Of course, some my VCR didn't have the ability to change channels like my DVR does, because it's built in so it can change that. It knows what channel to change it too, it knows when, and I can subscribe to an entire earies. So I can say I want you to record this show which comes on two days at eight, and the network makes a decision, no,

we're going to move that to Thursdays at nine thirty. Well, the DVR can handle that because and again there's meta data there that the DVR can follows. I can say I want to record new episodes only don't record reruns, and it goes, okay, this one's a rerun. That's kipping it. Yeah, whereas your VCR would just be like, nope, I'm going to record at this channel at this time. Because that's what he told me to. Yeah, and it's it's so

much more. The DVR is so much more flexible, much more versatile that then a VHS recorder is, and it's just one between the two of those. Once the move to digital happened, VHS really had no hope. And then on top of that, if that weren't enough, even the DVR, at this point I think is starting to have a bit of a slowdown. You know, people aren't buying DVRs as as frequently as they were before. And then part of that is because the time shifting has gone even

more dramatic with Serve. This is like Netflix Incident, or Hulu Plus or Hulu Hulu in general, or the Amazon Video where people now have access huge libraries of content that don't require a DVR necessarily. A lot of them have access to it through stuff they already own, video game consoles or just on on a computer. So we've even seen the DVR have a meteoric rise, and then I think I wouldn't say that it's gone or anything,

but still I think it's in decline. I think companies like TiVo are finding it harder to make products that consumers are finding really compelling. That they feel they have to go out and get because the the internet delivery

method has taken off pretty dramatically over the last two years. Yeah, I don't think they'll they'll die out like some of the other technologies simply because of well, actually live TV, um, things like awards shows and sports and things like that that uh um, you you won't be able to get it later on from one of the streaming shows you want to watch. Uh Um, let's say the the Oscars. She wouldn't be able to You're not gonna say, watch

the Oscars from last week on Netflix. Yeah, those of us on the East Coast are sick of the Oscars coming on so late at night for us, Yeah, or it's the afternoon for everyone in California. But for us, we're like, can you move it along? I have work tomorrow. But but you're right, like the standalone stuff, it's it's it's not a thing anymore. It's something you sort of expect um. But yeah, it's it's kind of amazing that VCRs really have moved off the map. I guess I'm

just not tune with what's on the store shelf. Such a it had such a huge impact on consumer behavior on the industry itself. I mean, it was one of those pieces of technology that really was a game changer. That's multiple I don't really care. Yeah, exactly, yes, And so you know, to see it kind of disappear now, it's again a reminder that just because something is popular doesn't mean it always will be that way. That's right.

It's it's a lesson that we've had to learn multiple times, and yet people still forget about it, and they'll still say, oh no, I can't see it. I cannot imagine a time when this will not be important. Well, there may

come a time, is all I'm saying. And with that in mind, the only thing I think you can count on is that tech stuff will always be amazing and popular and you should always listen to it, depending on what format it's and uh, no matter we transcend, we transcend formats, we transcend platforms, we are freaking amazing, all right. So just you can in fact that, I think that's gonna be our new slogan, tech stuff. We are freaking amazing.

You know. I am pretty sure that the VCR is largely thought of as an obsolete piece of technology now. They haven't been produced in a few years. But without it, we wouldn't have the wonderful series Half in the Bag from Red Letter Media, where they are consistently and perpetually not repairing an old man's VCR. That's a great series. I hope you guys enjoyed this classic episode of tech Stuff. If you guys have any episode ideas, or comments or

questions or anything like that, send them to me. The email addresses tech Stuff at how stuff works dot com. You can pop on over to our website that's tech stuff podcast dot com and check out the older episodes. Don't forget the head over to our merchandise store that's t public dot com slash tech stuff, and I'll talk to you again really soon for more on this and thousands of other topics. Because it how stuff works dot com