VCR days might be over but the law doesn't forget about it

Module 79L

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I've just heard Alice Cooper talking about this somewhat old story but it has everything to do with the recent announcement made by Funai Electric, the only manufacturer still producing VCRs, that they will end its production this month of July.

Anyway, it's just another story to add to the Book Of Odd Things That Only Happen In America. :D

160325152354-tom-green-freddy-got-fingered-promo-exlarge-169.jpg
Comedian Tom Green, seen here in 2001 promoting his film 'Freddy Got Fingered, which was the film that caused the 14 year warrant for not returning a VHS tape.
 
:( I better stock up on blank tapes.
 
:( I better stock up on blank tapes.
Interestingly, one of the local stores started selling brand new VHS tapes again a couple of months ago.
 
Just imagine how many hours of porn is out there on VHS tapes :p

PS. Not by me, i never owned a VHS or DVD player other than the CD / DVD player in my computer, and its only used for installing programs or games.
Got my first TV at the age of 43 or 44 or something.
 
I don't have porn but I have close to 1900 hours of Moto GP, WSBK and other motorsports on tape. I have all the Moto GP races from 1992 to 2007. :)
 
That's better than porn :D
Yeah, in a way. :D
I'm lucky enough to have captured some of the historic, memorable and best moments of the sport. Too bad I don't have a working VCR anymore and also not enough spare time to convert it all (well, not all but most of it) to digital. :(
 
I have a few races on DVD that I recorded, maybe one or two seasons of the Moto GP, you'd have some classic moments among all that I'm sure
 
But getting back to the subject of this thread, do you think a country's judicial system should maintain a warrant for such a small offense for so long (or even consider producing one for it in the first place), even after the injured party ceased to exist?
 
Perhaps you have forgotten how expensive movies on videotape used to be? They were not sold as a piece of cheap media plus a licence to view the movie, you were buying "a copy" of the movie and they cost silly money.

Prosecution should only happen if there's a reasonable chance of establishing the facts, which may not be possible after a certain amount of time. But deciding this at the time of arrest is reasonable I think.

Purging the records regularly might be healthy for the system. But not something the offender should be entitled to.

Just think how many people were desperate to watch that film but missed out because of that man's heinous crime!

Sent from my tap-to-talk using Tapatalk
 
Perhaps you have forgotten how expensive movies on videotape used to be? They were not sold as a piece of cheap media plus a licence to view the movie, you were buying "a copy" of the movie and they cost silly money.

Prosecution should only happen if there's a reasonable chance of establishing the facts, which may not be possible after a certain amount of time. But deciding this at the time of arrest is reasonable I think.

Purging the records regularly might be healthy for the system. But not something the offender should be entitled to.

Just think how many people were desperate to watch that film but missed out because of that man's heinous crime!

Sent from my tap-to-talk using Tapatalk
Expensive? As far as I know, he rented the movie, he didn't buy it. If he had bought it there wouldn't be a warrant for not returning a tape, would it? And come on, that was a really crappy movie, I bet no one was desperate to watch it! :p
 
I still own a few bought movies - they were just to expensive (30bugs a tape, ONE language no extras ;) to throw them away; the TV-recordings I gave away, a few I digitalized (as the uncut versions are no longer available, eg. "the park is mine"); I still have the VCR...

@Module 79L
...try ebay for a cheap VCR, or check for a service digitalizing tapes; they are not so expensive anymore; for those tapes you mentioned, I'd pay the priece...
 
@Module 79L
...try ebay for a cheap VCR, or check for a service digitalizing tapes; they are not so expensive anymore; for those tapes you mentioned, I'd pay the priece...
I'd never buy a used VCR on ebay, amazon or any other of those places. If I REALLY needed to buy one, I'd go to OLX. There are plenty of them there to sell and at least I have the chance to talk directly with the seller, verify in loco its state before buying, or return it with little cost if there's something wrong with it.
I also wouldn't use a digitalizing service, I can do that myself. ;) The problem with these services is that they digitalize the entire tapes and I don't want to digitalize everything I recorded.

The reason why I haven't bought a VCR yet is because the digitalization has to be done in real time and I don't have the time it takes to select what I want to digitalize and to be present while the process takes place so that I can cut all the commercial breaks. We're talking about more than 260 cassetes with an average of 7 hours each. :confused:
 
I see your point... (maybe a specialized service would be the "weapon of choice", would be sad if the tapes'd be lost in the nondigitalized nirvana)
 
I see your point... (maybe a specialized service would be the "weapon of choice", would be sad if the tapes'd be lost in the nondigitalized nirvana)
The reason I said that is because I've already looked into doing it and the few stores that did that at the time all said they would only digitalize the entire tapes.
Anyway, they're all chrome tapes and I have them properly stored, so the recordings must still be intact. At least I hope so.
 
The reason why I haven't bought a VCR yet is because the digitalization has to be done in real time and I don't have the time it takes to select what I want to digitalize and to be present while the process takes place so that I can cut all the commercial breaks. We're talking about more than 260 cassetes with an average of 7 hours each. :confused:

less frustrating to convert to digital first, then edit out what you don't want, that way the real time process of converting to digital doesn't require you to sit there monitoring it
 
less frustrating to convert to digital first, then edit out what you don't want, that way the real time process of converting to digital doesn't require you to sit there monitoring it
That was my intention in the beginning but it required finding one particular DVD/VCR recorder with an internal HDD. With that I could record directly from the tapes to the HDD, which would made the whole process much simpler than transferring everything to the computer, but I quickly ditched that idea because 1) I couldn't find said recorder and 2), although the conversion process didn't require my presence, the post editing process would eventually take almost as long because I'd still had to go though all the files to find and delete the parts I didn't need. :oops:
Maybe one day, when I'm retired, I'll find some time, between travelling around the world, to do that. ;):D
 
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