Im torn. On one hand yes everything is available digitally. On the other I like having hard copies and not thinking about backing up 3 hard drives and random hard drive failure and managing an even larger library on a computer…its nice just to have the media exist. And what happens when our ability to own media disappears (which looks to be a very real possibility).
They do take up space. I may keep the ones I really like and get rid of others.
I easily have over 300. Along with dvds, but im keeping those.
Of course not. The bigger problem is that VHS, like most magnetic analog media, decays. Most of those tapes have likely lost a ton of fidelity compared to when they were new and they’ll only get worse.
I wouldn’t scrap them but I’d also consider archiving tapes without current digital copies to DVD’s or video files.This is the way.
If I had VHS tapes, it’s what I would do. I even know a single place in my city that could do it, but they would probably reject the job for copyrighted stuff, sadly but understandably.
As long as you have a VHS player it is fairly trivial to buy cheap composite or S-video capture devices on eBay and archive them yourself. Its gonna be slow with 300 tapes but it is doable.
Fair enough.
Could give you a reason to rewatch every VHS :)
Beware, in this way lies madness.
Ask me how i know.
File storage, please.
Those DVDs will not last as long as you think.
When was the last time you watched one? For whatever reason tape media is making a comeback, so you could probably get a decent price for them if you wanted. Maybe just keep the rare ones and pirate the rest? I donno. I personally just dont see the reason to keep them with free digital access to movies being so readily available.
Tangentially related, and mostly for others reading this, but if you have 4K blu-rays I’d definitely consider keeping them. Disc looks far better than compressed digital, and uncompressed 4K movies take up way too much space, unless you’ve got dozens of TB of storage or only have a few movies. I have a few 4K AV1 (and HEVC too) files where I also have the 4K disc for, and the disc looks so much better it’s not really close.
VHS is low resolution and degrades over time, no reason to keep it unless you have tapes of things that don’t exist on better formats.
Yeah, a backup that gradually destroys itself on such a short timescale isn’t much of a backup.
Plus if you’re worried about ownership, just remember there arr always other acquisition methods.
No.
Before you do that, I would like to point out I donated the entire TNG collection, and later found out it could have been sold for over a thousand.
Just because VHS goes bad, I’d suggest ripping to dvd or blu-ray (too keep the physical feel) which should get you another 15+ years of storage in a compact fashion, more If kept properly (my ps2 games still work after 23 years, is my source on that).
My uncompressed rips (via OBS) from VHS are around 35 GB, perfect use case for a BD-R.
I know I’ll probably get shit for this comment because “optical media bad” but I don’t care.
there must be a better way than screen recording. I think you are using way too much bitrate that way
There is absolutely better ways to do it, but I have an HDMI VCR and a capture card from goodwill that was $10 total.
For now its fine, I’m not burning physicals, its just bytes on a platter, I do need a VHS digitizer though.
yeah but the blue ray disks must be expensive. can’t OBS use the capture cards source directly? v4l2 or anything?
how do you make the image visible on your screen, to begin with?
My VHS player is HDMI, I feed that into an HDMI splitter (to bypass HDCP) then into a USB capture card.
OBS displays the capture card as though it were a camera input. I record this while it is playing, and export to MKV so I can add web sourced SRTs in after the fact.
I’m sure there’s a better way to do it, but this works for me.
oh that’s not bad as I though first
So they’re slowly rotting (I mean, not rotting but you know what I mean). It’d be wise to back them up digitally if better digital copies are hard to come by.
But a couple additional thoughts:
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Whenever you actually watch one of them, put it back on the shelf backwards/upside-down. Wait up to six months. Anything on the shelf that isn’t backwards/upside-down gets put in the ‘don’t keep’ pile.
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If you’re looking for a hobby, don’t want to keep them but don’t want to toss them right away, you could play around with … idk exactly you call it, but video mixing? A couple VCRs, some sketchy looking hobbyist tech from Etsy, and a capture card, and you can play around with multiple analogue video sources and noise introduction to make some cool as fuck visuals. Actually looks hella fun, it’s high on my post-divorce distraction list. Use 'em till they’re dust for this purpose or you get bored. If you want to squeeze more life out of them afterwards, there’s lots of crafts you can do with old VHS bodies and tape.
Caveat: At minimum, if you have old VCR recordings, back that shit up ASAP. Old commercials and TV shows (particularly super local stuff) are of massive interest to a certain type of person, who would appreciate your efforts. This goes double for cam footage/recordings of live events.
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Allow me to share a personal experience with digital.
I’m well into my 50s and for many years I have been an avid books collector (much into rare editions). In the early 00s, I started reading… ebooks almost exclusively. Because I wanted to make my life much simpler and less focused on materialism. So, save very few books I truly wanted to keep with me I donated my personal library to a charity. And started reading (and purchasing) ebooks.
FF some twenty years later, approx in 2023. I have been reading ebooks almost exclusively.
I kinda like my various Kindles readers, and my iPads too. I’m not ‘happy’ to own a digital library (I have always loved the book object) but it’s so practical there is no discussing it. My entire library used to fill almost all rooms in our home, it can now fit in the palm of my hand. Great. But then, one day I suddenly realize I don’t really own the ebooks I purchase on Amazon (Amazon can and is legally allowed to delete them from our devices). WTF? Another day, I realize my ebooks can be remotely updated. So far, I had no issue with books being edited in order to remove typos and stuff like that but that day I realized a book could also be remotely edited to change its content, say to remove a word that would now be considered offensive… Without me having any legal ability to prevent that. So, in order to protect my property, I learn about removing drm. But then I realize all I’m reading habits are also being monitored and tracked by ‘my’ devices and send back to Amazon or Apple for marketing and data analysis. WTF?
I looked at my digital library and realized it never was mine. Most of those ebooks I had purchased for years on big retail platforms like Amazon and Apple they never were mine. I was merely renting a right to read them (that’s not always like that with ebooks purchased on some smaller/independent and DRM-free platforms but the bulk of my purchases were made on Amazon, and then on Apple). Looking at ‘my’ devices and knowing they were spying on me, I decided this was not the world I wanted to live in. It is something I discuss in more details on my blog, but simply put: upon realizing that I decided to quit reading ebooks almost entirely and move back to print (even for magazines and newspapers). Books I can fully own (no one can remotely delete or edit them from my bookshelves) and that don’t spy on me.
And, at last getting back to your point, I did the same with with movies, series and music. I cancelled all my streaming subscriptions, all of them, dusted my old DVDs and CDS, and started purchasing new (or used) discs again to complete it. I’m not a collector anymore, as I strictly limit the size of my personal library, but I have not looked back and do not miss streaming or digital access.
Physical medias are great as they give us full ownership (we can even resell or gave them away), they don’t track us, don’t spy on us, can’t be remotely edited or deleted. They don’t require Internet access, nor a monthly subscription.
If you have room to store your tapes somewhere, why not keep them? If you don’t, well then it’s a question of deciding what is more important to keep in that limited space and tapes can very easily not be that important ;)
edit: clarifications.
You’re honestly a far more forgiving man than me. My bitterness towards the same realization you had is what drove me to piracy. To me, I was playing by the rules and losing to the corporations that kept getting away with cheating and of no one well enforce the rule then it isn’t one. I don’t pirate to make a grand stand, I do it because I’m petty and powerless and that’s all I can do to enjoy the media I love.
If you still have all those ebooks and readers, there are ways around all the muck that can give them to you for real. Though honestly I think you have the healthier view.
I dare say we shared the same bitterness (and anger) in realizing that absurd situation they created. But it also happens I’m getting old, well into my 50s, and have quite a few severe health issues making it an almost certain fact that I won’t last indefinitely . Knowing that, I’d rather not waste whatever time I have left dealing with such nonsense. So pirating is not the best option for me but it’s certainly not something I would frown upon or discourage anyone from doing if they wanted to.
If you still have all those ebooks and readers, there are ways around all the muck that can give them to you for real.
I do. But I also realized I would never be able to read those ebooks as comfortably without using a device whose behavior (aka what it tracks and reports back to its maker) I can’t, or not easily, control. The only way I now read my ebooks is on my Linux computer using the Foliate epub reader (or Calibre, for all other file formats) because I know Linux and Free/libre software/apps are much more trustworthy than anything else. Alas, reading on a computer is often a lot less comfortable than reading a good old printed book that I can easily carry with me and that I can read whenever I’m not working at my desk.
Went back to buying CDs to rip them.
But I’m usually only buying what I really like.Collecting physical, listening digital.
As a player of Project Zomboid, I say keep them. You never know when the zombie apocalypse might happen and you’ll want those tapes to stave off boredom and also learn new skills.
I do think Face Off would be a valuable education film if stuck in an apocalypse
We donated ours to a local nonprofit org that rents them out. Such a cool group of film nerds running this operation. https://www.weluvvideo.org/
Keep only the good or rare ones.
Contrary to to what you think, not everything is available digitally.
My response is likely to be unpopular but it’s how I feel. I had ungodly gobs of physical media years ago - VHS, DVDs, BlueRay, CDs, etc. It got to where it was more of a hassle to dig through and find the item then slub it over to the equipment just to enjoy my media.
I digitized everything and stuck it on a home media server. Now it’s as simple as grabbing the remote and pick what I want and it’s done. I’m much happier now.
Same. Physical media will degrade and fail. If you want reliable access to the VHS collection then you need to digitize and create backups. About 10% of my collection wasn’t able to be digitized due to degradation
deleted by creator
I think you should keep physical media. I once bought a digital copy of a pretty obscure record from Google Play Music when you could still buy records from them, and eventually it changed to YouTube Music, and the record just vanished from my collection despite me having bought and paid for it. I’ve heard of other stories like this too. The companies just decide not to offer it anymore and it’s gone.
I’d say keep them, but if space is an issue you could sell or give them away. Please don’t discard them!
Oh I dont throw anything!
