It was a situation that happened all the time. Five minutes before a show was about to start, you’d remember that you wanted to “tape” it. So you’d dig through your pile of VHS cassettes and frantically look for a sealed one.

With no new ones to be found, and with the clock ticking, you looked for the next best thing: a tape with no label. If there wasn’t a label, there probably wasn’t anything important on it. There wasn’t any time to check, so you popped it in, hit record, and hoped for the best.

The moment of truth might have not arrived until a few weeks later, when you decided to watch whatever it was you recorded. As the program came to an end, you were either met with static or something much more upsetting.

Sometimes, right as the show you were watching ended, the screen would go a little fuzzy and transition to Rock ‘n’ Jock Softball or some other amazing show you recorded months prior. These few seconds rank among the most devastating a young adult could ever experience.

To those who are too young to have any idea of what I’m talking about, cassette tapes weren’t like blank CDs or DVD-Rs. You could record something onto it, and then record something over it. I had tapes that had ten to fifteen generations of things recorded on them. The first minute was always really warped but usually the rest of it turned out okay.

Wow. I just remembered slow play, long play, extended play…I’m not going to get into that here but if you know what I’m talking about, I’m sure your mind is blown too.

Now, with the advent of the DVR, you won’t ever have to worry about this problem again. The worst thing that can happen is when your DVR has too much stuff on it, and you have to decide whether you want to delete something or ignore the recording of the new show. And that’s not so bad. At least everything is clearly labeled as to what show it is. It sure beats digging through a pile of 50 VHS tapes.

I guess the word “tape” (meaning “to record”) will soon be obsolete. Even with the DVR, I still find myself saying tape, but I might be the only one.

The one thing that the DVR has actually made more complicated is the process of keeping something you like. When you taped something off of the TV, you had the VHS forever, or in keeping with the theme of this post, at least until you taped over it.

With the DVR, it becomes a process to get something off of the cable box and onto something else. I wouldn’t even know how to do it. The first thing I’d think of, sadly, is hooking up a VCR to the TV and doing it the old-fashioned way. Then I guess I’d have to get the VHS tape transferred to a DVD. Is there an easier way to do this? Am I missing something?

It probably won’t be long before TVs can’t even support VCRs. Most new TVs still have at least one traditional AV input, but I’m assuming it won’t be long before component cables are the lowest you can go before HDMI eventually becomes the standard.

We have a box full of old video game systems and we’d have to find an old TV to actually hook them up and play them. Maybe one that still has knobs to change the channel. Add that to the list of things my kids won’t know about.

Thankfully though, they will be spared the heartbreak of recording over whatever dumb thing they’ll be into in the 20s.

The 20s. That is so awesome. It’s been twelve years since I could refer to a decade by a cool name. Only eight more to go. I’m pumped.

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