Old man messes with stuff
The delivery of a ‘new’ VHS tape provided the catalyst for twenty three minutes of loosely connected video nonsense.
My videos often require a lot of stuff taking place off the screen to enable me to make the segments that get edited together. Videos like this one are especially weighted to the off-screen side of things. Driving to and from my storage facility, schlepping a variety of electronics around, rooting through boxes in the attic to find interconnecting cables I haven’t seen in years, charging batteries, ordering new stuff to make the old stuff work, messing with software downloads and updates - all for just a few seconds of onscreen footage.
The next time anyone asks what I do for a living, it would be more accurate to say that it’s Logistics or Admin rather than 'Global Internet Phenomena'.
Have a good one and take care.
Comments (83)
Last purchased NEW/CURRENT VHS tape? Possibly The Phantom Menace, around 2000. Had to wrack my brains for that one.
Great vid! The found footage sent me right back to the craziest album that John Peel ever played on his show (and that takes some effort) - https://parcevp.bandcamp.com/album/the-ghost-orchid-an-introduction-to-evp Personally (and I think I'm with Peel here) I 100% believe that the 'phenomenon' having a spiritual origin is bobbins and rathermore is clearly some super flukey analogue mixing of existing broadcasts / RF breakthrough but it IS still fascinating.
A bit unrelated, but these guys have repurposed retro tech in an artful way: https://youtu.be/vaG5tVnpkwc
For thousands of years smart people have been observing the same thing, along the general lines of, "amateurs think about tactics, but professionals think about logistics", so I think your focus is right (and yes, Mat, I do think of you as the Sun Tzu of retro tech :-D). Numerous people have identified the tape's original recording, but I still contend that the first parts of the audio, particularly around where the MiniDisc is revolving, are the sounds of a giant space sausage trying to contact humpback whales.
just got this video recommend. TLDW: some people send insane amount of time, money and resources into making composite video even worse, in order to create art. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ap0WK7W32E
I recall seeing that Hitachi unit in Beale's Department store in the early 1990s. The reason I remember it was that it cost about £1300 which was more than a top of the range CRT TV (probably a 29" Sony Trinitron back then) AND a top of the range VCR ! That was probably around the same time as I went to an AV show and Sharp were showing off a 20" LCD. It was exhibited in its own room with a security guard as if it was some priceless diamond. Of course back then they probably had to hand make about 100 screens before, by fluke, they got one which didn't have a load of duff pixels. p.s. I just found someone else's comment against a video about the Hitachi. "I remembered this device I was selling it $1800 in my store in Saudi Arabia. It was in 1990s."
I can only imagine the Orion remote control is for easier operation while driving. :)
Hope to see the Hitachi repair
There's a guy I watch on tiktok (I know) Matt McCarthy who digitises old vhs recordings. The interesting thing is not the actual media most of which is available somewhere digitally (but plenty not) but the ephemera of live broadcast adverts, trailers, idents etc.
Yes absolutely. I showed some of these types of things in the V2000 video. Old adverts really take you back.
The end sounds of what was on the tape reminded me of the film CONTACT! Put it through some other player, you could have plans for an machine that could actually play the film better:)
Speaking of content matches, I've been digitizing commercials from old VHS tapes using the VHSDecode project. I recently got a content match on 10s of clips from an episode of MacGyver in an ad. I suspect my few seconds of VHS quality clips probably would not have affected sales of the Blu-ray set!
You would have thought showing a few old clips would be free publicity and help to remind people of old shows and hence promote sales. Showing 0.004% of MacGyver is a blink of the eye. It’s like the old problem with sound samples. As Stetsasonic rapped ‘ Tell the truth James Brown was old until Eric and Rakim came out with I got soul. ‘
Move time back in the days of crts definitely had to be at night with the lights down, to avoid everything in the room reflecting of the screen 😄
Rare footage of the Outer Hebrides Broadcasting Corporation introducing an edition of Green Acres at 3am in 1974. https://ibb.co/VW0CXWrH (Edited: Would have helped had I got the name right!)
Escape from New York isn’t 44 years old! Hahaha why’d that make me… oh no… noooooooo *crumbles into dust
Definitely Green Acres.
I picked up a Toshiba VHS recorder from a charity shop for £8 about six years ago, having not owned one for well over a decade. I decided, since eBay existed, to seek out all the tapes I'd missed the opportunity to buy as a kid, such as the Now That's What I Call Music VHS releases, the earlier ones containing a handful of tracks not on their audio counterparts. Turns out they stopped at NOW 20, and there's no volume 19. The NOW Dance releases also made it to VHS. For some reason, NOW 5 seems very rare, and expensive when it does turn up.
Back in the day I felt the Now VHS tapes were better value than the CDs, especially when I eventually afforded a HiFi VHS recorder in about 1993.
I still have a Hitachi multi-format "worldwide" VCR that can play back and *record* in PAL, NTSC and SECAM. Also has both PAL and NTSC tuners. Unfortunately something's broken where it tries to load a tape but then ejects it again. It was expensive to get it repaired and my limited attempts to troubleshoot failed, so I left it - as it was right around the time that we got our first TiVo, so day-to-day recording to tape for time-shift viewing wasn't as necessary.
I actually found the Phillips Discoverer TV and the 2 portable VCR/TVs a lot more interesting than the fact that someone has put out a VHS re-release of Escape from NY. I remember portable DVD players being popular for a few years in the 00s, but I hadn't realized the concept had been done with VHS. Good job using this as an opportunity to show off some unusual old tech. I hope people don't overlook this video, thinking it's just about another novelty release on an old media format.
"Green Acres" theme! :^)
Rewatched this film recently still a classic (I was streaming for full quality)
Even as a kid I already noticed that stuff recorded on VHS looked worse that when you watched it directly on TV... Although I'm really intrigued by the way they managed to solve a lot of problems in video tape in general, all very clever! And that the whole complex mechanics actually worked pretty reliably. BTW: I still have a VCR, but just for a couple of old personal tapes. I really like the Hitachi device, I'm a bit wondered by the "Colour"-dial on it: was it specifically made for the British market? Across the pond, in the Netherlands, that knob was usually labeled "Color"... Actually, my first English teacher at school hat to tell us that that was "wrong", we were supposed to learn British English, not American English ;-). Was it usual in the UK that devices were specifically labelled with British words?
If the word ‘colour’ was printed on something intended for the UK market it would be spelled with the U. Most TVs from memory would just have a symbol rather than the word.
Image scaling on a LCD or anything is always tricky. I have a Philips 21:9 TV from 2010. Since it was posh and expensive is has a good scaler. It has scart so I can watch VHS on it. It scales it up and it looks as good as VHS can, or even ever slightly better. It just looks silly having a 4:3 image in the center, filling barely half the width.
THAT IS GREEN ACRES MUSIC !! All day long and twice on Saturdays! That’s where i am placing my money ! And i pray that i am right for a big shout out in a techmoan video :) https://youtu.be/DrbPAt1_vc4?si=4qhviMfIIuXve1u-
was gonna post the same. 100% that theme song.
That CRT with the visor brought to mind the helmets from the first ALIEN film.
Lovely video! The detective work is amazing. Thank you :)
The bit at the end is a rare instance where hitting a YouTube 'content match' would actually be helpful 🙃
I worked for a VHS duplication company in Denmark from 2001-2003 and it is true that the tapes for each order was made in the length that the movie was, including trailers. It was the "Loader" that was monitering 5-6 machines that took the videotape from big reels and put it in the empty cassette. Each cassette got a barcode that was later covered by the label. We could load tapes while another movie was copied and i think we had about 1.000 recorders. About reusing tapes was also true. We always made about 20 copies more than the order was, if a machine should fail during production. Those tapes would we afterwards run over an electric magnet and put on some shelves that was in order of length, so they could be used in another production.
The static..... Pure Poltergeist!
Maybe there are enough Techmoan-wannabes on You Tube nowadays to make releasing stuff like this commercially viable. That's a new take on the 'Techmoan Effect'.
That's exactly how I like my twenty three minutes of loosely connected video nonsense.
A nice fun video. Shame they didn't record the film anamorphic onto the VHS tape, especially as likely 100% of the buyers would be watching on 16:9 TVs. It would have looked noticeably better. VHS even supported recording a 16:9 flag onto the tape lattery to auto set the aspect ratio over scart into the TV, well my JVC S-VHS did into my Sony CRT. Some of my 16:9 anamorphic S-VHS recordings of early digital TV didn't look too bad at all. I remember reading a review of the Hitachi portable deck in What Video magazine when it came out. Can't remember what they thought of it, but it seemed a cool device back then.
Does anyone remember Pal Plus? This was broadcast on Channel 4 in the UK to give enhanced blow-up for widescreen content. The additional data, encoded in the black bars top and bottom, was preserved on VHS off-air recordings and is still decoded by my Panasonic Blu-Ray Freeview HD+ recorder, through which I run my VHS machines. It's weird to put a grainy 1990s recording in and have it present in 14:9 (note not 16:9).
Ah, but it's the attention to Logistics and Admin that make you a 'Global Internet Phenomena'. Great video, as always!
Not to mention schlepping around. That's an admirable trait.
You should do a "Behind the Scenes" video. Which will probably end up being twice as much work.
I remember the last BTS Mat did about the Omni Entertainment video. That must have taken a good deal of work because the published video is 35 minutes long.
Brilliant video. A treat to see the different devices, the demonstration of how rotten the quality of VHS actually was (I remember getting all excited about HI FI VHS), and your detective work around the origin of the actual tape! Hilarious to decipher Green Acres in the static. For a short while in the mid 80s, I worked at a duplication house, and it was quite the sound to hear 200 machines all eject tapes at the push of one master button. Much more exciting than my job - adhering the labels on multiple tables of VHS tapes staked 10 high.
I’ll always remember the first thing I played in surround sound from my new HiFi VHS machine and surround decoder. Lethal Weapon II - the opening scene was something I’d then show to friends who always seemed fast less impressed or interested than I was.
Do you still have your hifi crt tv? I’m curious how the movie looks on that screen. Have a similar feeling towards VHS, they haven’t aged well. To me VHS symbolises an era where the TV production style had a tranquility to it, Except of course for stations like MTV and all the youth tv programs that were over the top and in your face. Bit like tiktok but with longer runtimes and 16:9 instead of 9:16.
I passed the Sony CRT on but still have the Technics, plus perhaps around ten other CRTs of various sizes. The smaller they are, the better VHS will look. The Technics was NTSC-J though.
The music is the theme from Green Acres.
Great video. Maybe video is in the LP mode being played back in SP by your video player. I recently picked up 4 videos of the 1985 live aid, the TV broadcast version in LP though it's also up in archive.org. video has lot nostalgia as format grew up with but I was a betamax fan. A VHS connected to betamax got round the macrovision issue for copying videos.
It seems more likely it’s a US NTSC compilation of Green Acres. Speeding up the audio/video by 143% brought it back to the correct pitch.
The weight of camera was 1.1kg and it has a f1.2 lens. Year before were sold for£3.5k i purchased at tenth of that cost. Camcorders should never of been continued. Musk and Gates would have technology 10 years ahead of their time.
Over 39 years ago this was taken on A1 camera and NV180 recorder months later i designed a transmitter to discard tethered video. Rank wanted to buy it but licence restraints at time prevented uptake. It made me ill and i shelved it. https://youtu.be/hq3TiUsf2hk?si=O-i-i2wl3W4G_ws1&utm_source=MTQxZ
I loved this video, and Green Acres! When I lived in Cheyenne, Wyoming, I tried to watch Green Acres being broadcast from a TV channel in Laramie. My antenna didn't work well enough on my little TV, so I checked out a book from the library and learned how to make an antenna to pick up a specific station. It worked, and my 12-year-old self was a little happier in 1972.
Yeah. I knew it was Green Acres too.
I don't know who that's meant to be on the cover but that ain't Kurt Russell. Great video though. I had hundreds upon hundreds of films on VHS back in the day. Fortunately I managed to sell (most of) them just as DVD was creeping up in popularity. Wish I'd kept my Trial of a Timelord TARDIS tin though.
Maybe the guy on the cover is Snake from Metal Gear Solid. 😉
I'd love to show more and give you plenty of resource material.
Another good one. It seems you got a lot of energy, that's great! Not the Hitachi though, which is a bit of a shame bu lt glad you showed it. I am a bit sore my father just dumped the vhs and dunno how many movies. He said it wasn't working anymore but... I got one and I use it from time to time but getting a good picture on a modern TV is a bit of an issue. I am not sure things are not coming back. I am pretty positive there is no industry interest, especially media industry, as the streaming model was their target all along. Yet people seems to be interested on the simplicity of it all. You know, no faffing about, just plop the media and press play.
THANK YOU for the videos I've watch you for many years. I just had to add that video technology was much better than you seemed to suggest. If used carefully it competed with super 8 film in a way. All my vids tended to be closeups, on a 240 lines screen they looked incredible taken with the best cameras available circa 1985 they are incredible quality. I used broadcast quality cameras and effectively managed HD QUALITY PLEASE LOOK AT MY short playlist. There is much more https://youtu.be/P7MWQ-7G7Xc?si=0gYK2hFaKhwmYFKc&utm_source=MTQxZ I would love you to examine more precise footage and show what on a tiny budget can be achieved.
As others have already mentioned, I definitely heard the theme for Green Acres playing at the end. My ex-wife and I used to purchase movies on VHS all the way up to 2003. We eventually wound up with 2500 tapes. Some were purchased new, the majority were purchased used from the movie rental shop inside a local supermarket. Also maybe a few hundred were new blank tapes onto which we recorded movies checked out from the local library (surprisingly only a few had any copy-protection on them). We got a DVD player in 2002 when the prices came down during the Christmas shopping season, I think we paid $35-$40 for ours then. Most of those VHS tapes were either thrown in the trash or left in the house when we got a divorce in 2009 and sold the house. Still have a number of them left (65--I just went and counted them). Mostly stuff recorded from TV of which most are episodes of "Our World" a history of 20th century news events that was broadcast in 1986-87 and was my favorite program at the time. Also recorded as many episodes of MST3K as I could in 1992-93 (sadly done in SLP, mostly skipping adverts). Also a few movies, music videos and other miscellaneous TV recordings, most of which have been digitized. I'm kind of nostalgic for the old VHS days, but would only attempt to watch anything in that format just to see if one of my old VCRs would still play a tape.
Mat, I am surprised you didn't find it what the theme tune was by getting a content match warning after uploading it to YouTube. Though, it is great to see (or hear) the mystery solved already.
It’s the only thing that didn’t match. I suspect at this point that if I were to burp, it’d get matched with the Simpsons.
Green Acres! One of my fav.
Always here for this kind of video, thoroughly enjoyed ! love the look of the reissue VHS, and the tape printing is cool, but completely baffled why folks would want this when originals are plentiful and not particularly expense and I'm sure could be found in cheap second hand / charity shops with enough patience. A very tactile format, but not one I lust for the image quality, although like others say full of nostalgia
Wow, incredible detective work on this one! And well spent for this timely, important subject :) Is it maybe "Green Acres"...? Edit: oops, guess I should've read the comments first. You guys are quick.
Apparently it is.
I have five VHS recorders (including two of the same Panasonic model you show next to the LG TV) and even though they are seldom used most of them have died, probably either belt or capacitor issues.
I'm not sure cassette isn't coming back. I think it probably isn't, but I think it's got a lot of the same market as records. Yes, records sound better than tapes, but they often sound worse than CDs, especially with cheap turntables that are so popular. If vinyl records are popular with people listening on Crosley POS units, then cassettes can absolutely be popular in the same way. I think if you have $50 and need to buy a cassette player, they're actually better and easier than getting a vinyl turntable, and they sound okay. No worse than sub $100 record players, and mostly better. So compact cassette doesn't have the downsides of the clearly inferior VHS or 8 Track or anything like that. It sounds good. Tapes sound good. I can't hear the difference on Dolby C and type 2 versus CD unless I really try, and I think even modern Type 1 PRCs without noise reduction sound totally okay. If FM radio or low bitrate DAB is popular, then there's no issue with compact cassettes. Again, they're PROBABLY dead, but maybe they could maintain their current zombie existence. Regarding the actual tape: that cassette looks awesome.
I think Zombie status is the right way to describe it. Definitely not a comeback though, more a faint echo.
• Growing up with VHS makes me appreciate watching the same movie today. Last night I streamed 'Tremors' - and not only was I overly conscious of Kevin Bacon's outdated hairdo, I was pleased with the superior video quality. • I really enjoy seeing you use the Philips Discoverer television. 😍 • Look at this young lad with a superlative collection of VHS! 😃 https://postimg.cc/yDMrsMD9 • It's interesting that they've recycled the tape. The xylophone audio at the end seems familiar but I can't quite place it - perhaps it's a kid's show of some sort. • I am amused that companies would release a new VHS when you can get tons of them for 25 cents in a thrift store. Sometimes they're still in original cellophane packaging. On the other hand, there's plenty of recycling opportunities. • Next thing they'll be trying to bring back Pocket Discs... 🤣 ... Very enjoyable, despite the pesky video piracy Insanity. Take care 🤍.
Do not look up how much they charged for this, you'll be horrified...
Just Another Excellent Video, by the way. Left the audience with a bit of suspense!..... that is, until now....
My thoughts exactly
Sir, that is the theme music for Green Acres, TV show from the 60's. Specifically, the ending credits theme. You did get the speed right! At the very end you hear "This has been a Filmways presentation" - was the dead giveaway for me.
I think you've got it. 👍🏻
Most of us keep this stuff until the next clear out then recycle it. Mat hangs onto it until it comes back around as nostalgia. There's a lesson for us all there.
The theme song is Green Acres. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Acres https://youtu.be/umS3XM3xAPk?si=oE9oczcgHIYJMlED
I knew I recognised it, but couldn't place it, I had been thinking Beverly Hillbillies until I checked that out. I don't think I've ever actually watched Green Acres, just something I've been exposed to from other US films and shows.
As I recall, the slipcase version was the Special/Collector's Edition, with the proper plastic case version being the standard one. I think that annoyed some people, they'd have preferred the decorated tape in the plastic case, I don't think people in the UK had such a nostalgic feeling for slipcases. Whilst I found it interesting, the price for it completely ruled out out. You do realise you've completely ruined its collector value by unsealing it, though...
Another very entertaining video, Mat. Looking forward to seeing if you get the ‘laptop’ video player going again.
P.s. How are the health issues, hope all is good?
I’ll have more info (or be none the wiser) after another MRI in September.
Always look forward to watching your videos. I try not watch them on my phone as a lot of the detail is missed. So I always watch them on my TV when I'm at home.
😂
Look forward to watching this one. Regards