A year in Provence, 4 tape box set.
My sexual awakening was “bon jour, I am Raul the Pool Boy”
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Several dozen? Rookie numbers.
Yeah. My VCR TV would automatically rewind and start playing again. I have no idea how many times some of those tapes were played but it definitely broke 100.
Goonies, but it was recorded from TV and you had to switch tapes at about the pirate ship.
My family was pretty poor growing up, but we had cable. Back in the day there would occasionally be free weekends of Disney Channel, HBO and the like. Whenever there was one of those free weekends, my parents would buy a super long blank VHS tape and record hours of random movies. So for years every movie that I watched had an 800 number that would pop up every few minutes asking you to call and subscribe.
My dad would rent movies from blockbuster then set up the camcorder on a tripod to film the movie off the TV. It was always a big to-do since we all had to be quiet so we didn’t ruin the recording…
I’m going to assume you’re joking so I don’t go outside and scream into the middle distance.
Jus make sure to close the blinds on the way out. Otherwise, there will be a glare on the screen.
The motivation combined with the complete lack of understanding of the tech is certainly interesting.
The more things change, the more they stay the same i guess. Sounds like just anout every streaming service out there today.
This is the movie I thought of also. My copy was also from TV, but I did have it all on one tape with the exception that we were missing the first three or four minutes of the movie. Even today when I catch the beginning of the movie, I smile a little thinking of all the times I didn’t get to watch that.
Hey you guys!!!
That’s what you get for recording in SP.
What’s SP in this context?
Standard vs Long play.
I think we used a different term for it, so maybe that’s a regional abbreviation. But I’m thinking they were talking about the recording quality/speed. I remember there being two options, one gave you twice as many hours but the quality was lower.
From memory, SP was standard play, LP was long play, and SLP was super long play.
You could get 6 hours on a tape with SLP, but only 2 hours on SP.
Tape speed / recording quality. Frames on VHS are diagonal stripes from one edge to the other. At lower tape speeds, those stripes get shorter and closer together. The horizontal resolution is unavoidably reduced. Color information gets muddy, because that’s some deep magic in a black-and-white signal. Adjacent frames can bleed into one another. Worst of all, you’re more likely to get tracking problems, where the ridiculous wheels-in-wheels of the diagonal / helical read mechanism get misaligned with the stripes, and the whole picture can drop out.
You wrote a really long and interesting response that completely failed to answer the question. What’s SP in this context?
… the tape speed.
EDIT: You did it again
Phrased directly: What does SP stand for?
Standard Play, I think. Versus Long Play and Extended Play.
No idea why EP is sometimes called SLP. Wikipedia’s right there if you’re curious.
Wait wouldn’t stripes get longer the lower the tape speed?
Nope. The tape travels a shorter distance in each 60th of a second, so there’s a steeper diagonal between the start and end of each frame. The whole magnetic pattern gets scrunched.
I don’t understand what you’re saying.
Why would the stripes be longer, if the tape travels less distance, in the time it takes to make one stripe?
I had the same thing with video games. My dad got a free promotional copy of Morrowind from Fry’s. I didn’t have a computer/ laptop, but every summer, my dad would let me use his on our road trips. That game made me want to learn so much about anthropology, biology, history, mythology, etc… I played for hundreds of hours and never even came close to finishing.
Morrowind is one of my favorites of all time. I was into nag champa incense at the time, and so that smell will always remind me of Morrowind. Singing about the ambiance of Morrowind was kinda incense-y anyway, so it was the perfect combo
I love nag champa! The og smells so sweet, and the ashes are pretty/ easy to clean. I always think of headshops, though lol. They taught me the bottle trick, though. I like to use a key ring to hold the insence upside down in a glass bottle. It’s super clean.
Never heard of that! Thanks for the tip. Gonna try it
never even came close to finishing.
It is an Elder Scrolls game, you don’t finish those, the existence of the main quest is merely a theoretical thing from myth and legend.
My dad got a PS2 when I was six. There was Jak and Daxter, and there was Colin McRae Rally. Later I also ended up with Sly Cooper.
I didn’t have many friends to compare with so that was what I played. Everyone else played Crash Bandicoot, Pokémon, Mario games, etc. and I was like “have you heard about Ratchet and Clank”? Those series eventually got more popular but no one I knew had them at the time.
I had Sly as well! The soundtrack was awesome.
Milo and Otis, Toys, and The Goonies. Watched those 3 movies a thousand times.
Loved Milo and Otis as a kid. Hell we have a dog named Otis.
Fellow Toys-kid here!
Yes! My first Michael Gambon movie.
Bee Movie Ghost Dad The Wizard Secret of NIMH 2 The Ernest Series
I really liked Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. My parents got it for me on VHS at some point and I watched it so much it literally wore out the tape. Then my parents got it for me on DVD.
Can’t even watch it on streaming because they only ever have the subtitled version, and the dub is vastly superior for the dialogue. The subs cut so much flavor and poetry out of the dialogue that it becomes super boring and just the basic gist of what’s going on.
Before that, the “obscure” VHS my parents had that I watched a lot was Monty Python’s Holy Grail. We spent years trying to understand what the “witch” says when she is found guilty and only knew for certain what it was years later when they released a special edition DVD and we watched it with the subtitles on. “It’s a fair cop.”
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is so good. I have to admit that I’ve only ever watched it with subs though. Maybe I’ll try the dub next time.
Kyle Mooney made a show about this era of cartoons that everyone needs to watch!:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturday_Morning_All_Star_Hits!
Every few months, when the topic of obscure childhood bs comes up in conversation, my husband will always ask about my “made up dinosaur rock band show” from when I was a child.
I’ve asked so many people in my life, from different areas around the US, varying ages, etc, and only on the internet do I have proof that Denver the Last Dinosaur wasnt a fever dream. 😂
Thank you for my quarterly validation.
He’s my friend and a whole lot more! Ew.
oh my god
HE’S MY FRIEND AND A WHOLE LOT MORE
…wait what
DEN-VER! The last diiinosaur
My brain did the same thing. What the hell else is stored down in there??
I have finally found it, thank you stranger.
Oh ho, and yet I, a parent, can still put my thumb on the streaming scale. My daughter right now is watching old Nick Jr. Cartoons, playing Mario 64 (as well as a 2yo anyway), and the untitled goose game.
She also watched old seasons of Curb Your Enthusiasm with me since I had it running, though I probably don’t want her to adopt Larry David vibes…
Goose game is a hit with mine as well. I haven’t introduced 3d games yet, but Super Mario World and Donkey Kong Country seem to be favorites right now.
I thought about 2D vs 3D, and it just seemed 3D made more sense for her. Granted she mostly just runs Mario to butterflies and then let’s him nap. She’s not really goal oriented yet.
As for goose… She sees it, then she runs around the house honking and flapping her wings. This is how you raise a hell raiser lol
Fern Gully -WAM Sky Dancers -BOOM The Black Cauldron -HAZAA!
Ferngully is a regular player in our house.
Starring Tim Curry as It Doesn’t Matter He’s Having Fun.
Sgt. Bilko (movie starring Steve Martin) was a classic at my house
And it was recorded off the tv so you had to fast forward through commercials about clap-on clap-off lights
My dad would pause the recording when commercials started and resumed recording when the commercials ended. It was funny when he was 15 sec late on both accounts lol.
And the beginning of films were cut off. Big Trouble in Little China starts at the poker table for me-- I never realized Jack Burton (😍) had a monologue at the start.
Now we’re in the List of things we “own” on Amazon prime and watch over and over era
Ok but the Indian in the cupboard came with a key for the plastic VHS case, and a couple of toys from the movie. So my love was justified.
Worst child actor ever though
my class watched it and the teacher had to get parents permission to watch it because of the “girls girls girls” music video that plays for like 3 seconds
