Mike86

I didn't record the dialog from shows but I did have this old cassette tape player that also recorded and remember taking it and holding it up to the tv to try and record the theme songs of favorite shows. I mostly did it when I was big into Star Trek and recorded the themes from the original Star Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation as well as some of the movie themes. I did it with some other shows though too such as Batman: The Animated Series.

PhantomStranger

I wonder how much of the uncut Tonight Show broadcasts circulate among the bootleggers? We'll never get uncut episodes released to home video due to clearances and such; the current releases are cut to ribbons. Any hardcore Tonight Show dupers here? It's the one remaining program where keeping the original broadcast recordings is likely safe from being made obsolete.

Rex Fenestrarum

WKRP maybe? I know there were some hardcore WKRP fans who traded tapes with each other to get complete sets of the original series. Apparently it's not just the DVD versions with replacement music that suck, but also the syndicated episodes, which were severely cut up as well.

I wrote a letter to Letterman for the "Viewer Mail" bit when I was in 6th grade, and he actually read it on the air (and mispronounced my last name to the entire country). Thing was, I mailed it on a Friday, and he read it the very next Thursday, so I didn't even think to record it. And I checked Letterman's NBC re-runs for years afterwards, but the episode was never run again, ever. If someone out there has a copy of the original Late Night with David Letterman with Linda Ellerbee from a Thursday between August 1982 and June 1983, I'd love to have a copy!

devilshalo

I have a box of WWF/WCW/ECW PPVs that my girlfriend at the time taped for me from 1996 - 2000.

GuessWho

rw2516

The first syndication run of WKRP in the 80s had all the music intact, but were edited for time.
I used to record and collect all kinds of tv shows. Just about every older show had fans that traded tapes with each other. Wild Wild West was a big one. A lot of markets never got the B&W eps. in reruns. I traded Thriller and Night Gallery tapes with a woman in Australia. Mission: Impossible tapes with a guy in Canada. Rat Patrol tapes with a guy in New York.
A LOT of trading went on with Dark Shadows episodes.

TerryW

Those are the ones I have. From a local Fox affiliate in D.C.

Alan Smithee

A lot of the early VCR owners would record The Tonight Show so they didn't have to stay up late to see it, but they'd tape over it right after watching it. I have a few Beta tapes of mostly clips from 1977-78, where whoever recorded them actually stayed up watching the show and recorded just parts that interested them. The only complete show with commercials they recorded was strangely a repeat. They recorded most of a 1977 show where Steve Martin guest-hosted, but all the commercials are cut which always frustrates me

I do have the original airing of Carson's last episode, but that's not quite the same as the 70s stuff.

teameck

Back before I got a DVR about ten years ago, I recorded EVERYTHING on VHS that I watched or intended on watching. I often had three VCRs recording at a time during prime time. It was crazy.

I recorded a series or two or appearances/specials since back in the '80s, but once I started recording Babylon 5 when TNT syndicated it, I realized I could watch what I wanted, when I wanted-- and could FF through commercials and get through four hours of TV in just three. And if someone called or visited during a show I wanted to watch, it was great to hit "stop" and come back later.

I was recording Fox Sunday shows as late as last season because the DVR is usually full, and I didn't care about HD for them (until I started watching them in HD). But the DVR is just so damn convenient, so I doubt I'll continue that practice now that most can be found OnDemand.

I have been culling my tapes for the last year or so. Once I bought the DVDs of shows I had on tape, or just realized I'd never actually watch the tapes, I started tossing the really old, worn out ones (I taped over what I watched, often dozens of times). It makes me sick to think about all the money I spent on blank VHS tapes, and makes me sicker knowing there's nowhere for them to go but the landfill, but I'm about 200 tapes lighter; only about four times as many to go...

PhantomStranger

I do like seeing old commercials for a bit of nostalgia, especially ones that were distinctive or memorable. The best ones are always local commercials, since everything about them was amateur hour compared to the professionally-produced national commercials. I sometimes wish DVDs offered an option to insert vintage commercials while watching a TV show.

bluetoast

Holy shit 1000 tapes? Did you have one of the programmable VCR Plus things where you put in a number and it records? If so, how exactly did that work?

JimRochester

Come to think of it, my uncle still has a bunch of stuff on Beta. He recorded some oddball music documentaries from PBS 100 years ago that he insists he can't part with. I guess we have trouble letting go in this family.

Ash Ketchum

You guys have some amazing collections. Have any of you begun uploading what you have to YouTube? Some of this stuff is so rare that you may be among the few who have saved it. I've been going through my VHS collection and finding things that don't seem to exist anywhere on the web (I try to do a "due diligence" search first) or are not in any kind of distribution and I've begun uploading them to YouTube. These are TV shows, news segments, documentaries that I've either acquired on VHS from one place or another or taped off the air. So far, no one's asked to take anything down. If a tag appears claiming copyright on the entire show content, I'll take it down without asking, as in cases of Toei Animation, but sometimes you'll just get a tag for a particular piece of music, including classical music pieces, and it's just the computer reacting not the actual copyright owner, if there is one. And some of the copyright claims are completely bogus. No one's ever contacted me and asked me to remove anything and I've put up plenty of things I taped off the networks. I've often put up news stories on particular topics, including whole segments of "Nightline." Topics I've posted include the L.A. Riots (1992), the Oklahoma City Bombing (1995) and Anita Hill (1991). I now have four YouTube channels, including two with very specific themes. This whole thing was facilitated by my acquisition of an Elgato Video capture device that I've connected between my computer and a VCR.

hanshotfirst1138

I used to have the Power Rangers anniversary special which aired one time in the United States, but my mother saw fit to throw it away because it say there unwatched

JimRochester

One day I've got to take some time and figure out how to get a home made DVD uploaded to Youtube. I have a commercial we did when we had our business back in the 90's that occasionally I want to show people and that would be the easy way.

PhantomStranger

It's definitely a point to consider before chucking stuff out without any idea of what's on the tape.

Alan Smithee

My YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/user/eyeh8nbc/videos

Haven't put up any Tonight Show stuff because I've heard Carson Productions gets it pulled immediately.

I use DVDDecrypter to get the material off the disc, then use a program called MPEGVCR to edit it just the way I want it, save that as an MPEG file and then upload it. I'm not very computer literate, but it's easy for me.

Just wish YouTube would hurry up and get the right frame rate for video-based material. I know it's possible on the Roku since I've seen a couple other apps on that do it. But I remember it took YouTube forever just to support stereo audio.

Rockmjd23

Yikes, even your youtube channel is full of stuff nobody needs.

Actually there's some fun stuff in there

Ash Ketchum

If that isn't an amazing time capsule I don't know what is. If I was teaching a course on Contemporary American History, I'd assign my students to watch only clips from your channel and then come up with an assessment of the era.

Autotelik

In terms of stuff that you can't see on TV anymore, I used to record major news events as they happened on the various news networks, like CNN, NBC, Fox etc. Stuff I have are 9/11, first few days of Iraq invasion, and some I can't remember. I figured it would be quite interesting to have hours of continuous footage of those events as they happened. But to this day, I still can't bear to watch 9/11 again.

Autotelik

It is this mentality that helped preserve some of the missing Doctor Who shows from the 1960s. A lot of those episodes don't exist anymore because the BBC junked them, but a couple of viewers actually used a microphone to record the audio from the TV, and that's all we have left of those episodes (and some photos)

Rex Fenestrarum

heh. Yeah, I used to have a tape of all the early space shuttle launches - remember when the big three networks would cut away from regular programming for 2-3 HOURS for a shuttle launch? I watched it a few times over the years, and somehow the commercials were the most interesting thing about it:

- A Hostess commercial in which a June Cleaver-style mom (complete with apron) serves her family a "nutritious breakfast" of Hostess cakes and honey buns.

- That damn commercial for the Equal Rights Amendment that was just 60 seconds of liberal actors sincerely saying "help... pass... the ERA". Worthy cause or not, that was the "HEAD-ON - APPLY DIRECTLY TO THE FOREHEAD!" of political commercials.

- The PSA for the federal minimum wage with the catchy "$3.10... $3.10 ah 3, 3, ah, 3:10...10!" jingle.

- "Give a hoot — don't pollute!"

- And yes, local commercials. Amazing how much BETTER they are now than they were then. I think the cheapest, rock-bottom video camera you can get from Walmart is better than what they used to film local commercials in the late 70s-early 80s.

PhantomStranger

There is some crazy nostalgia going on with those clips. The 1982 Macy's stereo electronics commercial is a hoot to see. The Sears Video Catalog one is amazing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptW0...PHeEbGEy2QhDdw

TerryW

http://modcinema.com/

This site sells collections of vintage television commercials from the '60's and '70's including local ads. This is the best part:
They also have tons of rare TV Movies.

writer106

On youtube, there are videos like that and it is interesting to watch and it is hard to watch some of the events. There is an upload of CNN's footage of the Challenger tragedy as it happened. I watched that out of curiosity because I was only a year old when it happened. It was a bit haunting afterwards.

Back in June around the anniversary of the OJ Bronco chase, I found a video on youtube of some of CBS's coverage of the chase which was interesting to watch. When the chase happened, my family and I were watching the NBA finals on NBC and there was split screen coverage of the game and the chase.