First, I love your humor.

Second, I picked up a USB video rig. You plug the VCR into it and the other end goes USB into the Mac (or PC, ick). As you play the tape, the stream is captured on the computer. It digitizes your media. It will work with anything that has the typical red white yellow black kinda plugs.

I feel your pain man. I have crates of the stuff. Cassettes - forgedaboutit! Already replaced most with CDs, still transferring to my computer, and otherwise download the MP3s. VHS quality does not compare to DVDs, let alone blueray - not even worth transferring unless they are personal, or rare, and then it takes forever. Who has the time? I've been hanging onto it all anyway - never know what might be worth money to collectors someday... you seen some of the stuff people are selling on ebay? My wife's taken to watching Hoarders on TV - I think she does it mainly to taunt me.

I am old school in a sense........I have reluctantly keep my VHS and cassette collection. Although I have everything duplicate on CD, I especially love my cassettes and will hold on to them forever, even if they are worthless. They just meant so much to me, growing up....I can't throw them out.Jump For Joy

i wasnt aware of the adapter for the usb. thats neat. where did you get yours?

i dumped my cassette collection about 10 years ago. had some good stuff there. crazy thing is that i am still buying certain 8 tracks when i find them. ive got a player setup and throw one in every now and then. its just a nostalgia thing. i enjoy it though.

my problem is vinyl storage. ive got albums stashed everywhere and steadily buying them it appears.

we recently donated our vhs tapes withthe exception of a select few faves. done even have the vcr hooked up right now though.

mike

I still have VHS and cassettes that I use. Then again, I still use CDs, and THAT's already outdated... Mind Blowi

Years ago I got rid of my collection of over 500 8-track tapes!

I bought this recently for my cassettes: http://www.ebay.com/itm/380394029697?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649

It's cheap, easy to use, and works well.

Hey, I forgot about the transfer thing. Someone had told me about that awhile back and simply forgot (another symptom of old age!). But, I have road cases full of tapes and it would take me another lifetime to go through the tapes that would be worth transferring. And I fear that, even if I transferred them all to another format, it wouldn't be too long before THAt format became outdated, too! :)

It's just a shame. I don't know why I felt the need to record all those tapes. What was I thinking -that I would one day sit down and watch them all? What is it? Why do we record things like.....movies? I have MOVIES on VHS tape that I recorded off the television! I spent a pretty good chunk of cash on VHS tape -"Hi Quality" TDK ones! LOL! sheeeeesh!

I traded in my old Dodge Caravan for an old Volvo wagon recently. The Caravan CD player had died. When I discovered the Volvo had both working CD player and working tape player, I celebrated with an old tape of the Hollies greatest hits--sounded great.

This is a topic near and dear to my heart, as I also have an extensive VHS collection which I'm not sure what I'll do with. I spent close to ten years working as a video dubber/video master control op for campus. I had all kinds of equipment at my disposal, and dubbed things for myself quite a bit.

First off, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater! Yes - VHS quality leaves much to be desired, especially if you want the audio - audio quality can have terrible hiss (a la audio cassettes) and if you don't monitor your VHS-to-digital transfer properly, the tracking can interfere with the audio (I'm sure you've seen youtube videos that exhibit this). That being said - the new medium technology is designed so that you can record it - but you can't keep it! DVRs are meant to be watched in your home, you can't take the 'tape' to a friend's house to watch, for example. You also can't copy it without using the analog outputs (i.e. you go down to a 2nd generation recording). VHS tapes, while lacking in certain departments, are at least YOURS to do with as you please.

Much like your vintage drums as a kid - you didn't want you grandfather's drums, you wanted that brand new Tama with the 'square toms' or similar - I have a feeling a younger generation will start mining the analog world for content - remember, it's not the medium, it's the MESSAGE! The content on your tapes should be the discerning factor on what you do with them, don't be a technocrat and think that 'legacy' equals 'worthless'.

(This is a pet peeve of mine, as many tech experts on campus cannot see past the media and de-value content which basically can never be replaced!)

Last bit of advice - if you are storing your VHS tapes, whatever you do, don't store them 'reels down', or stacked, if you follow me. Store them by setting them on the cassette's edge, bookshelf style. The way magnetic videotape is organized, the video takes up most of the tape, while the audio runs along the bottom with the sync information. If you store your VHS tapes stacked for a long (LONG) period of time, GRAVITY can pull the audio and/or sync information out of alignment, rendering your tapes unplayable!

As an aside, there is a magazine I highly recommend called TapeOp Magazine - subscriptions are free! For all those audio eng types out there who think everything is done in ProTools, this magazine will restore your faith in creative recording processes. You'd be surprised what people are pulling out of major recording facility trash cans, to take back to use in their own home studios.