Memories Of Video

That’s a brilliant example. Obviously films and programmes are what we record but it’s historical events that are the real gems.

An episode of ‘Family Affairs’ recorded as a test in the opening weeks of Channel 5, April-May 1997. Long taped over though. When digitising clips a decade later, the earliest surviving footage I self-recorded was from December 1998 (several episodes of Harry Hill and The Simpsons).

On first getting the internet I began an “idents tape” with the rather flawed idea of capturing every single ident on every channel with the idea of eventually uploading them to the early web. It ran to four volumes spanning September 2000 to January 2002, and most notably includes several minutes of the UK coverage of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, recorded as I darted between the TV and the computer following updates on a website called TV Forum. That (very badly edited) footage made it to YouTube a few years ago.

The first thing I found on a VHS was an episode of Neighbours circa 1991. When I finally persuaded my parents to get a new sky subscription in 1999, I also made 'compilation' tapes of all the channels that were on 19.2e back then. That was inspired by a German show called 'Zapping' which went out on premiere mostly showing bored guests on news programmes or things going wrong on programmes on the other German channels.

I paid a visit to my archive in storage recently and there's grey stuff in between the actual tape which can be seen through the window. I hope it's dust and not mould.

Thanks for the replies everyone. Hopefully it’s help taken minds off the current situation.

Memorex VHS' I used a lot to record a lot of random things on and The Big Breakfast between 2000 - 2002. Before I gave in and started to label my tapes, I used to memorise the last four digits of the long code that was on the side of the tape and to this day I can still remember what's on those unlabelled tapes thanks to the code.

You know what must've been frustrating for folk with a VCR back in the 1980s and 1990s? Setting the video for BBC1 to record a film starting at 21:30, you go out, come home and get ready the next day to watch the film, only to find there's been an extended nine o' clock news!

There’s a punt and Dennis sketch about video tapes. Don’t know if it’s on YouTube.

PDC (Programme Delivery Control) would later attempt to solve this crisis. Unless you were trying to do it on ITV and then you were at the whim of your local company, according to http://625.uk.com/pdc/#WhichStations most of the ITV regions that did support it in the north, and also Westcountry.

Of course these days its a technology that's gone out the window, but I suppose when broadcasters remember to update the EPG it tends to sort itself out so the concept is still there...

An uncle in Northumberland had a Panasonic VCR, with the pen you scanned over a barcode, to record a programme. I also believe some listings magazines carried barcodes as well. Anyone else have one?

Didn’t you just set a start time but let it record until the end of the tape?

My great aunt had one too - it wasn't quite as user-friendly as the adverts suggested.

My grandad had that, or at least some variation of it - one of my earliest memories is of him scanning a sheet of barcodes for the video.