What old recordings have you found?

Erm, I think I've got about 40 at last count..... they're kept in large storage cupboards and yes, they get viewed! I'm learning to do tape-to-tape recording so I can put the best bits on a few tapes.....

You could copy all the sets of titles to go at the beginning aswell!

How many hours of recording can these tapes carry? Do you use long play?

Will look for it online, funny I've never heard of it before, bet I'll know it when I hear it though... EDIT: ah, totally got the wrong end of the stick there, I've heard of Time Frequency, yes, but I thought you were talking about an e.p. called "Any Time Frequency", But, no I've never heard any of their stuff as far as I know.



Got 'em all on original 12"s. "I feel the heat (Trumpton Remix)" is the better version, but those Trumpton samples are still good to drop into the mix sometimes. And taking the bass out of the original version of Charly so you can scratch up the sample is good fun too

My Hitman and Her tape is mostly the 2nd and 3rd (last) rave specials ("NOT The Hitman and Her"), and some bits of their normal programmes too. There is a Get Stuffed on it too, and a bit of The Real McCoy, which was the first multiracial comedy show on TV, I think.

(I know, I know, I'm slowly trying to get back on topic here )

I don't think Katherine's collection will beat the old guy who has recorded every single editon of North West Tonight/Look North West on video since 1980! I remember on the report (which I sadly taped) he had a few hundred tapes! (And this was 5 years ago aswell!)

The oldest North West Tonight thing I have on tape is the end of one edition from 1992.

As anyone who follows my 'ramblings' will remember, I've recently bought a Bush VCR/DVD RW machine, & I'm transfering the best of the material to DVD at the moment!

I've recently found 2 'Cue The Musics' from around 1991 featuring ELO part 2, 'Bernard & The Genie', a comedy one off featuring Lenny Henry, Alan Cumming & Rowan Atkinson, in addition to my TOTP off air clips from 1983 to 1991, to complement my TOTP2's & UK Gold shows!

Mind you, some of the tapes are a bit dodgy quality wise.(BBC2's ATV Night for example, even though it's on Long Play & I've fiddled with the tracking, so I've pulled off what I want & binning the tapes!), so I'll have to track down 'proper copies', or retape, if I want a replacement.

I'm also restricted to 2 hours a disk as well, so god knows what I'll do with my off air Dr Who's from Uk Gold !

(4 parts leave a 25 mins gap, & 6 parts & longer, will have to go over 2 discs!

How do the pros get around this BTW ?)

We didn't actually get a VCR in our household until around 1996 and even then I remember my first ever few tapings - in those days tapes were ugly Scotch things that weighed a ton and cost about £12 for three three hour tapes. I've still got them around somewhere so I think I'll have a rummage around and see what I can find.

There is a box full of video tapes sitting in the lounge, although the VCR hasn't been used in ages - mainly because it's been sitting gathering dust under my digibox. Add to that that the sound quality is really crap and in mono - you can probably see why I don't use them anymore. Come to think of it, it's nearly 9 years old now.

Does anyone here remember the first time they ever used a video recorder?

Are you sure it wasn't before that? In 1996 you could buy a pack of three 3 hour tapes from Argos for £4.99 - I know because that was when I started on my still uncompleted quest to hold every single episode of Prisoner on video and I got through a lot of the said tapes!

I do remember the first ever blank tapes bought by my parents back in the 80's however - they purchased a pack of 2 Memorex 3 hour tapes which had a price tag of £14.99! They are almost twice the weight of modern tapes (I know that because one day I was sad enough to weigh them) and they do genuinely feel much more solid and permanent than anything you can buy today. The recordings they hold also look spectacular today, well over 15 years and god knows how many playings later, and although the material on them is too precious to erase, I've no doubt that if we stuck one in the machine and recorded tonight's Eastenders on it, the recording would be just as perfect as that which can be obtained from a virgin tape just removed from it's shrinkwrap.

We had a giant ITT top-loading video recorder in 1983, it's in my parent's loft somewhere. The first time I ever saw a video recorder must have been at infant school in about 1978 when a man brought one in once so we could see Words and Pictures, or Watch or something!

Unfortunatley as others have mentioned tapes were too expensive so we didn't keep much. However I've dug out loads of tapes recently and am starting to put clips on to DVD. It's amazing how the early tapes are generally of a much higher quality than more recent ones, with some stuff close to DVD quality!

I've unearthed the last BBC1 Mirror globe and Cow closedowns, all Midlands Today titles from 1985, the BBC's 1, 6 and 9 O'clock news titles from the mid-80s on, some Channel 4 and ITN news titles too.

I also found 2 episodes of "Dear Ladies" (Hinge and Bracket), the 2 Rovers fire episodes of Coronation Street, and a "Shillingbury Tales". Some great continuity around them too!

Also found some kids shows: Chockablock, Pigeon Street, Stop Go, Gran, Bod, Flumps, Heads and Tales and Brick-a-brack (with Brian Cant). Also some bits of Roland Rat on TV-am!!

As far as I remember (born in 1982) we've always had a VCR in our house and I remember the first one we had in the 80s was top-loading and had big keys at the front to operate it and it didn't have a remote control! I also remember the Scotch tapes and have quite a few of them floating about somewhere! There are quite a few boxes of old VHS tapes stored away which are probably full of old presentation etc but I just haven't got round to going through them all yet as it is so time consuming!

Probably the first thing I taped was kids shows in the late 80s mainly Thundercats as I was a huge fan of that show but alas these have long since been taped over I also taped the last Going Live but I had went out that morning and left the tape running and it stopped about 15mins before the end The VCR is hardly used now except for when capturing clips from old tapes and for watching Prisoner: CBH of which my complete collection is on VHS but I'm hoping it will be repeated soon so I can record it on DVD!

I have also found from looking at some old tapes from the 80s the picture and sound quality actually seems better on the old tapes recorded on the old vcrs than those recorded using new tapes on modern vcrs!

I was obsessed by video machines as a kid, and the first recordings I made were on my junior schools Betamax. I had the made-up job of Video Monitor in about 1985/6, and had to record How We Used To Live for the class to watch.

I use E240 tapes and record using Long Play, so that's 8 hours per tape.