So priceless. OMG our innovations come at a fast pace. Kids react to VCR player, VHS format.

[madfloridian]

This really hit home to me. I remember the day in the early 90s that I discovered my 2nd grade class had no idea what I meant by a record player. Blank stares. Unfortunately in our outdated classroom that was all we had, so I had a lesson in how to put the needle on the record.

That made me feel very old and outdated.

Kids react.

More:

Kids’ Reactions To VCR Player Are Priceless!

I remember being a child wandering around my dad’s warehouse (hoarded mess) looking at all the old, dusty junk. One of the things I remember having no clue about was an 8-track player. I’m 27 years old and still had to Google that to make sure I wrote it correctly. For the record, I didn’t. I thought it was A-track player. Now that I’m an adult, I keep coming to the startling revelation that kids don’t know what things are from my generation especially thanks to this video.

Fine Brothers Entertainment studio runs a Youtube channel that produces a show called Kids React. They sit kids down and ask them to react to different items. In their most recent episode, they ask children to react to the VCR player. Yes, the VCR. The bane of my existence. The eater and destroyer of your favorite tapes. Deities help you if you watched a long movie and had to rewind it. No longer is there a need for the phrase: “Be Kind. Please Rewind.”

[Starry Messenger]

1. I used to use record player descriptions when doing demos of wheel throwing for pottery.

That went out the window!

[madfloridian]

34. lol

After a few blank stares, I'll bet.

[FloriTexan]

2. It made me feel old and dated. ..

THAT'S GREAT!

[yallerdawg]

3. The 8-track.

To this day, I expect breaks at inappropriate places on Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon." You all know what I'm talking about.

I remember after Ma Bell was broken up, retail stores started selling telephones. I moved into a new apartment, and had bought one of these phones. No one ever called me, everyone had my number, no phone calls for I don't know how long.

Then, one day, I was near the phone, and heard this damn annoying cricket chirping, it had been bothering me for days but I could never find it.

It was the phone, of course! All I had ever heard was a Bell Rotary or Princess phone, and they didn't chirp, they rang!

It has gone down hill since then. We should have "kids reactions to old people using a computer."

[brewens]

4. One of the Tom Petty CD's has a pause in it where Tom comes on and says some thing like,

"we have to take a quick break to allow those listening to the vinyl version to turn the record over to side two. Thank you for your patience."

[1StrongBlackMan]

5. Makes one feel old, huh? ...

about 5 years ago, I was at work a needed a type write to type some notes on an index card. There wasn't a sing;le type writer in the place. But to make matters worse ... my 25+ admin had only seen a typewriter in her parents storage locker ... it belonged to her grandmother!

[madfloridian]

8. I remember my first typewriter. I was so proud.

Then came electric ones.

I have converted many VHS recordings to CD format...guess that will be obsolete soon.

[Archae]

6. I just put on CD a bunch of 78 rpm records.

Also a bunch of 45's, and 33's.

How's that for retro-to-modern?

But the first tape player I saw in a car, my Dad had a 4-track.

[Downwinder]

7. Remember film strips and spirit copies?

[madfloridian]

9. Oh, Yeah.

What did we call those copies we ran off for years...mimeographs?

[bvf]

11. Yes!

In my elementary school, they were called "dittos."

[madfloridian]

22. Had forgotten we called them the ditto machines. lol

[Chellee]

10. Rotary phones

Years ago, my daughter and I were at my grandmother's house and my daughter's cell phone battery died. She wanted to talk to a friend, so I sent her to my grandmother's bedroom to use the extension. Minutes later, she came back out and said the phone wasn't working. This was not surprising, my grandmother lived in the country at the time and the phone lines went out with ridiculous frequency. So I picked up the phone in the kitchen, heard a dial tone, and thought maybe the phone in the bedroom wasn't plugged in. So we went to check it... and it was working. She said, "Well, it won't make a call." So I said, "Show me." And that's when I realized that my child could not work a rotary phone. And why should she? We'd never even had a phone with a cord in her lifetime. Grandma's phone was completely foreign to her. She knew that you were supposed to put your finger in the appropriate number and move the dial. What she did not realize is that you had to bring it all the way around to the stop, and let it go all the way back before you started the next number.

I hadn't felt that old since the time she was 5 and asked me what my favorite tape was when I was little, and I told her that there weren't any tapes when I was little. That if I was going to see a Disney movie, Grandma and Grandpa had to take me to the theater, and I only got to see it once. The look she gave me was 2 parts incredulous and 1 part pity.

[pstokely]

12. when I was their age

[Savannahmann]

13. No offense to the primitives, but why would you make this.

I think that sums up the reactions pretty well.

[JBoy]

14. A couple of those kids were very cool

"Nobody would die if we still had these things".

Damn right young lady. It was shit. And we liked it.

[Skittles]

15. heck, I remember thinking the VCR was cool

being able to tape something and play it back later? PRICELESS!

[madfloridian]

16. I remember when we got our first VCR.

Seems like it was very expensive. Came broken in the package, had to be replaced. We were among the first in our neighborhood to get one.

Yeah, we liked it.

[Smarmie Doofus]

17. Rec, Kick.

I still have VHS tapes of movies... 20+ years old.... that work better than my 3 y.o. dvd versions of same.

This may be "innovation" but it is NOT, I can assure you, "progress".

[TheKentuckian]

18. You must have some high quality tapes, have some poorly mastered DVDs, and blu-ray must not be in

the discussion AND have to be using a old tv and/or a pretty small one.

A laser disk vs DVD I might buy but no way on a VHS, too big a hit to resolution to be better.

[Smarmie Doofus]

20. I knows what I sees and that's what I sees. YMMV.

And apparently does.

A similar "consensus" was formed at some point about the audio quality of CDs being superior to that of cassettes tapes.

I have MANY musical cassette tapes in the back of my car, that have been there unboxed and unshielded for close to thirty years.... and guess what: They still work. And They work WELL.

Yeah, yeah: they have a "hissing" sound that CDs do not. It is perceptible to rare, exotic breeds of dogs and even MORE rare, exotic breeds of humans.

However.... the piano intro to Bruce Hornsby's Mandolin Rain ( Now what year was THAT released?) sounds... in my car... as sweet and melancholy as it did when I bought it at.... I dunno.... Sam Goody (Look it up, kiddies.). Mind you it's been in the trunk of my car for all those years, the "case" long since lost or discarded as superfluous. I live in NYC. Extremely cold winters, often zero-ish temps in Jan and Feb. and blistering Julys, Augusts and, sometimes, Septembers.

Point: Bruce requires NO maintenance. Meanwhile my living room is cluttered w. scratched, flawed, smudged or just plain defective.... (and MUCH MORE EXPENSIVE) CDs that refuse to be coaxed back to life.

Again: innovation is not progress.

[TheKentuckian]

24. Definitely, since I'd say the difference from a DVD to a blu is substantial

but a VHS isn't even in the same conversation except maybe on a 480 display and even then I say you still get other picture quality advantages beyond resolution like timing and color that make it a better result.

I'll grant somewhat on durability but only somewhat as I had more than a few VHS (cassettes too) that just got eaten and back in the day before Top Gun and Batman those VHS movies were very, very expensive. A chewed copy of the Godfather was a big loss like approaching a hundred bucks.
My DVD coasters are very few and everyone was product of a abuse rather than any decay. The big problem with the very old ones is that they are matted and so they offer an analog quality picture that is in a little area in the middle of the screen and others have crappy masters that could fly at lower resolution.
Well other than just being poor performers next to a blu (though upconversion helps a lot on a clean master) which has caused some replacements for sure but the DVD's are generally all still fine as they came.

CD's do seem delicate particularly to temperature and maybe other disk media is too but just tends to be kept in more forgiving environments but at least my VHS were all kept the same way so apples to apples it doesn't seem to be an issue and I had cassettes bubble in the car so they weren't bullet proof either, add those to the ones that the deck eats and it's probably about "meh".

Worried about durability in the digital age? Rip all your shit. I don't know where almost a single CD is but I have all the music.

[phantom power]

19. reminds me of explaining what "you sound like a broken record" means to my kid

And that day she found a 35mm film canister, and asked me "what is this?"


Archaeology:

[PassingFair]

21. These kids are adorable.

And SMART!

[Bosonic]

23. Come for the old tech, stay for the old lyrics

[hifiguy]

25. The modern day turntable is alive and well, thankee.

Last edited Fri Mar 20, 2015, 02:09 PM - Edit history (1)

The Kronos Sparta with SME series V arm



The VPI Super Scoutmaster with VPi JMW arm



The Rega RP1



The Spiral Groove SG 1 with Graham Phantom arm



And for my money, the ultimate Big Daddy 'table and the best sounding LP player in the world, The Kronos Turntable, big brother of the Kronos Sparta. Here with Graham Phantom arm

[arcane1]

27. It's still the only medium that actually produces an actual sound

That's what I love most about them

[hifiguy]

28. The very best digital is now the equal of LP

though the sound is different. Unfortunately the very best digital is at least as expensive than most of those very big-bucks turntable/arm/cartridge combos i pictured above, the Rega being the budget inclusion. The dCS 4-box Vivaldi stack of digital components is $106,000 and change. It's incredible, but holy cow....

[madfloridian]

33. I honestly did not realize how advanced turntables had become.

We had one for a while because of late hubby's record collection, but sure did not look like that.

Great pictures.

[valerief]

26. I wonder how many would know what a 5.25" floppy disk was.

on edit:
They've done it!

[madfloridian]

30. Ha. One summer we teachers had to take one of those home to practice on.

That looks pretty much like the Apple IIs we had in our classrooms into the early 90s.

We finally just used the software available for it...there was a version of Reader Rabbit and a great Oregon Trail. I recently found Oregon Trail online with some other vintage games...and I thought you gotta be kidding. We thought it was so advanced.

Love that video.

[valerief]

31. Makes me want to pull out my old Macintosh and mess with HyperCard. nt

[Spider Jerusalem]

29. The first DVD players were introduced in 1997

so there are kids starting college, now, and people in their 20's, even, who really have no memory of VHS.

[madfloridian]

32. Just blows my mind.

Seems the last 2 decades technology has grown too fast to keep up with.

[Lancero]

35. Heh, reminds me of my friends reaction to a rotary phone.

"How do I use this damn thing?"

Anyway, I had a beta unit when I was a kid. No, I'm not that old - My dad did scrapping to make extra money and repair shops occasionally had to throw away still working electronics, some of which we either saved for ourselves or sold/gave away to friends.

Now that I think about it, pretty sure the beta unit is somewhere in the garage. I'd bet it'd still work too, though I think the tapes were apart of the things my dad ended up giving away to a friend since he didn't feel like transporting all the stuff he'd collected over to our new house.

[madfloridian]

36. You should read post#10

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=6389337

About using a rotary phone.