Just press record
Back about thirty years ago (it sound so much longer when you put it that way) some of my buddies borrowed a piece of gear from the university audiovisual services that showed just how things were changing. Up until then, a movie required investment in time and equipment. The ability to tape two pieces of film together without sending the projector into “spew mode” was not given to all. Here they were, with a “recorder”.
No need to go into further detail on why the batteries were dead when it came time to actually tape something; the core matter was that they had managed to bring a digital tape recorder into the residence room. Technology meets the beer bash. The tape ran from reel to head to another reel in a manner that we could all understand, and even if the results were a snowy black and white image, it was shiny and new.
Of course, technology constantly refines, and about twenty-five years ago, I purchased my first video recorder, in VHS. The machine was purchased somewhere along Yonge Street during a rush trip to Upper Canada, and I promptly traded the goods against my rent. Since I had a live-in landlord, the shiny and new VCR remained available for taping videos from the nascent Much Music. Good use of technology. The machine is still alive and well in a basement not far from ‘town.
My next VCR was purchased to allow timeshifting of the David Letterman show, which I haven’t watched regularly since his heart surgery hiatus. Shades of Y2K. Now, the only thing that gets taped is the occasional celtic program from PBS and the annual ECMA capture for posterity. We haven’t rented tape in ages.
Tonight, I moved one step further in the technological paperchase. Our PVR (a PC with a vidcapture card running MediaPortal) recorded a holiday movie from CBC, commercials and all. No need to ride the pause control; we’ll simply edit out the ads later, before transfer to DVD. I had figured out where the program was laying its ostrich-sized data eggs a week or two ago (this movie ran to 6.4 Gigabyes of file), so the program utility jumped greatly. No muss, no fuss, no place for a child to stuff cookies. I could learn to like this digital recording stuff
