How often do you really watch your skating tapes?

[Lara]

My DVR has a hard drive but does not record in high-def (I don't believe any on the market do) so I feel like I should keep them just in case that technology becomes available (the tapes are low-def, but I figure recording in better quality couldn't hurt?).

Yeah, my DVR is almost full as is - I'm going to have to delete or archive on DVD and it sucks for the NBC broadcasts because there's no way to keep it in HD. :( Hard to believe it's still not possible in late 2011 (maybe Japan?)

[BigB08822]

The last time I moved, about 4 years ago, I just threw them all away. Included were a ton of gymnastics videos as well. I felt bad, and sometimes still do, but they were all VHS and I had no VCR. Many of them were poor quality and some of them had not been watched in so long that there is no telling if they still worked. I thought about giving them away but I was not willing to put in the time or money to ship them to someone, if I knew someone local then I would have handed them over but no way am I mailing out 100s of tapes.

[Aussie Willy]

The biggest thing I worry about with getting rid of tapes is disposing them into landfill. So I have a stack of VCR tapes (not just skating) that I want to get rid of but I want to do it responsibility with as little as environmental impact as possible.

[BigB08822]

The biggest thing I worry about with getting rid of tapes is disposing them into landfill. So I have a stack of VCR tapes (not just skating) that I want to get rid of but I want to do it responsibility with as little as environmental impact as possible.

Oh, it is bad to dump them in the trash? What else are you supposed to do with them?

[Carmen Ovsiannikov]

Probably a dumb question for this board, huh! :P

But seriously, how often do you really watch your tapes? I'm at a cross-roads of what to do about the probably well over 200 video tapes I have (a full video cabinet double lined with tapes, plus about 4-5 copy paper boxes full of tapes). The majority of my tapes are USA tv broadcasts of US Nationals, Worlds and Olympics since early-mid 90's, and then a lot of the Pro-Ams from the mid-late 90's. I taped most of these events live as I watched them ... then have never watched them again. I've never once pulled out a tape and watched it again. Yet I continue to tape those 3 big events and keep piling on more video tapes.

I randomly put in a couple tapes recently (that I had not even marked!), and the quality is so poor, they aren't even watchable.

......even my VCR's are breaking and you can't even buy brand new VCR's anymore (buying on E-bay just got me one that is now also broken), so soon I won't even be able to watch them if I wanted to.

Is it really worth keeping them and continuing to tape, when I have never once pulled out a tape and watched it again? Do you really watch your videos again or do the tapes just end up collecting dust?

...I don't think I am ready to let them go just yet .... but then again I have never watched any of them again and wonder if I ever will.

BaileyCatts, you sound just like me. Though I've found as the years progressed I've drastically cut down on the number of competitions and exhibitions that I want to tape and watch over again.

I originally began taping skating beginning with the 96/97 season. Back then like you, I popped a tape in and taped the entire competition/exhibition. I did this up until the 03/04 season as (again like yourself) I realized that I wasn't watching every performance or even every discipline on a regular basis. I also started editing out commercials as I got sick of fastforwarding though the commercials as I thought that would wear out the VCR sooner.

As of the 04/05 season I began taping only the entirety of the icedance competitions/exhibitions and only taping pair and single performances where I loved the programs enough that I knew I would go back and watch those performances again.

Up until recently during the season when I had a couple of hours free I would have mini figureskating marathons and in the summer I also would watch certain tapes over again. For the past three years I haven't been watching much skating at all. This season I taped a few pair and dance programs and except for watching V&M, V&T and I&K performances for the first couple of weeks post worlds I haven't watched skating at all since then.

It is hard to decide what to get rid of especially since you can't use your VCR (another thing we have in common). In my case my VCR is just old and the tracking doesn't work. I have to squint to try and make out what's what. I wish I had purchased one of the newer styled VCR's with both VHS and DVD capabilities so I could at least transfer my compilation tapes and some of the performances I want to keep onto DVD. Now I don't think you can get any type of VHS player.

I did get rid of a bunch of tapes earlier this year and could get rid of at least half of what I have left if those tapes didn't have a couple of dance routines sprinkled throughout.

[Erin]

I started converting my videotapes to DVD 3 years ago and am still working on it. I think next summer, I'll probably be done. I could have finished in about half the time (or less) but I've been watching everything as I've been converting and that's made it a really enjoyable project. Some of the surprises I've found have been really exciting - like in the 03-04 and 04-05 seasons I'm doing now, I'd been too busy at work to pay a lot of attention to skating, so I don't remember a lot about the programs or who won which event, so it's like watching brand new skating. And a lot of what I'm finding is not on YouTube, so I'm still glad I have the DVDs. Once I'm done all of the recording videotapes and editing to burn to DVD, I'll have that much more time for watching afterward. I do cut some things out that I'll probably never watch (and probably should be even stricter with my cutting), but DVDs are cheap and don't take up that much room, so what the hell.

[Aussie Willy]

Oh, it is bad to dump them in the trash? What else are you supposed to do with them?

Definately bad to dump in trash. They are plastic and that stuff doesn't decompose easily. Just sits in landfill for years.

I have investigated services that do recycle them but there are not many around. Still it is possible to recycle them. It does require a bit of effort to find out where to do it though.

There are quite a few services that do recycle DVDs.

But then I am talking about Australia. Not sure what the rest of the world does.

[Nomad]

I recycled all my old, unwatched FS videos. I think I used greendisk.com. Unfortunately, I also recycled a bunch of stuff a friend was storing at my old place. So if anyone has competition videos/DVDs between Calgary and Nagano on offer, please let me know.

[Japanfan]

The biggest thing I worry about with getting rid of tapes is disposing them into landfill. So I have a stack of VCR tapes (not just skating) that I want to get rid of but I want to do it responsibility with as little as environmental impact as possible.

Also, the tape can get loose and birds can mistake it for food (as they do plastic objects in the ocean).

[Skate Talker]

Ohh, what's this? You can use a regular external hard drive with just a bunch of avi or mpgs in a folder? How do you select which ones to play? This would be convenient for watching downloaded programs (right now I either burn a DVD-RW and erase, or connect my laptop to the TV).
I have a (Western Digital) WD TV HD Media Player. I got probably the first version so it wasn't Wi-Fi, but they are now. See this link http://store.westerndigital.com/store/wdus/en_CA/compare/parentCategoryID.13092400/categoryID.13742300 It looks to me like the newer ones function almost the same as a "smart tv" so if you haven't got one of the latest and greatest TV's this would be a much less expensive way to use your tv as if it was. I may have to look into this too. When I got the hardwired version, I didn't have a home network but now I do so this could be useful to me too.

The WD interface groups all the files by type, so all your photo files are in one area, music in another, and video in a third area. The files are organized however you have set them up on the hard drive. So if I create a folder on the hard drive for 2011 Worlds, then all files of whatever type, avi, mpg, etc. that I have put in that folder will show up as a list or icons as I choose, sorted by name. There are other options too, like using the menu to show you recently added files or some such. Like a DVD player it has fast forward and rewind options, skip to next file, etc.


I'm confused. Wouldn't it be easier to just watch the DVD through a DVD player connected to the TV? Or do you mean data DVDs?

I mean data DVDs. It all makes sense when you know that I capture the figure skating as data files, not movie DVDs. I have a Hauppauge WinTV PVR that I used for years. It allows me watch TV on my computer and also to capture as mpg files. Now I have a new, more powerful computer and a Hauppauge HD PVR that (obviously) can capture in HD as .mpg4 or .ts files as I wish.

When I am not home I can schedule the PVR's to capture, but that makes for such big files that whenever I am home, I start and stop the capture at commercial breaks. Since my computer and the TV are in the same room this is very convenient. I can watch live on the big screen and hit all the commercial breaks no sweat. (The mpg files I can cut and merge easily into individual skaters later if I choose without loss of quality. I am still searching for a good program to do the same with the mpg4 HD files, but have been given a lead on one to check out as soon as I have time.)

When I first started capturing on my computer I used to use software that came bundled with the Hauppauge PVR, or software that came bundled on my PC to turn them into movie DVD's with chapters by skater, etc. but it always took so long to burn and then I would find out that somewhere along the line the video and audio had gotten out of synch or the DVD would have places it would freeze up or skip, etc. I just have found the data files to be so much more reliable and a lot less work to burn to DVD for back up so initially I would burn them both ways. All I needed was an easy way to put them on the big screen TV for best replay so I could stop creating movie DVDs. My mother kindly gave me the WD TV HD Media Player for my birthday years ago as soon as I spotted it in the store. The unit I have is very compact, a little smaller than a paperback so it doesn't need much space.

[Cupid]

I have tons of my daughter's skating VHS tapes sitting around. I don't want them to deteriorate - what is the best way to preserve them? Where do I take them to convert into DVD's. Is that the best route to go? How expensive is it? I remember plugging in an old tape into an old VCR and it ruined the VCR.

Do they not make VCR's anymore? I right now have a combination VCR and DVD player and have had it for years.

[floskate]

Over here in the UK at least, VHS to DVD conversions are expensive and many companies use equipment that you can buy for yourself. I have a VCR/DVD combi recorder which also has a copy function where I can copy directly onto DVD from my VHS's. It's multi-format but PAL comes out way better than NTSC as a rule. It cost me around $500 a couple of years ago but considering the purpose of my task, I've had way more than my money's worth from it.

[icenut84]

I had lots of videos too and transferred them to DVD - editing is your friend :) It can be a long process but it's worth it in the end, and only a couple of discs per season doesn't take up too much space. I tried to be drastic and work on the basis of keeping the top 4 in the event plus any others that I particularly liked/were particularly dramatic or historic, but I could have edited them even more really - some still ended up being quite long. Maybe when I get some better technology I'll transfer them again and cut them down more. No rush - I just did a bit when I had some spare time. It was fun rewatching old performances :)

[MacMadame]

I stopped making skating tapes a long time ago when I realized I never watched them.

[BaileyCatts]

Ahhhh. So many views! I'm so torn. On the one hand, I just "want" them. On the other, I have never watched them. Then my VCR's are all dying so soon won't have the option anyway. Copying to DVD could take several years it seems and then ... would I ever watch the DVD's, and do I have the patience to figure the technical part out (I'm thinking no .. my patience fuse is about thislong and the posts where some describe it leaves my head spinning). :( And I am in a total declutter mode now as I'm trying to make room for my mom to move into my house. I have already decided I will no longer tape gymnastics in Summer Olympics (and already tossed 2000 O's in my fit of rage). I think I am going to have to make the hard decision to just stop taping as of now. I'm still thinking on what to do about the current tapes though, so please keep adding opinions if you'd like. :shuffle: