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buckbova

> It was a simpler time.

Until you try to program the vcr to record a show while you're watching another show.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101587/quotes?item=qt0238698

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Or program a VCR at all. That is literally a phrase that is used to refer to difficult and arcane tasks.

Or you program the VCR and it starts and stops recording in time. But the TV schedule is so off that you miss that movie completely. I swear that in Croatia, in the 90's, announced tv schedule was just a suggestion of what they might put on at around that timeframe. Except Santa Barbara, people went mad if that wasn't on schedule :)

This still happens in Australia with free to air channels on Digital TV

Didn't you have this code programming I was describing in my other comment?

I am surprised at the number of comments to this effect on a site where I am normally in awe of the depth and breadth of technical knowledge, and the willingness to learn by doing, that is displayed. I found VCRs easy enough to use and only ever got caught out by Programme Delivery Control.

I completely agree with you about programming VCRs. Despite being in my teenage years around their peak usage, I found it quite easy to do.

Xerox and fax machines, on the other hand, are the work of the devil.

There's a major difference between people on this site (who likely had no issue scheduling a VCR) and the average consumer.

A sizable chunk of humanity, from my experience, is scared to even try.

I should have been more clear: Several posters here on HN indicated they struggled with VCRs, and that is what I found surprising.

My aunt used to have two VCRs and an alarm clock. She'd use the alarm to remind her to hit record. She struggled with the timer, but I don't think she trusted it to record what she asked it to.

It's now 2016. She's got two DVRs... and an alarm clock.

To clarify, I'm not claiming that programming a VCR actually is difficult. I don't know, because I'm slightly too young to have ever tried it. I was merely pointing out that "VCR programming is difficult" is or was a cultural meme.

I don't know about the US, but in Europe we had this dead easy code programming (forgot what the name for it was). Each show had a code printed next to it in the weekly showtime guide. You'd open up some VCR menu, enter the code, and thus program the thing in 10 seconds. It would start recording at exactly the right time because the channel would send a special signal together with the beginning of the show. Worked 100% at least 80% of the time ;).

Actually, even the oldest VCRs let you do that, when your source was a coax connection (cable or antenna) and you were using a true TV with its own tuner. You would select on the VCR whether to view the VCR tuner or bypass it.

While it is true that this was possible, that does not mean it was easy. It may have happened, but I cannot recall a single time when I or someone in my family actually succeeded in doing that.

Odd, that was one of the main uses of our VCR. It never seemed complicated to me (tune VCR, record. Change channel on TV, watch) Maybe it was a lot easier in Europe with the SCART hookup?

Same! SCART [1] was amazing; it was a single plug for analog video and audio.

You'd typically have a coax splitter so both the VCR and the TV could get an independent feed from cable/antenna. Then you'd use SCART to get the VCR's output on the TV's 'AV' input, a special input mode like 'HDMI' on modern TVs.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCART

I agree, it was easy (and I live in the US). Even programming a time-delayed recording was pretty easy though a lot of owners never even seemed to learn how to set the clock. However, there were a set of people who, for some reason, could just not grok the picture currently on the TV being something different than what was being recorded.

In Europe (not sure about the rest of the world) the newspapers printed numerical codes along with each TV listing. If you typed that into the VCR it would populate the start and end times for you, possibly the channel as well?

edit: the system I used was VideoPlus+, it looks like similar systems were used elsewhere https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_recorder_scheduling_code

Ours was branded VCR Plus+ in the states. We had one but I found myself just doing it manually.

That's a shorthand for telling the VCR the channel and timeframe to record; it's not related to the ability to record one channel while viewing another.

Every VCR I ever owned had that ability, clear back to my first Betamax.

You're watching too much TV if you consider that a complication.

It only takes two shows that run on different networks. Running popular shows in conflicting time slots was a common strategy to retain viewer share, especially before the VCR was widespread.

I'm sure the lost time and network sponsorship on that obligatory third show running in the 24/7 timeslot behind all others was worth it.

Put TV on desired channel. Put VCR on desired channel. Hit record.

There is no complication there. You don't need to program the VCR.

TVs and VCRs were considerably more expensive. One of the biggest use cases was compromising with family members or housemates.

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