Hacker News Reader

Comment by coding-saints | Hacker News Reader

My parents owned a mom/pop video store during my childhood. It's still crazy to look back at how in-demand VHS tapes were. We lived in a super small town so there was zero competition. Cable was not common in every home yet. "Be kind, rewind" cost a buck if forgotten. Rewinding to the beginning of VHS tapes was honestly so long that nobody really forgot. The store was eventually acquired by some regional chain, and almost like magic the future started taking its form. So cool to see this.

View on HN

So, you needed to rewind the tape to the beginning if you wanted to return it after having partially watched it i.e. at 40%? Now I wonder, did the store owners check each tape on return for this? I hope it was a quick process..

> Rewinding to the beginning of VHS tapes was honestly so long that nobody really forgot.

Hmm, if it took so long, wouldn't it have caused the reverse effect? That people would ignore it out of laziness? Maybe I'm too spoiled! :D

Interestingly, in the very first iteration of home video cassette rentals, the tapes could not be rewound at home:

> These rental cassettes were red, approximately 7 inches (180 mm) high by 6.5 inches (170 mm) wide by 1.5 inches (38 mm) deep (however used the same videotape used today) and could not be rewound by a home Cartrivision recorder. Rather, they were rewound by a special machine upon their return to the retailer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartrivision

I recall them having a transparent window so you could see where the tape was. I think the process would have been: slide the VHS out of the sleeve and glance at where the tape was positioned. Should take just a second.

I mean, you could look at most VHS tapes and tell if they're rewound or not. Don't even need to insert them into a VCR.

Further wrinkle: it only took a long time in your VCR, which (we all believed) was also bad for your VCR (I mean, maybe? But avoiding stressing the VCR's mechanism was why it took a long time). So, gadget catalogs sold standalone high-speed VCR rewinders, which just about anyone who watched a lot of movies owned. They took less than a minute to rewind a cassette.

Yep had one of these. For some reason I really liked the sound it made as a kid.

My friends parents had one… looked like a sports car

Wow, a bright red sports car. We had one of those in I’d like to say 1988 or 1989. What a memory. Thanks for that!

You’re welcome!

What I remember is that it was a cultural part of movie watching to rewind when the credits hit. You'd use that time to discuss what you saw with whoever you were viewing with. That's how I did it.

Quick process? Just look at it… every rewound tape has all the tape on the same side.

It took about 3 seconds to check. Pop open the case the tapes came in and look at the plastic window and you can easily see both reels. If the tape was all on the left reel, it was rewound. Just about all rental places did this when you returned the tape. Audio cassette tapes were the same way. The VHS cassette was basically just a larger version of an audio cassette with wider and longer tape.

Pic of rewound VHS: https://www.becomingminimalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/0...

> Audio cassette tapes were the same way.

Ah the days of audio books on tape. For a moment I was thinking "renting audio tapes?" but then the memories hit me.

If you left the tape running after the end of the movie, the VCR would usually rewind it automatically when it hit the end of the spool.

Our family VCR had the "EZ Rewind" setting which would automatically rewind it to the beginning once the movie ended. Saved a lot of hassle.

You can tell by looking at a VHS tape if it's been rewound or not; there are two little windows that let you see the tape reels, and all of the black stuff should be in the left window.

Also, I feel really old explaining that.

Lucky that your parent's shop got acquired. It was amazing to see - Blockbuster shops popping up here and there, all the while it seemed that virtually everyone could see the tsunami coming (except Blockbuster).

Curious what revenue the store was generating without any competition in your small town?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com