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Comment by bagels | Hacker News Reader

My experience with tapes does not match yours. I've seen both audio and VCR tapes unspool by playing or trying to remove them from the player.

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I estimate renting over 1200 VCR tapes in my lifetime, and I've never had one unspool. The cassette problem was common enough that fixing it with a pencil was part of the zeitgeist, but I can't remember anything like that for VHS.

i had ONE cassette unwind. my less careful friend was always winding them with a pencil. the culprit? button mashing between fast-forward and play.

I grew up in the 80s, and was a prolific user of both video tapes (mostly VHS) and cassette tapes. I can't recall ever having a tape get eaten by any deck, either video or audio.

Not saying it never happens, but if it was common I absolutely would have encountered it many times over.

> I can't recall ever having a tape get eaten by any deck ... if it was common I absolutely would have encountered it many times over.

Common enough that you know the slang for it, despite it not happening to you.

Touché

I think it happened more as the players aged and wore out. In the 90s and 2000s I remember it happening pretty commonly although cd or dvd skipping was way worse. A couple years ago we took the old family vcr player out of the parents attic and tested it out. It was a great vcr at the time, sony with all the bells and whistles. But it immediately at the tape and I mean ate it. Had to take it apart and route the tape out myself and I'm pretty sure its ruined the tape. We spent 2 hours on youtube with it taken apart and gave up the project indefinitely.

That must be an issue with the player

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