VCR question for 83 year old

marleyboy

Shucks I have 3 VCR's in my cupboard, gathering dust, one has V+, another has a teletext recording facility, one is just a basic. All three are pretty useless to me. (anologue tuners). I dont even know if you can still buy scotch blank VHS tapes anymore, I most certainly cant hire a VHS video from blockbusters or any other movie rental store. They are as much use to me, as a 78rpm record player.

TomsMom

marleyboy wrote: »

Shucks I have 3 VCR's in my cupboard, gathering dust, one has V+, another has a teletext recording facility, one is just a basic. All three are pretty useless to me. (anologue tuners). I dont even know if you can still buy scotch blank VHS tapes anymore, I most certainly cant hire a VHS video from blockbusters or any other movie rental store. They are as much use to me, as a 78rpm record player.

So marleyboy, do you live anywhere near Gwynedd, N.Wales or Birmingham or somewhere in between?

Idiophreak

marleyboy wrote: »

I dont even know if you can still buy scotch blank VHS tapes anymore,

On an almost unrelated note, I was in a service station the other week and they actually had a box of floppy disks for sale on the shelf. Talk about blast from the past

TomsMom

I like floppy disks, so quick and easy to use. I know they don't store much but I use them like a filing system - one for letters, one for accounts, etc.
Suppose that makes me a dinosaur :rotfl:

I have progressed on to an external hard drive (and a memory stick) but I don't like burning on to a DVD.

superscaper

TomsMom wrote: »

I like floppy disks, so quick and easy to use. I know they don't store much but I use them like a filing system - one for letters, one for accounts, etc.
Suppose that makes me a dinosaur :rotfl:

Depends, have you only just given up using punch cards?

Minerva69

marleyboy wrote: »

I dont even know if you can still buy scotch blank VHS tapes anymore.

Yes you can! Poundland usually have blank tapes and Morrisons supermarket still sell them too. I haven't seen them anywhere else in my area though!

marleyboy

TomsMom wrote: »

So marleyboy, do you live anywhere near Gwynedd, N.Wales or Birmingham or somewhere in between?

Ironically, I have family that live in Ffesstiniogg and Birmingham, however I live quite a distance in Manchester

Terrylw1

Hi,

Argos still do them, I think Tesco do as well. They also tend to do those combined ones where you have DVD/VCR.

I did see one on QVC that was a twin tuner PVR but it has a VCR inbuilt so you could use either the VCR functions or the harddrive. I think it was around £129??? I think Tesco direct do one, they currently have the catalogues in the stores.

We tend to use Phillips or Sanyo ones which do the job. We had a Hitachi before but the main problem was that it had no channel display for recording/playing - so you couldn't see which channel you were recording unless you went on the AV channel which was very frustrating.

She could get the vids copied onto DVD later which should last longer and you could keep them on HDD as well just in case since HDD's are cheap up to 500gb thesedays for PC's.

Freeview is not that much of an issue for you at the moment since she can't watch most of it anyway. Freeview boxes are dirt cheap and they were on about even given them out to the elderly closer to the time weren't they???

TomsMom

Argos still do them, I think Tesco do as well.

Yes, she's seen the ones in the Argos catalogue but she wont have the Funai as she wants a make she's heard of (!). I've looked at reviews of it actually and they're pretty poor. The Phillips one (VR550) doesn't fare much better in the reviews either but as it's a make she knows she might be willing to try it. Will have to check up to see if it's got Videoplus - she's happier to set that than timer recording. Same two available in the Tesco Direct catalogue, don't know about Tesco stores, will have to check next time I'm near one.

They also tend to do those combined ones where you have DVD/VCR.

Nope, she's got one of those in her spare room and she's confused by it.

Thanks anyway.

TomsMom

If those freeview channels are available in Birmingham (the freeview website is a little conservative in its availability identifier),

We did actually take our own freeview box over last Christmas as we were going to buy one for her Christmas present but wanted to check first if she could get many channels. There was even less then than the freeview website says now but we can check again.

a PVR with a 7 day programme guide is 100 times easier to use than any video

She'd probably be fine with that but she still wants a VCR to play all her old pre-recorded tapes she's bought. We don't know anyone with a combi VCR/DVD recorder who can put them onto disk for her.