Goonies, but it was recorded from TV and you had to switch tapes at about the pirate ship.
My family was pretty poor growing up, but we had cable. Back in the day there would occasionally be free weekends of Disney Channel, HBO and the like. Whenever there was one of those free weekends, my parents would buy a super long blank VHS tape and record hours of random movies. So for years every movie that I watched had an 800 number that would pop up every few minutes asking you to call and subscribe.
The more things change, the more they stay the same i guess. Sounds like just anout every streaming service out there today.
My dad would rent movies from blockbuster then set up the camcorder on a tripod to film the movie off the TV. It was always a big to-do since we all had to be quiet so we didn’t ruin the recording…
I’m going to assume you’re joking so I don’t go outside and scream into the middle distance.
The motivation combined with the complete lack of understanding of the tech is certainly interesting.
Jus make sure to close the blinds on the way out. Otherwise, there will be a glare on the screen.
That’s what you get for recording in SP.
What’s SP in this context?
Tape speed / recording quality. Frames on VHS are diagonal stripes from one edge to the other. At lower tape speeds, those stripes get shorter and closer together. The horizontal resolution is unavoidably reduced. Color information gets muddy, because that’s some deep magic in a black-and-white signal. Adjacent frames can bleed into one another. Worst of all, you’re more likely to get tracking problems, where the ridiculous wheels-in-wheels of the diagonal / helical read mechanism get misaligned with the stripes, and the whole picture can drop out.
You wrote a really long and interesting response that completely failed to answer the question. What’s SP in this context?
… the tape speed.
EDIT: You did it again
Phrased directly: What does SP stand for?
Standard Play, I think. Versus Long Play and Extended Play.
No idea why EP is sometimes called SLP. Wikipedia’s right there if you’re curious.
Wait wouldn’t stripes get longer the lower the tape speed?
Nope. The tape travels a shorter distance in each 60th of a second, so there’s a steeper diagonal between the start and end of each frame. The whole magnetic pattern gets scrunched.
I don’t understand what you’re saying.
Why would the stripes be longer, if the tape travels less distance, in the time it takes to make one stripe?
Standard vs Long play.
I think we used a different term for it, so maybe that’s a regional abbreviation. But I’m thinking they were talking about the recording quality/speed. I remember there being two options, one gave you twice as many hours but the quality was lower.
From memory, SP was standard play, LP was long play, and SLP was super long play.
You could get 6 hours on a tape with SLP, but only 2 hours on SP.
Every few months, when the topic of obscure childhood bs comes up in conversation, my husband will always ask about my “made up dinosaur rock band show” from when I was a child.
I’ve asked so many people in my life, from different areas around the US, varying ages, etc, and only on the internet do I have proof that Denver the Last Dinosaur wasnt a fever dream. 😂
Thank you for my quarterly validation.
He’s my friend and a whole lot more! Ew.
HE’S MY FRIEND AND A WHOLE LOT MORE
…wait what
DEN-VER! The last diiinosaur
My brain did the same thing. What the hell else is stored down in there??
Kyle Mooney made a show about this era of cartoons that everyone needs to watch!:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturday_Morning_All_Star_Hits!
I have finally found it, thank you stranger.
Police Academy 1-7 but mostly 4.
Dont sleep on Police Academy 3: Citizens on Patrol
Edit: C.O.P was 4. I feel shame
Yeah. 1 and 3 were recorded during one of those HBO free weekends for us.
That was number 4. I used to think the skating and “robot” scenes were the coolest shit ever.
You are correct. How could I get this wrong???
I only had 6. All I can say is “cigar scene”
I still yell “they’re not yielding!” when I’m driving
I had the same thing with video games. My dad got a free promotional copy of Morrowind from Fry’s. I didn’t have a computer/ laptop, but every summer, my dad would let me use his on our road trips. That game made me want to learn so much about anthropology, biology, history, mythology, etc… I played for hundreds of hours and never even came close to finishing.
never even came close to finishing.
It is an Elder Scrolls game, you don’t finish those, the existence of the main quest is merely a theoretical thing from myth and legend.
My dad got a PS2 when I was six. There was Jak and Daxter, and there was Colin McRae Rally. Later I also ended up with Sly Cooper.
I didn’t have many friends to compare with so that was what I played. Everyone else played Crash Bandicoot, Pokémon, Mario games, etc. and I was like “have you heard about Ratchet and Clank”? Those series eventually got more popular but no one I knew had them at the time.
I had Sly as well! The soundtrack was awesome.
Morrowind is one of my favorites of all time. I was into nag champa incense at the time, and so that smell will always remind me of Morrowind. Singing about the ambiance of Morrowind was kinda incense-y anyway, so it was the perfect combo
I love nag champa! The og smells so sweet, and the ashes are pretty/ easy to clean. I always think of headshops, though lol. They taught me the bottle trick, though. I like to use a key ring to hold the insence upside down in a glass bottle. It’s super clean.
Me and the other Brave Little Toaster kids ended up a bit weird.
We just rewatched this with our daughter the other day and it is rrrrrough.
Yeah… yeah we did I guess. At least a bit
The Sandlot for me
“you’re killin me, Smalls!”
FOR EV VER
Uncle Buck Great movie.
When I was a kid I wanted to grow up to be uncle Buck. Unfortunately my brother took that position (down to driving a shit car that randomly backfires) and I’m just a normal dude 😕
Yeah, being the slightly dangerous uncle is a pretty sweet gig, NGL.
Short Circuit and Flight of the Navigator. Had them both on one tape and I’d sit down and watch it all in one sitting.
Add Batteries Not Included to the list and that’s me.
Just in case you needed reminding how good Flight of the Navigator was:
My brother and I loved this movie so much and must’ve watched it 100 times.
I would tell people about Death Race 2000 and they’d look at me like I was crazy.
But have you seen its sequel?
No. I will not see it. They cannot improve upon perfection.
I had an aunt with the Disney channel and HBO that recorded almost everything. It was like a home video store at her house, probably hundreds of tapes that she let friends and family borrow. She have me a spare copy of the Disney animated Robin Hood with all the animals and I must have watched it a hundred times.
My great aunt had 101 Dalmations. Just that film. Every time we visited, we would just sit there for an hour watching it. Over and over. It was great.
My “rich” aunt (relative to my family) had a laserdisc player. I would watch the Disney Robin Hood, as well as Star Wars and Star Trek The Motion Picture.
Damn, your aunt had a laser disc setup? Not only was she ballin, but she was cool, too.
Several dozen? Rookie numbers.
Yeah. My VCR TV would automatically rewind and start playing again. I have no idea how many times some of those tapes were played but it definitely broke 100.
Hook. I can still quote most of it from memory.
I’ve lost my marbles!
I’ve never wanted to eat something more than the imaginary feast.
Milo and Otis, Toys, and The Goonies. Watched those 3 movies a thousand times.
Fellow Toys-kid here!
Loved Milo and Otis as a kid. Hell we have a dog named Otis.
I really liked Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. My parents got it for me on VHS at some point and I watched it so much it literally wore out the tape. Then my parents got it for me on DVD.
Can’t even watch it on streaming because they only ever have the subtitled version, and the dub is vastly superior for the dialogue. The subs cut so much flavor and poetry out of the dialogue that it becomes super boring and just the basic gist of what’s going on.
Before that, the “obscure” VHS my parents had that I watched a lot was Monty Python’s Holy Grail. We spent years trying to understand what the “witch” says when she is found guilty and only knew for certain what it was years later when they released a special edition DVD and we watched it with the subtitles on. “It’s a fair cop.”
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is so good. I have to admit that I’ve only ever watched it with subs though. Maybe I’ll try the dub next time.
For me it was Cocktail. I was a latch key kid, and sometimes you just got bored and hunted around your parents shit.
Turns out 11 year old me was REALLY interested in watching a shirtless Tom Cruise throw around bottles of alcohol in a tropical paradise.
