By Got a tape stuck in my video recorder the other day and thought "Just pull it out; it'll snap and I can splice it."
No such luck. It brought part of the video recorder with it and didn't snap. Will teach me for buying Scotch.
Anyway, priced up replacements and a cheap and nasty video recorder was still going to set me back £50; with a half-decent one over £100 and a suitable replacement of a similar quality was going to be over £200 still. So I decided to have a look at DVD Recorders instead. Wheras most of the decent, branded, ones are still over £100 and the recorders with integrate hard drives can approach £200 or more I decided that I didn't need a branded model or a hard drive recorder and plumped for the Sumvision SV-1000 which also supports DivX and XviD playback. £75 from SVP.
Sounds like a good deal to me :)
We currently have a DVD/Video combined thingumy - gawd knows why though, we hardly watch telly let alone tape anything and all the kids stuff is on DVD.
Not our brightest purchase.
I've loaned a video/dvd combo off my Dad for my bedroom; the new recorder is going into my 'Tech Room' aka my old bedroom.
The combo is useless. It'll hardly play anything. I was going to watch some of Simon Schama's History of Britain last night and the dvd; which has never been played in anything, skipped constantly on the combo. Ended up giving up and going to bed instead.
Jeez, you were still using a VCR? I seem to remember Scotch tapes were good enough for them to come with a lifetime warranty (though exactly what constitutes the "lifetime" of a product is something I've never been sure of).
I thought you had a load of computers. I'm amazed you hadn't switched to using some five year old box with a TV-tuner card and decent sized hard-drive and used that instead. Would also let you transfer all your VCR tapes onto DVD if you stuck a DVD burner into it. And copy DVDs that you rent if you want to be slightly n0rty, something no consumer DVD recorders will do.
I was using a VCR to tape things for my 12 year old nephew. I've got Sky+ myself so use that for recording.
As to having loads of PCs, not anymore. I have my main PC and a laptop. My old PCs have been spread out through the family. Dad has my old Barton 2800+, both sisters have old Athlon 1.33s and my old P3 500 is now in pieces in the spare room; just needs a case and that'd be working too. Gave away the old P120 to a friend who I believe plans just to gut the case; although amazingly enough it booted first time when he took it home.