Back when we would record onto VHS, is that considered piracy? Found a super bowl XXXI tape from my Uncle circa 1997. I’m curious lol.

Also side note, have any of you dabbled in digitizing old VHS? Have quite a few home videos on VHS and I’m wanting to preserve them for the future. I’ve done a bit of research and have come across a wide array of information. I know that doesn’t really qualify as piracy, if there’s a better comm for this, please direct me there!

  • Neato@ttrpg.network
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    5 months ago

    The VCR was invented, marketed, and sold to do this very thing. When the VCR first came out (same for betamax) they didn’t sell pre-recorded tapes because the only way they had to make those was to manually record them individually in real-time which was prohibitively expensive. That’s also why movie rental places caught on: early VHS movies were too expensive for most to afford. But not too expensive for a business to rent hundreds of times.

    Suffice to say: if recording TV was piracy, it wasn’t illegal and the people bitching had no way to enforce their will.

      • cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de
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        5 months ago

        Pre-recorded tapes usually had a primitive form of copy protection called macrovision. It would make the copy pretty much unwatchable, but it was fairly simple to remove. You could build or buy a device that would strip it out.

        • bobs_monkey@lemm.ee
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          5 months ago

          Yup, those little inline filters. Even building the circuit for $5-10 in RadioShack parts was pretty simple.

      • ivanafterall@kbin.social
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        5 months ago

        My modded original Xbox was magical. Rent a game from Hollywood Video, rip it straight to the Xbox hard drive, return it.