Norem Ipsum remembers the VCR

When I was 16 years old my Aunt called to ask me if I'd be willing to go over to her house and teach her how to use her VCR. She treated it seriously. Like she was hiring a babysitter, providing a set time and payment. She said she had tried to figure it out herself, and so had my uncle. But they just couldn't get the hang of it.

A whole generation of people could never figure out how to program their VCRs. For me, it really wasn't any different than programming an alarm clock, yet people seemed to be able to get out of bed in the morning. Maybe it was the end time that threw them. You program an alarm clock and you're not telling it to wake you up at a given time and then stop after an hour. Although the snooze function might do that. And if you ignore it all together it will shut off eventually. Or at least mine does.

My aunt had a onscreen programmable VCR, so it was a breeze to me to explain to her how to record her favorite shows. The first one my family had consisted of these tiny buttons and a green digital display. It was also in mono.

After onscreen displays, the VCR+ was introduced. Now, the ads claimed, you didn't have to know how to program a VCR, all you had to do was enter a code. Open up your TV Guide, find the listing for the show you want, and enter the seven digit code and you were good to go. I had a VCR+ and it always seemed easier just to program the damn thing. Besides I liked to have my timer start a little earlier and go a little later to be sure that I wouldn't miss anything.

Today's DVRs really aren't that much different that the VCR+. The programming is on screen, only instead of pulling out a TV Guide and putting in the number, the name of the show is already onscreen for you. It saves you a step. But you still have to do some manual tweaking. Set 60 Minutes to record during football season if you don't believe me.

The other day a friend asked if I remembered when video stores used to rent VCRs. It was in the early 80s when not everybody had one, and it wasn't that uncommon for someone to rent a VCR and a few movies, in much the same way that someone might rent a video game system and some titles today. But here's the catch. Almost everybody who records television is renting a machine today. It's digital, but it's still a video recorder. Whether you have cable, DirecTV, Dish or pretty much any other service, you are renting a DVR. Was it the ease of programming that got people to forget that they were pretty much getting the same thing with their VCRs? Or was it the ability to record and rewind live TV?

Recently I started shopping for a stand alone DVR. Sure there's Tivo, but you need a subscription service to use that. And really, why do I need to pay someone so I can record my shows? I don't need to be able to do it from my computer or cell phone. I just want to be able to record the beautiful signal I get through the air with my HD antenna.

They're not that common, but I did find a couple models. It seems like most will record directly to a DVD or DVD-RW, which would answer another complaint I have about modern video recorders, in that they don't make it easy to archive stuff. The cable and satellite company's DVR set up to record and erase after viewing. The DVD burning models are relatively cheap. But if you want a DVR with a hard drive get ready to spend some serious cash. And I never could find one that had a hard drive and a DVD burner.

So here I am, wondering how we got here. How we went from having $99 VCRs to endlessly renting DVRs through our cable/satellite companies or paying for a Tivo subscription service. I know I can do it on my own. But because everybody is following this model, it makes it really difficult and expensive to get that new improved VCR.