Home Technology Experience a blast from the past with the VHS Vault

Experience a blast from the past with the VHS Vault

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Nothing makes you realise exactly how far technology has advanced until you take a look back at some of the hardware of the past and then wonder how we ever put up with it in the first place. While we’re constantly looking for the next best thing with 8K technology and above, we often forget that just a short while ago the thought of getting anything to match just a fraction of 4K was almost impossible and that what we define as High Definition viewing was the stuff of science fiction.

The Wayback Machine is looking to remind us all of just how rose-tinted our nostalgia often is by taking us back to the 1990s and the hey-day of the VHS cassette to show us exactly how bad the technology actually was. The company has created a VHS Vault (first reported by The Verge), where they have more than 20 000 recordings for you to view that showcase content in the good old technology format of the VHS cassette. And yes, this was cutting edge technology back then:

Yeah, the 90s don’t look so great anymore, do they? It’s not just the poor resolution and content quality but even some of the pop culture references that simply haven’t aged quite well. It’s great that our history is being preserved and that we’ll get to be able to see exactly how far we have come as a species, but it’s also incredibly scary at just how old we are at the same time.

If you are keen for a blast from the past and want to feed your nostalgia, I would definitely encourage you to peruse their content and experience the pleasures of content you grew up while crying at just how old you are.

Last Updated: March 2, 2020

7 Comments

  1. Umar

    March 2, 2020 at 14:21

    I DON’T WANT TO WAIT

    Reply

  2. D@rCF0g

    March 2, 2020 at 14:21

    The newer generations don’t even know the challenges us 80s kids had to deal with: Blowing into cartridges, video and cassette tape stretching, sitting for hours in a library to do assignments, hiring VHS tapes from a video store (and DVDs eventually), waiting intently for that favourite song to come on the radio to quickly hit record on your tape deck, bug bulky walkmans where you could only put one tape in at a time (then came portable CD players, but expect the song to skip sometime when the disc moved unexpectedly in the cheaper players), having to actually be healthy outside because there was never anything to do so inside, etc.

    Reply

  3. MaSeKind

    March 2, 2020 at 14:21

    “I don’t want to wait, for our lives to be over”

    It was like a reflex action upon seeing that header image.

    Reply

  4. MaSeKind

    March 2, 2020 at 14:57

    Speaking of old VHS stuff, there’s this animated short story collection movie we saw as kids that I’ve been trying to find for years. Me and my sister suspect it might be French Canadian or something. It sounded like it was dubbed with some heavy american accents.

    Basically it starts at this animation studio where the editor craps on an animator for not having any stories or something. Then he goes to his studio and his pens and inkpots come alive. I can remember the inkpot heads exploding to fill things with color and then they draw this wooden block train that’s way too happy and seems a bit high. Anyway after it travels around the sun for a few times it goes of on a adventure and this is where they start telling different childrens stories (not sure if they were all Hans Christion Anderson stuff).

    There was one with (I think) Leo the lion who falls off a circus wagon and is found by a bunch of rabbits. They try and feed him carrots (he still gets the carrot stuck sidewise in his mouth) but that doesn’t go to well. Can’t remember all the details but in the end I think the lion makes peace with being a vegetarian. And like randomly in between they show the toy train looking at these stories.

    I think there was also a tin soldier story and later on a three pigs one where Leo shows up again to chase away the wolf. Anyway I know this all sounds weird but I’ve been trying to find out what this was for decades and if anyone has any idea what I’m talking about and know this please tell me! It’s the one thing from my childhood that I saw and stuck with me that I’ve never been able to find again.

    Reply

    • Kromas

      March 2, 2020 at 16:14

      This is not 100% like what you described but look into Storiebook international.

      Reply

      • MaSeKind

        March 2, 2020 at 16:15

        No I think it was a stand alone movie thing. Also it was only handdrawn animation. I might even be very old, it’s difficult ot tell with those animations.
        I can picture the scenes perfectly in my head, unfortunately there is no google image search for your memories XD

        Reply

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