Oldest Extant Off-Air VHS/Beta Tape You Have

crainbebo said:

That would be me who posted the High Mountain Rangers episode, as well as about a half-dozen others. It was a show that came and went too soon IMO.

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Good finds and posts! The one episode I saw was pretty good, I can see where they got some of the concepts for Rescue 911, take the plot of High Mountain Rangers and cut the budget drastically where it is just recreations of events instead of paying for Robert Conrad and big sets and stunt expenses.

Went through some tapes in old boxes that my dad recorded for himself and me back in the day (we had a VCR starting in 1985) and lo and behold I find one with Christmas scribbled on it. Dad recorded the Peanuts Christmas Special and Twas the Night Before Christmas for me back on December 4, 1985. Sadly dad died a long time ago but the VHS memories remain...

Speaking of Rescue 911 we have a kind of a revival of it on ABC called Emergency Call. It is not news adult a revival of R911 but the closest thing we will get to it these days.

I have a 1979 VHS recorded off the air with "A Claymation Christmas Special". Going to watch it later in our annual viewing. However, we are going to opt for the DVD version, since I am not going to get down the VHS to watch it in 480i on a big screen TV.

K6JHU said:

I have a 1979 VHS recorded off the air with "A Claymation Christmas Special". Going to watch it later in our annual viewing. However, we are going to opt for the DVD version, since I am not going to get down the VHS to watch it in 480i on a big screen TV.

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That is really cool, you don't see much earlier than mid 80s from the cost of VCRs and blanks alone. You should post your original recording on Archive, especially if it has commercials.

After a bit of a wait, I've finally checked through doughtnut98's lot of 60 Betas this morning. I've kept 20 since I'm at the point where I want to record stuff that have tradeable content, but did place 16 to the sell pile that contain content that doesn't really interest me (old movies or certain documentaries that seem a bit too academic for me, as well an episode of Special Delivery off Nickelodeon in 1991 about Peter Pan but with poor video quality at times), but still contains commercials. There were also two retail tapes, a head cleaning tape, and the rest being duds. Quite a few kids/cartoon items in this lot that surprised me since the original recorder was apparently disenfranchised by rock 'n roll given a couple tapes had jazz music on them, including my oldest Cartoon Network find (and it's a good one!)

TAPE 1: I, The Jury and The Killer Elite off an unknown station, then it cuts to about half of the November 1983 HBO Preview Special, along with a couple minutes of promos afterwards.

TAPE 2: Several Philip Marlowe: Private Eye shorts, followed by about ten minutes of promos off HBO from around September 1983.

TAPE 3: Mexican Slayride and Solitare Attacks off various Philadelphia stations without commercials, then after about ten minutes of dead air, it cuts to a full episode of Not Necessarily the News followed by several minutes of promos off HBO on 4/10/1984.

TAPE 4: Several episodes of the 1950s sitcom Topper off WHYY in the summer of 1985 from Golden Age of Television broadasts, with the episodes packaged together like a feature movie, then it cuts to most of an episode of The Great Space Coaster off WTAF in January 1986 with commercials (mostly promos for the network). I've found a full 1981 episode back in 2018, and allegedly the masters for this series are destroyed, so this was a nice find here, even if the tape runs out with about two minutes remaining.

TAPE 5: Most of The Desperate Journey recorded off WPHL circa 1986 with commercials.

TAPE 6: They Gave Hum A Gun, recorded once again off Channel 17 (WPHL) in April 1989 with commercials, many being erotic 900 phone ads.

TAPE 7: B.L. Stryker: Blues for Murder recorded off WPVI/ABC on 5/15/1989 w/commercials, followed by part of Riff Raff and the first segment of Delaware Valley Forum (very Marion Stokes-type) off WPHL from around spring 1989 with a few commercials.

TAPE 8: Love Them & Leave Them and Young Man With A Horn off AMC sometime in the early 1990s, with a long intermission break (about 30 minutes) in between, including several vintage trailers, a Movietone News segment about the 1941 World Series, and an interview.

TAPE 9: Alfred Hitchcock off Nick at Nite in December 1991 with commercials, followed by Madeline's Christmas and Madeline in London off the Family Channel from December 1991 with commercials, then it cuts to part of Yentil off PRISM circa 1983 with no promos. I've already found the Madeline in London special from a different airing previously.

TAPE 10: Starts with an episode of Tiny Toon Adventures "My Brilliant Revenge" off WTAF/FOX Kids on 12/30/1992 with commercials, followed by a repeat of the season premiere of Unsolved Mysteries off KYW/NBC from the same night, before it cuts back to Son of Ali Baba off an unknown station and year without commercials.

TAPE 11: Begins with about half of an episode of A&E Biography from early 1988 with some commercials, then it cuts over to the documentary James Cagney: Top of the World, followed by a collection of more vintage movie trailers along with half an hour of Looney Tunes of TNT in 1992 (pre-Cartoon Network) with commercials, before jumping ahead to part of Miracle on 34th Street off USA in late 1986 with a few commercials.

TAPE 12: Begins with For A Few Dollars More off an unknown station without commercials, then continues with a nearly complete episode of Key West off WTAF/FOX from January 1993 with commercials, then cuts over to part of Warlock off an unknown station without ads.

TAPE 13: Begins with the syndicated premiere of Sightings from September 1994 off WGBS with commercials, then it cuts to the last half of the 4th Quarter of the Raiders vs. Broncos NFL game, along with about three fourths of the Bermuda Triangle Special, followed by Unsolved Mysteries off KYW/NBC on 9/18/1994 with commercials. I've actually had two traders request the same 1990 Unsolved Mysteries episode before, so don't bother to pass on those if they turn up.

TAPE 14: Begins with an episode of Batman: The Animated Series "Harley's Holiday" off WTAF/FOX Kids in October 1994 with commercials, followed by part of Ghostbusters off HBO in late 1986 with some promos after the movie.

TAPE 15: Walker, Texas Ranger off WCAU/CBS on 2/5/1994 w/commercials, followed by part of Scarface & I Am and A Fugitive From A Chain Gang without ads (or copied off rental)

TAPE 16: The first 4 1/2 hours of the Flinstones marathon off TBS on Memorial Day 1994 w/commercials, lots of kids-targeted ads of course

TAPE 17: Two episodes of The Masked Rider recorded off WTAF/FOX Kids in September 1995 w/commercials (sounds like a great show to revive given the success that the 4th Network is promoting), followed by another episode of Sightings off WGBS from around the same time w/commercials.

TAPE 18: Starts with a partial episode of Sightings off WPHL with a few commercials, followed by two episodes of Marvel Universe (one featuring the Iron Man and the other being the Inhumans Saga episode of Fantastic Four) off WPHL Kidtime circa October 1995 with commercials, followed by another episode of B:TAS ("Zatanna", billed as The Adventures of Batman and Robin at this time) with commercials off WTAF/FOX Kids, before cutting to the last half of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, then continuing on to about three-fourths of Baywatch with commercials.

TAPE 19: Features four hours from the Captain Planet Marathon from 4/22/1995 with commercials, followed by another hour of various cartoons from the same day, including a "World Premiere Toon". Yea, some Checkerboard Era Cartoon Network!

TAPE 20: This was me after school in 5th grade here! It begins with the B:TAS episode "Terror In The Sky", followed by part one of the MMPR episode Return of the Green Ranger, then jumps to the next day for the B:TAS episode "The Mechanic", then part two of Return of the Green Ranger, then follows a third episode of Power Rangers (Scavenger Hunt), then it winds down with another episode of Masked Rider. All recorded from sometime in October 1995 off WTAF/FOX Kids w/commercials, even if most of the episodes were repeats. I've only found one other episode of MMPR before, back in 2014, found at a school yard sale.

At least there wasn't too much news content which I could care less abut from the Philly market, thanks to Marion Stokes. Overall, it was another fine year of finds. Still, the average recording was about a decade older than the tape stocks age, with my oldest footage being a couple of commercials from 1982 on one tape that I placed in the seller pile from the end of a movie off WPHL. But this proves that sometimes the '90s finds are better than the '80s ones. Given the lockdown measures, just about all of my finds came from eBay, with the exception of a local Craigslist pickup in February. It wasn't quite as "wow" as 2019 with those Star Searches, classic Jeopardy!'s, and 1977-78 finds, but I'd still say it beats 2018's finds. A two-hour aircheck off WAKR from 1980 including a newscast, WNT, and Buddy Hackett episode of You Bet Your Life, a 20/20 episode from late 1979 that features a story on New Wave, the Columbus lot with some vintage Entertainment Tonight, Carson, as well as Friday Night Videos, the Florida lot featuring lots of soap operas mostly from the early 1990s, but some from the late '80s and even a tape from 1995 (too bad Disney had other plans with my accounts), and of course those LA lots with all that '80s gold proves that there's still some great content to be had. And even stuff that I haven't touched for awhile such as that lot with all those Star Search episodes (resulting in three trades with a single trader this year) yielded an unexpected episode of Wheel of Fortune from 1/2/1992 (a Teen Week episode that was thought to be a rerun) that I discovered on Christmas morning shows that you never know if the label is always right. Sure, there were a couple of dud lots that yielded all but nothing, but that's part of the fun of searching, you'll never know how good a lot truly is until you've hunted through it.

Unfortunately, it looks like my long-running HP PC that I've had for 11 years finally bit the dust this morning. Up until Christmas Eve, it was running very smoothly, and that was my primary source for my WMV files to eventually post onto YouTube, along with my collection files. I managed to snatch most of the important files onto my hard drives, but still left behind a few things, so I'll have an assistant remove the hard drive. I'm typing this on my 2017 HP laptop which has a broken flap on one side, forcing me to keep my display open stationary. I'll try to have that fixed soon since this is a good notebook (1.8 TB), and still feels good for at least a couple more years of use, barring the inevitable. With that said, its time for a new desktop (no Acer), and with Win 10 capability since my older PC had just Windows 7. I'll be slowing down on new uploads, but I may restore some of my old videos from one of the two channels that got taken down by the copyright police. I hope you had a great Christmas and a fine 2021, and hopefully by summer that will mean a better opportunity to get out in the wild and discover some more vintage goodies!

Sweet finds on tapes #19 and #20. Always fun to find Cartoon Network nostalgia and the fact that I'm sure you probably watched the exact same episodes after getting out of school that day on tape #20...

2020 was the craziest year ever for VHS hunting. Never before have I piled up banana boxes worth of tapes into my house, but sitting about 15 feet away are multiple boxes filled with NEW tapes...most of those coming from an estate sale in late July of a woman who kept track of every movie and TV show she recorded in binders! Even by actors and genres! Then you had the multitude of C-Band finds from a Moxee lot in early November, and Boise Beta rarities around the same time. No wonder 2021 will likely result in fewer tape finds. I'll be spending those 365 days likely going through the 2020 batches!

Great finds!

Relatedly or unrelatedly, has anyone had any issues with Youtube canning their accounts? I just reached the thresholds to get monetized and so I applied for that, then they sent me a total account takedown notice claiming that "We have reviewed your content and found severe or repeated violations of our Community Guidelines." Specifically the claim was of "Spam, scams or commercially deceptive content are not allowed on YouTube."

I was a bit taken aback by that as I have not had a video removed in 3 years, and I have not had an official "copyright strike" only "this video is blocked in certain countries because of content warnings". My content is only old commercials, some opening trailers on VHS tapes, and a few in person reviews of things, so I'm a bit puzzled what is going on here.

Appeal that crap. I've only had Community Guidelines strikes twice, and surprisingly I had them overturned! The second time had them suspend me from uploading for two weeks and that's when I appealed and won. Also, I don't monetize my videos whatsoever because of the questionable content anyways...my 'monetizing' comes from when the lots go up on eBay.

crainbebo said:

Appeal that crap. I've only had Community Guidelines strikes twice, and surprisingly I had them overturned! The second time had them suspend me from uploading for two weeks and that's when I appealed and won. Also, I don't monetize my videos whatsoever because of the questionable content anyways...my 'monetizing' comes from when the lots go up on eBay.

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I always wondered if the channels that are solely showing old commercials and commercial blocks were able to be monetized given the content. Some users out there have 20,000 subscribers and technically all the stuff they are post are against community guidelines.

Can you order some old religious TBN and TCT stuff on blank vhs tapes?

Something I can't figure out is how some things on You Tube get a strike over a few seconds of a video clip or a song yet there are no problems finding complete albums of different singers or groups, some fairly recent. And at least in some cases they're put on You Tube by the artists themselves or their representatives.

anotherguy said:

Something I can't figure out is how some things on You Tube get a strike over a few seconds of a video clip or a song yet there are no problems finding complete albums of different singers or groups, some fairly recent. And at least in some cases they're put on You Tube by the artists themselves or their representatives.

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In the later cases, artists/reps almost always get permission from the corporation to exhibit their material and is fair use. As for anyone else, its a game of Russian Roulette that could vary based upon numerous factors, but of course it is much more viable to takedown a recent mainstream hit than an episode from a now obscure TV show from the 1980s/90s. At least as of tomorrow, you'll be free to post the 1925 silent film "The Gold Rush" starring Charlie Chaplin on YouTube, and in just two more years, The Jazz Singer, and if they are taken down at that point, than you would be the one having the upper hand since the claimant would have violated the public domain policies.

crainbebo said:

Appeal that crap. I've only had Community Guidelines strikes twice, and surprisingly I had them overturned! The second time had them suspend me from uploading for two weeks and that's when I appealed and won. Also, I don't monetize my videos whatsoever because of the questionable content anyways...my 'monetizing' comes from when the lots go up on eBay.

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he should, this could be the biggest injustice to him in his life

crainbebo said:

Appeal that crap. I've only had Community Guidelines strikes twice, and surprisingly I had them overturned! The second time had them suspend me from uploading for two weeks and that's when I appealed and won. Also, I don't monetize my videos whatsoever because of the questionable content anyways...my 'monetizing' comes from when the lots go up on eBay.

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Do you want to order old religious tv stuff?

So I wrote my appeal and Youtube did not even look at it, came back with a canned response less than an hour later of "your account will remain suspended".

Lessons to be learned from this:

1.Cross post your stuff, Youtube will delete everything, whether you have 20 videos or 3,000.
2.Don't try to monetize your content, no matter how much Youtube encourages you to do so, its a trap.
3.If you have issues with your account they will not care and will just give automated responses, I didn't expect to talk to a rep but this was beyond insulting.

I recommend using Archive in the future or possibly other sites that allow some sort of monetization. I am eagerly awaiting Federal government backlash from their disruptive practices regarding the 1st Amendment, as well as monopolization issues, but I would not hold my breath sadly.

alexclarke236 said:

chandler0201 said:

So I wrote my appeal and Youtube did not even look at it, came back with a canned response less than an hour later of "your account will remain suspended".

Lessons to be learned from this:

1.Cross post your stuff, Youtube will delete everything, whether you have 20 videos or 3,000.
2.Don't try to monetize your content, no matter how much Youtube encourages you to do so, its a trap.
3.If you have issues with your account they will not care and will just give automated responses, I didn't expect to talk to a rep but this was beyond insulting.

I recommend using Archive in the future or possibly other sites that allow some sort of monetization. I am eagerly awaiting Federal government backlash from their disruptive practices regarding the 1st Amendment, as well as monopolization issues, but I would not hold my breath sadly.

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I try to make the channel more interesting by adding original content...similar to how TV stations have mascots or brand ambassadors.....

Monetizing is fine when you're a family vlogger or a Fortnite gamer targeted at teens. But not for all these old TV clips. We should be thankful that we can share most of these things anyway.

Like I said everything I do in the future will be posted on Archive, if anything I like the principle of it being like Wikipedia, user submitted and not profiting off our upload work. Even if Youtube does not shut down your account, they make tons of money off ad revenue from the videos you post (I remember watching a video from one of the users here, and 2 ads ran before the video started, and 2 more 5 minutes in) when people decide to view them, that is what irked me about all this, if one dares try to get a piece of the pie they are making YOU get in trouble. Up to this point I had total views of 4,000 hours in the past year and over a million clicks lifetime. For all of that I did not get a single penny the last 3 years. Some of it was original content, some was reposting old commercials (I did not post a single copyrighted show actually) either way the result was the same.

All in all, I'm supporting the non profit sites in the future, at least they are not profiting off our work in posting it, whether it is original or copyrighted stuff.

chandler0201 said:

Like I said everything I do in the future will be posted on Archive, if anything I like the principle of it being like Wikipedia, user submitted and not profiting off our upload work. Even if Youtube does not shut down your account, they make tons of money off ad revenue from the videos you post (I remember watching a video from one of the users here, and 2 ads ran before the video started, and 2 more 5 minutes in) when people decide to view them, that is what irked me about all this, if one dares try to get a piece of the pie they are making YOU get in trouble. Up to this point I had total views of 4,000 hours in the past year and over a million clicks lifetime. For all of that I did not get a single penny the last 3 years. Some of it was original content, some was reposting old commercials (I did not post a single copyrighted show actually) either way the result was the same.

All in all, I'm supporting the non profit sites in the future, at least they are not profiting off our work in posting it, whether it is original or copyrighted stuff.

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