Does anyone still watch the their WAM on VHS?

I do not anymore. And its a shame because I have things from defunct producers that people clamor for.

I will probably end up throwing them out someday.

So............. does anyone watch these yet?

Digitized and tossed or sold everything four years ago, except for some third-tier cliptapes that may never get converted.

Although I did appear to have accidentally deleted a small portion of a long-OOP Messyfun volume during a file migration, so I guess I fucked that up.

What's a VHS?

ABGamma - you've just made me feel positively ancient.

I was being cheeky . I used to set some WWYD episodes to record on VHS while I was at school.

I watch the ones I haven't converted to laser disc on beta-max...

How dare you be cheeky in my class, go and put on your proper school uniform immediately and sit in a large cherry cream pie !

In semi-seriousness, there was never a WAM laserdisc, right? The technology was too expensive for any sort of small-time venture (which MessyFun and Splosh were, even in their heyday). By the law of averages, there must've been at least one WAM shoot shot on Betamax... But I don't remember any releases on anything but VHS.

Weirdest format? I'm almost positive I got a disc from WAMF once that wasn't DVD, but rather a CD-ROM! I guess it was that weird in-between time before DVD took over. (There's a company whose early work is frustrating... They released almost everything through RealPlayer clips with very low quality. Even VHS would've been an improvement but they rarely sold anything that way.)

Fun fact: The first three SlapstickStuff volumes were released on VHS first! But I converted them over to DVD pretty quick. Pretty sure SS01 sold more copies on VHS (at either $25 or $35 each) than most of my CURRENT scenes sell now... in glorious HD... through instant download... for a fraction of the cost.

Simpler times.

You have a working VCR??? I am surprised there are still TV's that will support that old technology. What is it 120p?

I'd imagine that Rob probably shot the majority of his stuff on BetamaxSP, then edited it down to VHS...

Wasn't that that goofy Xvid format?

I think so.

I still have all my old WAMF DVD's. It's a fond look back once in awhile.

He shot using professional newsgathering cameras on Hi-8, which was Sony's high res vcr format (the VHS equivalent was sVHS). Both systems recorded 400p as opposed to the 240p of domestic Beta and VHS VCRs. I think by the time commercial WAM videos were being produced Betamax was already dead, though there were probably amateur scenes shot by individuals before then, now lost to time.

ive been going thru my old vhs tapes over the years and converting them to dvd and other digital formats in my spare time. i still have them though, just in case. and anytime i find a vcr at a thrift store or something, i buy them and put them in a closet. you never know when you might need one if there's anything you'd like to have converted, shoot me a message. we can work something out

I would convert my old tapes by running the output through an original DV camcorder and into my editing software to grab and convert. Output is 480p. It's SD, of course, but I've found the clips I recorded back in the day, when converted, look far better than the often-pixelated ones you find circulating now.

I still have mine.

No, own none

I still have a few.

Ha. Yes. I didn't have anything that would play that and I was furious. Although I saved the disc and, years later, popped it into a laptop and pulled the files off of it. And of course they were so tiny they were basically unwatchable. There's a lesson in that -- everything I bought on VHS going back to the early '90s still looks reasonably OK, but all that born-digital stuff from the mid-2000s is so compressed that it's useless. There were a few producers who peaked in that moment that I never bought anything from because I was annoyed they were only releasing downloads -- Crazygirls right before it bit the dust and Messy Mercedes/Chantelle come to mind -- and I regret not having it, but even if I did, whatever copies are extant probably look terrible.

I'm down to one and a half working VCRs although, as a teenaged (and early-twentiesed) movie nerd, I had as many as four at my peak. Two to record different channels at the same time, plus a dubbing rack to edit commercials or run off bulk trades for other dweebs. I also worked for a company that tossed a roomful of video equipment, and with another collector I went in and scavenged a trunkful of professional grade VCRs and U-matic decks. There was a 1" machine up for grabs but we didn't have a screwdriver to get it out of the rack and it was almost 100 degrees that day, so we abandoned it. Naturally, a couple of months later, for the first time, somebody offered access to something we'd been searching for ... on 1". That other guy still has a closet full of VCRs and is still digitizing a lifetime of tapes, though.

I'm glad someone else remembers laserdisc, and I don't think there was any WAM ever on laserdisc.

Laserdisc came and went so quickly that I'm surprised there was time for content of any type to be released on it. My high school had a player that I saw used only once.



Most modern TVs still have a component input that will accept a signal from a VCR. I used one to go through a bunch of old VHS tapes last year ahead of a cross-country move. The picture isn't the best because blowing it up to fit a big HD screen reveals the weaknesses of the old format, but it was still watchable.

People think that (I used to - the Camelot Music in my hometown mall had a rack of laserdiscs and for years I thought they were soundtrack albums), but it was actually around as a consumer format from 1984 until DVD made it obsolete in the late '90s. (Almost as long a lifespan as DVD has had!) It just never had much market penetration (huh-huh) because it stayed expensive.

True story, I threw about 10 Hurley clip tapes in a dumpster the day I left Arizona for California. it stung a little, but VHS was long dead by then, and didn't wanna leave them lying around for my old roommates to find.

They were good buys at the time, before youtube. I think you can still pick up some 1g compilations somewhere. good for the very rare stuff.

I still have ALL the original Hurley volumes on DVD... which he burned for me over the years. (Sometimes one VHS "volume" required TWO DVDs... Not sure how that worked, but Hurley was nothing if not lo-fi during his entire run. Pretty sure these DVDs were created by one of those VCR/DVD combo things rather than a higher digital transfer.)

The only ones I'm missing are the first 3, which never got "converted." Hurley said the original tapes were unusable, or something. Anyway, 95% of those clips surfaced in better quality on future tapes, and then when he started to "pad" volumes at the end by adding that "original tape" footage, the quality was so bad you realized you weren't missing much.

And I'm also missing a few towards the end, when his cliptapes were really just a combo of easily found YouTube clips (converted so they were 1/4 size of everything else and borderline unwatchable!) and the same current mainstream clips everyone had. No rarities.

But until that point, I was getting every new cliptape for gratis... because there was a period when Hurley was in desperate financial straits, and I gave him a chunk of money (back when I was pretty broke too!) to keep the Pie Mafia going. In return he promised free cliptapes "for life". Well, "life" turned out to end around volume 30 or so.

Aside from that, he was still a good guy (even if his business model doesn't work in the age of YouTube and easily shared clips). Like most WAM legends, it's usually better if you ignore their last couple years in the community, when everyone seems to burn bridges on his/her way out.

I wonder if he is a lurker on this site. One would assume so.

How long were they? The max bit rate on the commercial DVD recorder I used (back when they made them with hard drives, so you could do some rudimentary editing) was an hour per disc, so all my 2-hour tapes got split into 2 discs.

Ive got several original MessyFun (including my all time favourite My Friend Shaun) and lots of the Splosh branded ones
Just need to find them and hope the mould hasnt taken hold of them

I have found a service that transfers old VHS (and repairs mouldy ones) to WMV files... although not sure what they would think to the Rob Blaine classics

There are also some DIY kits that look like you plug a VCR into your PC and direct transfer, but that needs the VHS tapes to be playable and the VCR to be working i guess

Still got a working, but creaky, VHS player which I used at one time to transfer my tapes to DVD's, using just a connecting cable from the VHS output into the input of a DVD recorder (think they're also getting scarce nowadays), using the tv as a monitor. No significant loss of quality between playing the tape and playing the DVD copy.

I also had a Betamax player, which had been sitting in the attic for about 15 years, even with some tapes (non-WAM) in good condition. Sadly, when I tried it out last year it groaned and shuddered to a standstill....the repair shop said that most VCR and Beta used rubber rollers to run the tape, and these had long-since crumbled to dust. Obviously no spares so long after, so I guess if you want to view or copy tapes, do it now.

Two hours, no more. Towards the end it was closer to 1:45. (I think he REALLY needed money so he'd shorten and pad volumes so he could release a new one every month even if the content wasn't there.)

Some of the 2 hours ones fit on 1 DVD, some are split. No rhyme/reason.

If he lurks on here, he's been awfully quiet for over a decade. None of the other Mafiosos have heard from him either.

I was one of the guys who sent a chunk of money the first time, when the Pie Mafia still had a newsletter being sent out, but when he stopped mailing them the freebies were over.
I remember those 1:45 length clip tapes and making sure they played through to the end hopeful of some bonus material appearing in that dead space. lol