

if you use the phrase "be normal" as if it's something to aspire to, kindly take a long walk off a short plank. or block me. whichever is easier for you.
child of the 80s
i escaped a cult.
all of the content warnings.
all of them.
tag: exerian's tragic backstory
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I heard the adapter tapes were unreliable.
But some people really have it out for VHS these days.
Some years ago, I happened to be working somewhere with a bunch of analog-to-digital conversion equipment, and as a favor to a friend I offered to digitize a bunch of tapes of old home movies. About 2/3 where VHS-C tapes of this kind, which my friend provided along with an adapter. While all the footage was very much VHS-quality (with all the AV artifacts that entails), I was still able to pull just about all the footage without any real difficulty, despite most of the tapes being 20-30 years old. Now, I can definitely imagine things going wrong (e.g. the tape-threading system in the adapter being misaligned), and you could only really digitize in real time (so the process just ran in the background at work for about a week). But compared to trying to wrangle old digital AV equipment, I have to say I was impressed by how straightforward that approach felt.
I thought you meant that the adapter was an "unreliable narrator" because it was being puppet-controlled from the inside by a second, secret tape. 
Yeah my understanding is that it's mainly threading issues. And having to have a good set of batteries on hand for it to work. More "family home use" issues than "I do digitizing" issues. With some exceptions, (hello Fuji, hello Scotch) video tape seems to hold up pretty well long term. Lovely stuff.
Alas, my comments are not that clever. 😔