Ordinary Gweilo

A few weeks before Christmas, British retailer Dixons announced that it was going to stop selling VCRs (video cassette recorders).  This story generated a lot of interest, but it seems Dixons may have acted too hastily.  The Sun recently reported that other retailers have seen a huge rise in demand for VCRs and VHS tapes since this announcement was made.  So it seems that VHS will be sticking around for a bit longer. 

Here in Hong Kong, I think pre-recorded VHS tapes disappeared 2-3 years ago (DVDs are better quality and VCDs are cheaper), but it’s only in the last year or so that there has been an affordable alternative for home recording.  DVD recorders are now a fraction of the price they were a couple of years ago, and there are several HDD machines (recording programs on to a hard disk), though still no sign of Tivo. 

I reckon the best (though not the cheapest) option is a combined DVD & HDD recorder.  I have wanted one for some time, but decided that I would wait for them to come down to HK$5,000.  So when LG came up with a machine at that price, I was straight into Fortress with my credit card  (though, of course, if I had waited a few more months I could have paid less than HK$4,000 for the same machine).

Unfortunately, mine went seriously wrong after a few weeks (it seemed to record OK, but playback ended after a few minutes whatever I watched).  I wasn’t happy about having to return it to a warehouse building in Tsuen Wan, and unimpressed when they failed to contact me to let me know that it was ready, but at least they fixed it and didn’t charge me.  Since then it has worked without any problem.

I have a few (relatively minor) complaints, but it is so much more convenient than VHS.  The hard drive can store up to 40 hours of television (at medium quality, which is better than VHS), and anything you want to keep can be burned to DVD.  Editing out commercials is fiddly but it can be done, and combining or splitting programs is easy.  My main complaints are that adding a title is so frustrating that I rarely bother with it, burning to DVD is in real-time (90 minutes of video takes 90 minutes), and you can only set 7 programs in the timer.  Obviously the latter is not much of a problem in Hong Kong, where it is a rarity to have 2 or 3 worthwhile programs each week, but it seems bizarre when you can store 80 hours of TV (at the lowest quality setting).

Yes, I know that better and cheaper machines will be along before too long, but isn’t that always the way?  Personally, I am just glad that I don’t have to mess around with VHS tapes any more!