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Oldest Extant Off-Air VHS/Beta Tape You Have

Hello,

I'm new to the site. Hopefully, someone out there can help me. I was wondering if anyone out there has VHS tapes from or around December 25, 1993 of The SCI-FI Channel? I'm looking for a silent cinema marathon hosted by film critic Jeffrey Lyons that aired during the Christmas holiday. Most of the following films were shown during the marathon that I'm looking for. The rest were shown the following year as part of Radioactive Theater late Saturday nights / early Sunday mornings. Any information would be greatly appreciated as these hold sentimental value to me.


"20,000 Leagues Under The Sea"

"Aelita: Queen Of Mars"

"The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari"

"Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde"

"The Golem"

"The Hunchback Of Notre Dame"

"The Lost World"

"Metropolis"

"Nosferatu"

"The Phantom Of The Opera"

"Siegfried"

"The Thief Of Bagdad"


Thank You & Happy Holidays!
 
In response to Scott:
I have both parts of Dead by Sunset already, off KNDO Yakima. I watched the miniseries and thought it was a suspenseful show with some interesting twists and turns, and a good performance by Ken Olin (playing Brad Cunningham). In fact I copied the miniseries off for a man in New York state who didn't have a copy. This miniseries was finally put on DVD a few years ago. The Sunday broadcast aired at the same time as ABC's Beatles Anthology. I also have *both* parts of Son of the Morning Star, off KAPP. I haven't seen your WWOR EMI stuff but I look forward to seeing it.
Those Wheel clips should be posted to Dailymotion, those episodes might not be up there yet. I've got one partial Teen Week episode and one regular episode both from 1992 that need to go up to Dailymotion soon. While Sony takes them down on YT, they have been up on the other site for years without problems.

Also, a copyright notice to everyone!
DO NOT post any Sally Jessy Raphael episodes to YouTube. Yes, this is now the latest talk show to be taken over by the copyright scrooges, at NBC Universal. One of my subscriptions (one of the Michael Pannoni channels) got two strikes in one day due to this. Sad, knowing this show hasn't been seen anywhere in 15 years and the half-hour version has not been seen in almost 30. But time marches on. I had to delete a clip on the old channel from 7/27/2000 this morning but didn't get a strike from it.
 
Unfortunately, the WWOR and WXMT ads from Renegade won't make it to YouTube. When I tried rewinding the tape the other day, it had somehow gotten wrinkled and damaged inside the VCR as it was rewinding, so I don't plan on converting anything from that tape so as to avoid any further VCR problems. Weird thing is when I watched it the first time on my Funai VCR that I bought from Amazon, it didn't have any problems. Luckily the Magnavox hasn't done anything like that to any of my other tapes.

The closest thing I do have from WWOR from that era is a partial Jenny Jones episode from 1997 called "You Have the World's Worst Hair and I've Got to Make You Over!" with commercials. I uploaded that onto MightyFalcon2011 shortly after I got the tape at a local yard sale two years ago. I also have a tape of the 1984 special Rock Rolls On hosted by the late Dick Clark taped from WOR's superstation feed with commercials.

The only Sally Jessy Raphael episode I have is the first few minutes of an episode from 2002 called "My Child Vanished Without a Trace!" taped from WKBN in Youngstown. It was shown after a partial broadcast of The Early Show that had been recorded on the tape I found it on.
 
Too bad the WWOR stuff won't be posted. The EMI Service is harder to find on YouTube than the main NYC feed! I'm considering buying another Wahpeton or Helena VHS lot to find more rare stuff from Fargo or Helena/Great Falls/Butte. There's another lot of 10 tapes (Laser-branded) from Wahpeton, and 30 random tapes from Helena.
 
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This is the longest post drought on here that I've seen.

So I got a lot of 30 tapes from the seller I linked to in the post above, all Scotch tapes from the early to late 1980s, lots marked with movies taped off TV, but I will do a thorough look-see soon.

Also, got some leads on tapes from Looking For Home Recorded VHS posts on Nextdoor. I highly recommend trying this out to see if you can score some free tapes this way.
 
Haven't bought any VHS tapes since mid-December. I'm putting up a big lot soon to get rid of. Probably 40 tapes at least, many were taped around the Christmas holidays and the commercials/news clips/etc. were posted to my YT channel already. The Helena lot mentioned above sold a few days ago to someone else; and I completely missed Wahpeton #2. Oh well. It's winter; it's been cold, the off-season for estate sales. They'll start showing up around late February or early March and I'll be back to business. Maybe I'll start hitting more sales out in Terrace Heights/Moxee this year, along with the usual spots in Yakima proper and West Valley. Don't know if I'll find another tape from 1979 ever again, on the other hand!
 
Finally got around to going through some of the tapes from the aforementioned 30 tape lot, the seller only gave the vague response that "there was a lot of PBS stuff on these" when I asked what would be on these tapes.

Tape 1 (both of these were from WMVS 10- Milwaukee PBS affiliate):
2/21/1986 Austin City Limits Steve Wariner/ Restless Heart
2/12/1994 Austin City Limits John Anderson/ Billy Dean
-curiously, this was taped at SP, I occasionally come across LP tapes, most are EP, and SP is quite rare
 
Been inquiring into a Craigslist lot near Klamath Falls, Oregon. There's a man selling some 250 retail tapes and a box of home-recorded tapes. Can't read most of the labels, but one is an old Memorex Pro Series in a hard clamshell case, and another has The Outer Limits episodes on it. I mainly want this for the chance of content from KOTI-2 Klamath Falls, practically the only localized station in town. There's practically no old footage of them online besides a 2016 news clip celebrating their 60th anniversary of broadcasting. Collecting tapes...one small market at a time! Thank me for all the new stuff I've uploaded this year from Yakima, Butte, Bozeman and Boise ;) I've been going through old tapes on my YouTube channel, just posted a new Guiding Light taped in May 1996.
 
Picked up several tapes at an estate sale in Brunswick yesterday, but most of them were disappointments. Most of the programs recorded on these tapes didn't have the commercials included. The one that had the most commercials was a tape of Spongebob Squarepants episodes on Nickelodeon taped in November 2004 (on an unlabeled TDK T-160). I found several older tapes as well ranging in year from 1985 to 1998, including such finds as Bob Hope specials on NBC, Walt Disney World 4th of July Spectacular (syndicated special in 1988), several wildlife documentaries on PBS, 60 Minutes special "The Entertainers," Happy Birthday Hollywood (ABC special from 1987), a couple of movies recorded on network or local TV and a few network specials on classic TV shows, but very few commercials were found on any of these tapes.

Another tape contained a "highlight reel" of the Cleveland Indians' Division Series and World Series runs from 1995 to 1997, containing a WKYC special "Tribe '95: A Look Back," some highlight clips from throughout the 1995 World Series (my parents attended Game 5 of the Fall Classic that year), Jack Corrigan and Mike Hegan interviewing Indians players after the last 1996 regular season game before the Division Series (from a WUAB broadcast of the game), a WJW special "The Tribe: A Video Scrapbook" from 1997 before the World Series, some clips of the Tribe's ill-fated Game 7 of that year's Fall Classic, and a clip from the following morning's Fox 8 News at 5:30 AM.
 
Happens. The worst example was that estate sale a couple of years ago where only 1 out of 16 of the tapes had commercials - and it was the newest tape! The rest of the tapes I bought had 1980s TV shows (Equalizer, Simon & Simon, Dukes of Hazzard reruns, even some old Twilight Zones) and the ads were all cut out. The tape with commercials was a 6-hour block of movies taped off TBS in 1990.
Unfortunately I will have to wait to get those tapes from Klamath. The seller's father passed away a couple days ago and I'll be leaving him alone so he can get through this terrible time. In the meantime, a new Helena lot has showed up and I'll try to grab it. I've got a HUGE eBay lot to put up by this weekend - over 40 tapes.
 
I got the Helena lot a couple days ago. I haven't finalized dates or content of all the tapes yet, but here's what's on about half of the lot so far. I've found content from Great Falls, Bozeman (the PBS station), Sacramento and a bit of Los Angeles. Last night I went through an unlabeled tape that contained some March Madness game taped off KXLF-4 Butte/CBS in 1996 with commercials. However, Butte and Bozeman count as one Nielsen rated market. I haven't looked entirely at that tape yet. Lots of rarities in this one, with all tapes being pre-2001.
Tape 1 - 'Gone with the Wind' (1939) taped off TBS 12/13/1989 with commercials (I have this already); the I Love Lucy Christmas Special taped off an unknown Montana CBS station (either KXLF or KRTV) on 12/18/1989 with commercials (I have this already); about an hour of Comic Relief III footage taped off HBO in March 1989; end of 'The Last Innocent Man' (1987) taped off HBO. Tape ran out before the intershow. Kodak T-120
Tape 2 - 'Firefox' (1982) taped off Encore circa late 1997 with introduction before the movie. Sony T-160 in SP mode
Tape 3 - 'Victim of Love' (1991) taped off KXTV-10 Sacramento/CBS 5/5/1991 with commercials and very beginning of News 10 Nightside. Scotch T-120 in SP mode
Tape 4 - 'Legends of the Fall' (1995) taped off KTGF/NBC 11/23/1997 with commercials and intro to 'L.A. Story' that aired afterwards (channel 16 Great Falls MT - now a MeTV station); about 30 minutes of a Mystery! episode (recording ends before local break, likely off KUSM-9); most of 'Rio Diablo' (1993) taped off KRTV/CBS 2/28/1993 with commercials; episodes of Washington Week in Review and Wall $treet Week taped off KUSM-9 Bozeman/PBS in March 1993 with promos and pledge breaks in between. TDK HS T-120.
Tape 5 - 'Doctor Zhivago' (1965) taped off TBS 11/18/1987 with commercials, unknown brand T-120. Oldest content found in this lot.
Tape 6 - 'David & Lisa' (1998) and first few minutes of the NewsChannel 5 Weekend Report taped off KFBB/ABC 11/1/1998 with commercials; partial pledge drive segment taped off KUSM/PBS Bozeman the same night; start of the Canadian Open (figure skating) taped off TNT 12/16/1998 with a couple of commercial breaks. TDK S-HG T-120 in SP mode
Tape 7 - Shadow Casting: The Making of 'A River Runs Through It' taped off KUSM/PBS in February 1993 with promos; 'Gorillas in the Mist' (1988) taped off Disney Channel circa 2/1993; nearly-complete episode of Northern Exposure taped off KRTV-3 Great Falls/CBS 11/2/1992 with commercials; partial broadcast of Street Stories with Ed Bradley taped off KRTV/CBS in November 1992 with commercials; brief clip of the 1992 Nestle Invitational final round (likely off KTGF/16 or KTVH/12), ends with an episode of Star Search taped off KFBB-5 in March 1992 with commercials. Scotch EG+ T-120
Tape 8 - KRTV 5:30 News, Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune taped off KRTV-3/CBS 5/13/1997 with commercials; episode of Frasier taped off KTGF/NBC 5/13/1997 with commercials; 'Punchline' (1988) and first few minutes of 'The Laughing Policeman' (1973) taped off Encore 5/14/1997 with promos before and after; about 20 minutes of a Masterpiece Theatre broadcast follows; ends with last 20 minutes of 'The Milagro Beanfield War' (1988) and 1AM sign-off taped off KTGF/16 sometime in 1992 or 1993. Kodak T-120
Tape 9 - 'A Few Good Men' (1992) taped off KTGF/NBC 5/12/1996 with commercials
Tape 10 - Both parts of The Judds' 'Love Can Build a Bridge' miniseries taped off KTGF/NBC 5/14-15/1995 with commercials. Maxell T-120
Tape 11 - 'Waterworld' (1995) taped off Starz! in July 1996 with promos; two hours of Olympics footage taped off KNBC/NBC on 7/26/1996 with commercials. TDK HS T-120
Tape 12 - 'The Wizard of Oz' (1939) taped off KXTV/CBS 3/19/1991 with commercials; 'Heidi' (1969) taped off KRBK/31 Sacramento in March 1991 with commercials
Tape 13 - Part 1 of In The Beginning taped off KTGF/NBC 11/12/2000 with commercials - blank after 2hrs
 
First Yakima estate sale of the year brought a couple of new tapes with mainly golf footage - nothing taped from Yakima, all from California and NOT from L.A. or the Bay Area!

Tape 1 - Final round coverage of the British Open taped off KEYT/3 Santa Barbara, CA (ABC) 7/18/1999 with commercials; ends with about a half-hour of Ryder Cup footage taped off USA Network 9/21/1995 with commercials. Kodak T-120
Tape 2 - Barbra Streisand: The Concert taped off unknown CBS affiliate 5/21/1995 minus most commercials; last 45 minutes of the final round of the BellSouth Classic and part of an episode of Hawkeye taped off KCCN-46 Monterey (now KION, CBS) 5/8/1995 with commercials; ends with part of the 1994 World Cup of Golf taped off KSBW-8/NBC 11/13/1994 with commercials
 
Another estate sale was listed on Craigslist this morning, and I ended up finding one more tape for this week. It contains 'The Man with the Golden Gun' (1974) taped off KAPP/ABC on 3/16/2002 with commercials, and the first several minutes of Local News at 11 follow before the tape goes blank.
 
Went to two estate sales today, the second one had tapes.
Tape 1 - 'To Dance with Olivia' (1997) taped off KIMA/CBS 3/9/1997 with commercials, blank afterwards. At the beginning is a brief clip of KIMA Newsbeat at 6 taped 5/29/1997. Sony T-120 in SLP mode.
Tape 2 - Starts with the last 20 minutes of some 1940s NTA/Republic Pictures film; then cuts to most of 'Bill Cosby Himself' taped off Showtime on 9/29/1987; cuts again to The Elephant's Child (1987 children's cartoon narrated by Jack Nicholson) also taped off Showtime; tape reverts back to the 9/29/87 SHO aircheck with Concert Stages of Europe and Blind Sunday, with promos. Ampex T-120, not in great shape and rough video at times.
Tape 3 - Starts with the 'Do the Bartman' Bart Simpson music video; then cuts to the premiere episode of Yearbook taped off an unknown Fox station on 3/9/1991 minus commercials (suspect K53CY); and to an episode of Beverly Hills, 90210 taped in March 1991 minus commercials. Tape then reverts back to a partial episode of Moonlighting, a full episode of thirtysomething and most of News 35's 11:00 Report taped off KAPP/ABC 3/15/1988 with commercials. Ampex T-120

(Also bought a pre-recorded copy of 'Paternity' (1981) with Burt Reynolds...this is out-of-print and NOT on DVD! eBay copies are going from $10-$30 right now. Also, thanks to subbing in for a paraeducator at my local middle school, I was able to acquire some pre-recorded tapes from free piles the librarian set up in the staff lounge for staff to take...namely the 1995, 1997 and 1998 Scholastic Book Fair preview videos! These are extremely hard to find. All three are the middle school version and run about 20-25 minutes. Scholastic made two tapes for each year, one for elementary grades and one for intermediate/middle schools. The 1995 preview has an interview with the late Brian Jacques, the author of the well-known Redwall fantasy series; and is hosted by then 16-year-old Nick Stahl, around the time his Disney film 'Tall Tale: The Unbelievable Adventures of Pecos Bill' came out in theaters.)
 
I hope those Ampex brand tapes didn't make your VCR squeal. Remember when I had that problem a couple of months ago and needed to have my VCR cleaned and repaired? Apparently there's a term for that type of VHS deterioration. It's called sticky shed syndrome. According to this Wikipedia article, Ampex tapes are the most common tapes to have sticky shed syndrome. (Granted, this is Wikipedia, so this information can't really be taken for face value, but it's still worth reading.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sticky-shed_syndrome

Lately I've been noticing a few YouTube users in my list of subscriptions have actually been live-streaming themselves scanning through some of the VHS tapes they find as they first go through them. The first user I've seen do this goes by the channel name Vance's TV Archive and he has apparently inspired a few other VHS collectors on YouTube to start live-streaming as well. Not surprisingly, usually all they do is play back the commercials on these tapes and fast-forward through the actual programming because of potential copyright issues. In the few streams I've seen Vance do, not only does he do this with VHS tapes, but also with an old TiVo he found containing various recordings from the 2000s.

Here's a link to a replay of Vance's latest stream where he actually found some rare content from the early 1980s on at least a couple of these tapes, including footage from the long-forgotten Spotlight premium cable network as well as Pinwheel, Nickelodeon's predecessor. He also provided commentary throughout the stream while going through the tapes (be careful where you watch this though because he uses some rough language at times).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJiFrCO_QJE

Viewers of these live streams are also able to type in their own comments on what they're watching and chat with other viewers, although replays of the chats themselves usually aren't available during the replays of the streams provided the user chooses to leave it up for replay.

Just the other day, another YouTuber who uses the screenname 'danthemanwiththegarbagecan' did a live stream of a nice long tape containing a bunch of Canadian TV airchecks from 2003, all with commercials (couple of Jeopardy episodes on CTV; The Amazing Race, Entertainment Tonight, Friends and Will & Grace on Global; another Amazing Race and an episode of Top Dogs on OLN Canada). And last night he streamed a tape containing a 1987 broadcast of Saturday Night Live on WKEF in Dayton and an episode of Mad Movies with the L.A. Connection on Nick at Nite, also from 1987, both with commercials. Neither of those streams are available for replay though.

Yet another user, NickelodeonBoy11 (who also happens to be a Northeast Ohio native like myself), recently did another live stream. The second half is all kiddie shows on tapes he said he found on eBay, but the first half is a late night aircheck from WNBC in New York City in December 1999 (he said in the live chat that he found that tape locally at a thrift store a few days ago). That first tape had a partial broadcast of It's Showtime at the Apollo, a classic Saturday Night Live from the late '70s or early '80s (NBC All Night), an episode of Comedy Showcase with Louie Anderson and a weekend broadcast of Access Hollywood. It was available for replay for about a day or so before he apparently took it down. Still pretty cool to see these tapes as these collectors go through them.
 
Unfortunately YES...that Ampex tape does have a 'squealing' issue. They are the worst tapes when it comes to this and it's sad. The good news is the picture is wobbly just for a few seconds after fast-forwarding, then clears up. I won't play it often, just to copy the items off to YT. And I've also got a separate rewinder which I will use for that tape. That KAPP newscast is very hard to find, and I have very little KAPP footage from the 1986-89 period, unlike KIMA and KNDO. Another Ampex tape I have is the 1985 Yakima Centennial Parade off KIMA, which I still need to copy off to YouTube. Too bad it squeals a little bit too, but it's one of the rarest local programs I've ever found. The parade, held June 8th, 1985, celebrated 100 years of Yakima history.
I could have gotten a fourth T-120 tape marked 'Cartoons' but after studying the tape, found out it was eaten up and it was out of the casing. Garbage, sad. That was a Safeway T-120 c. mid-1990s, and anything marked 'cartoons' is $$$!
I'm not getting into streaming nor do I have the time to make it possible. Anything I post is what I post. I've been going through several Beta's full of Siskel & Ebert which I have been pulling off to Google+ due to copyright troubles on YT.
 
crainbebo said:
I'm not getting into streaming nor do I have the time to make it possible. Anything I post is what I post. I've been going through several Beta's full of Siskel & Ebert which I have been pulling off to Google+ due to copyright troubles on YT.
Click to expand...

What is your Google+ link as I would be really interested in seeing the Siskel & Ebert episodes!
 
Thanks again on the link, I was a big Siskel & Ebert fan growing up in the 80s and 90s, some of my earliest memories of my local PBS affiliate were when their review show would come on on Saturday nights (had to have been 1987 or 1988 or so).

Got distracted on the Milwaukee tapes with some other work recently, but did stumble upon a cheap box of what looked like early to mid 80s home recordings at one of the few local thrift stores left that do not outright toss these types of VHS tapes.

Tape 1: Based on the heft and labeling on the tape I assumed it was a late 1970s tape stock, was marked as episodes of WKRP in Cincinnati, turned out to be recorded over with an early 2000s airing of the 2001 version of "Planet of the Apes" on Cinemax. Bummer. This has to be the oldest tape stock I have ever seen recording something from the 2000s, at least a gap of 20 years, maybe even 25.

Tape 2: This one was correctly labeled (mostly) on an old Maxell Epitaxtial tape:
1983? A few minutes of the WABC-7 Sunday Night at the Movies airing of "The Last Picture Show" taped over by
4/8/1984 WWOR-9 Sunday Night Showcase "All About Eve" 1950, complete airing with commercials
I assumed it was a timer recording, as there was half of the next program from 4/8/1984 movie airing of "Written on the Wind"
 


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