who hear remembers walkmans?

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I haven't even seen a VHS tape in almost a decade. I kinda miss the old boxy things.*

Says this while using an iPad, lol.

I keep a few VHS machines in case one day I might wanna dub some tapes to DVD. VHS was certainly useful to me in terms of recording programs back when I had cable. but these days with just the over the air broadcasts received from a treetop antenna, there isn't much to record and since it everything now is ATSC, my NTSC VCR can't record it anyways, not without a converter box which doesn't tell the machine what time to start and stop recording.
on the subject of cassettes and sound quality, in the last years of the format, with metal particle tapes and dolby S NR [which had somewhat strict technical requirements in terms of transport speed stability and tight azimuth control], that most dolby S cassettes had excellent sound quality, certainly good enough for casual listening and even some serious listening as well on high-quality audio systems. the dolby S cassette sound quality on playback could not, under most circumstances, be detected as a recording, compared to the original source. alas, digital came along and rendered analog obsolete in terms of its versatility and speed.

Of course! You'd have to be pretty young to not remember them. (Recently I watched an episode of Kids React where they reacted to VHS tapes; some didn't know what they were! I was shocked!) I was so upset when my parents got rid of our tapes, especially the Care Bear ones. >.< I miss Blockbuster, too.

I miss the after work ritual of going to the video store and browsing their stock.

I thought VCR's were, like, really amazing!

I used to use a Walkman a lot when I was little. Nowadays, I just listen to music on my phone like most others.

when I saw my first sony Betamax in '74 I was mesmerized.

You were ahead of the times!

I saw my first Betamax in 1977. Some family in the neighborhood had one. A bunch of us kids saw "Oh God!" on it.

it was a Japanese import, it was a display model in a seattle Japanese food emporium called "Uwajimayas" and it was displaying a cooking class in Japanese, recorded off of a Japanese NHK broadcast. we didn't get a vcr of our own until 1983.

Same here, there wasn't a VCR in our family until 1983 also -- I remember how excited I was to not only be able to rent and watch movies of my choosing at home, but also to record things. That was unknown up until home video, and I still remember the thrill.

I also relate to your post about the ritual of visiting the video store -- I loved that! I had a good mix of big box video stores and cool little boutique video stores, and between them I loved browsing for movies.

My local Blockbuster had $2 Tuesdays in the mid 90s, and I was there every week picking out things for my Tuesday night viewing.

At first, I used to get kind of a sensory problem just looking at all the video cases on the shelves, but when I learned how to slow down and look one-at-a-time I loved the browsing ritual.

Digital streaming rentals are more convenient but the thrill of the ritual is missing.

I remember in that uwajimayas display, thinking that I was seeing the future had arrived.

Of course I remember them. At the time I didn't see the point in bringing music with you though. I had one portable cassette player from Linguaphone that I used to listen to language tapes, but I never brought it with em and it wasn't very good either. My tape player on my radio was far better and more used.

I never had one other than that, nor did I have a CD walkman.

I was 9 when we got our first video. At first when it was new I was interested in any video we got into the house. We only had 3 TV channels at the time, so it was a very exciting thing to have.

I remember the excitement when I got to use my first metal particle tape, marveling at the crystalline trebles and purity of sound compared to tdk SD or AD.

I just saw your post about metal tape -- I think I remember I did have at least one superior metal tape cassette, but I think I probably didn't have the equipment that would show off the better sound quality at its optimum! I'll bet it did sound more pristine that ordinary tape, though.

and before metal by about a decade, I heard my first chromium dioxide high bias tape, [early 70s] which itself was a revelation on my primitive early cassette deck which btw didn't even have dolby or a high-bias switch but still it was able to record [but not erase too well] and the sound to my ears on my then equipment was identical to the LP I copied. but when I got my first high quality CD and decent quality cassette recorder, I definitely could tell the difference, there was a subtle veil over the trebles, which was eliminated when I used metal particle tapes. dolby C and S also were huge improvements when recording CDs.

I guess it would be pretty pointless for me to write that I don't remember them. But at least I know what they are.