The joys of technology

One day some weeks back I discovered that the VHS tape I had left in my VCR could not be pulled out. It seems the tape itself – the film strip, as it were – had been snagged somehow by something and would not come loose without tearing the film (being the unedited video of my ordination I didn’t want to do that).

Now, my electronic equipment is far from current and it seems that this has finally caught up with me. For no few months I have pondered simply tossing my television out the window, being able to watch most of the movies I enjoy on my computer and catching the “news” on the Internet. Nearly the only thing that has kept me from doing so is my love of my Saturday evening routine of British comedy, not too mention an episode or two of Everybody Loves Raymond before bed.

The tape that was stuck in my VCR has been removed and is – I think – still viewable. I have not yet checked into the functionality of the VCR.

I had decided to purchase a DVD/VCR combo, thinking this the easiest solution and one easy way to do a bit of de-cluttering. But when I was out looking around this evening I can’t recall seeing one that had a jack for the cable cable (English certainly is a strange language) that I would need with my television.

The difficulty here is that my television is the same one I purchased between my senior year of high school and my freshman year of college (which, being a bit of a frugal person when it comes to such matters, was certainly not top of the line at the time), and it seems that televisions have come a long way since then, both technologically and price wise. It has only one jack: either for the cable cable or the cable that would go to the VCR – that now may be defunct – into which the cable cable would be run, thereby making these DVD/VCR combos rather useless (my current DVD player does not have the appropriate jack, either).

So I hear I sit in my living room pondering my equipment:

• My television is twelve years old;
• My VCR is twelve years old;
• My DVD player is about seven years old; and
• My stereo must be close to seventeen years old by now

An entirely new home theatre system certainly is tempting, but with my upcoming travels to Rome in less than a fortnight, Washington, D.C. this April, and Australia this July, it seems a bit beyond my price range.

This may be a lesson to keep a better eye on the pace of technology so as not to get outpaced again in the future.

I’ll do some playing around this evening with the VCR and see if the jacks are at least still functional, even if the tape deck itself is not.