I've recently taken to task the transferring of home movies from various tapes to DVD.  The process, thanks to handy appliances like DVD recorders, has been a relatively painless one.  Most of our home movies are on either the old HI 8 cassettes, or on good ole VHS.  After 10 years of marriage, we've managed to collect a good amount of tape.  The fun part of this is having a reason to watch them, and seeing just how much your children can change in such a short period of time.

Those of my generation witnessed the evolution of media from cassettes and VHS to Cd's and DVDs.  I remember making "mix tapes", unable to envision Ipods and the like.  As I was gathering the old home movies to transfer over to DVD, I decided it was about time to throw out the VHS collection that had accumulated over the years.  It was hard letting go of those tapes--some with memories going back to my grade school days.  One tape contained the movies "The Goonies", "Teenwolf", and 'Return of the Jedi" - if that list doesn't excite the 80's nerd in you, nothing will. All told, I tossed over a hundred VHS tapes, along with around 50 or so cassettes.  In this day and age, there's no chance I'll be firing up a VCR for any reason, so why take up space with old tapes?

Do any of the kids today know what "tracking" is?  Ever have their favorite media get hung up and destroyed in their player?  Technology has been awesome, but I think we've lost something as well.  As I viewed those old memories, I realized something..  If I could just transfer the video files, or burn them like any other DVD, I wouldn't have sat through then all.  That good feeling of nostalgia and pride I felt watching how my family has grown over the years would have been missed.  Though it's a bit cumbersome and time consuming to back them up, I may just keep recording my family on tapes.  It gives me an excuse to enjoy those memories again.

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