I read last week in a couple of different places that JVC, the last electronics manufacturer still making VHS-format videocassette recorders, has stopped production of standalone VCR units. Those VCR/DVD combo players will probably live on for a while, but for all intents and purposes, this is the end, at long last, of the VHS era.

I can already hear the smart-aleck kids out there in our studio audience murmuring, “good riddance,” and I suppose I can understand why. The lowly VHS tape doesn’t begin to compare to modern digital media in terms of video and audio quality, it’s hopelessly bulky compared to slender DVDs and Blu-Ray discs, and it’s subject to wear and tear that reduces fidelity every time you play your favorite movie. Like the much-maligned 8-track audio format, VHS is something we look back upon from the comfort of our more advanced times and can’t believe anyone ever thought it was acceptable or cool.

But, as I’m sure my three loyal readers are already anticipating, I’ve got something of a soft spot for this obsolete format, and also, believe it or not, for 8-tracks. I think people have forgotten just how revolutionary these two media really were, and we should take a moment to properly eulogize the vanguard of the media-on-demand world we now enjoy.

I’m not joking. The two formats share a similar historical significance. The 8-track was the first technology that allowed drivers to take their own music with them in the car instead of being beholden to whatever was on the radio; it gave consumers more power to determine what they would listen to. The VCR did more or less the same thing by freeing us from television schedules through the magic of time-shifting, and from television programming itself by letting us watch movies at home instead of Battle of the Network Stars.

While time-shifting was a significant new paradigm, I think the real cultural change wrought by the VCR was blurring the lines between movies and television, i.e., the VCR brought cinema into our living rooms, and in time transformed our living rooms into cinemas. I’m just old enough to remember what it was like before the rise of ubiquitous home video. Movies used to be ephemeral things that you saw once or twice in the theater, then maybe a couple times on TV, and then, unless you were lucky enough to have a revival house nearby, they were gone forever. That all changed in the late ’70s and early ’80s, first with the idea that you could rent movies to watch in the comfort of your own home, and then a few years later when prices dropped to the point where you could reasonably own movies, collect them even, and have access to them whenever you wanted without having to leave the house or wait until someone brought the tape back to the rental place.

We take these concepts for granted now. Everybody I know, even people who couldn’t be termed “movie buffs” in the same sense that I am, has at least a small collection of favorite flicks on tape or disc, and the very concept of renting or owning physical media seems to be fading as on-demand, streaming video becomes more common. Hollywood counts on home video in one form or another to earn its profits on movies that no longer pay for themselves at the box office alone. And a lot of people no longer even go to the theater, preferring to just wait until they can see the latest features on the home-vid format of their choice. Movies are simply everywhere, available to us whenever and wherever we want them.

But 30 years ago, the idea of watching unedited, uninterrupted movies at home was seismic. It was such an incredible novelty that I can still remember the first time my family ever did it. A friend and former co-worker of my father’s had just opened a franchise of an entirely new kind of business, a “video store” called Sounds Easy, where you could rent a VCR the size of a suitcase (as I recall, it actually came in a big nylon pouch that looked like a suitcase) and pick from maybe a hundred or so titles on cassette. My dad’s friend assured him that the annual membership fee was worth it, that the machine would be easy to connect to our TV — “You’ve got an Atari, don’t you?” I remember him asking. “Well, this plugs in the same way…” — and that this was the wave of the future. He was right about all of those things, even if he failed to become as wealthy as he seemed certain he was about to. We rented a half dozen movies that first time, and Mom and I spent pretty much all weekend camped in front of the tube overdosing on a whole-new experience: watching movies at home. (In case you’re wondering, yes, I still recall what movies we rented, at least a couple of them… my choices were 2001: A Space Odyssey and Silent Running, and it seems like Mom got something with Robert Redford — maybe The Electric Horseman. I think we got Stir Crazy with Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder for my Dad; about the only kind of movie he’s ever had the patience to sit through is comedies.)

Historical significance and nostalgia aren’t the only reasons to mourn the passing of the VCR, though. In a lot of ways, it’s a more convenient technology than the digital labyrinths that have replaced it. Oh, sure, we thirtysomethings who grew up with home video don’t have a lot of trouble navigating the layers of menus on DVDs or cable-television systems, and lord knows the kids have an even easier time of it than we do, but what about older people? The Girlfriend has tried repeatedly to teach her 91-year-old grandmother how to work a DVD player; the poor old gal simply can not do it. Her mind just doesn’t organize information in hierarchical trees or folder structures. But she’s got no problem with popping a tape into a slot and pressing “play.” I have similar problems with my own parents, who can manage to get the disc playing, but still struggle with any function that requires too much button-pushing. (True story: my mom panics if she buys or rents one of those older discs that suffer from the glitch that automatically turns on the subtitles. I’ve gotten more than one urgent phone call from her wondering whether she’s done something wrong and had to talk her through correcting the problem.) And then there’s the convenience of recording something at my house and carrying the tape over to The Girlfriend’s so we can watch it together. They still haven’t built (to my knowledge) a digital recording system that allows that sort of portability. VCRs and VHS tapes are frankly a much simpler technology than anything else that’s come along so far, and there is something to be said for simplicity.

Yes, even though I long ago replaced the bulk of my VHS movie collection with DVDs, I am going to miss the humble VCR. In fact, I’m thinking it might not be a bad idea to watch for clearance sales so I can pick an extra tape machine or two. Hey, it’s not my fault that Mother Lode and High Road to China haven’t been released on DVD yet!