On this day in 1984, the Supreme Court ruled that it was legal to record TV broadcasts on your VCR. If folks in 1984 could only imagine the world we're in today with DVR and video streaming. What was your first VCR (or your parents) and when did you get it?

In the early late 70s and 80s, we would actually rent a VCR for the weekend. Our rental place had a special that came with two movies and a VCR. The VCR was meant for traveling and essentially came in a suitcase. And on special occasions, we'd rent a video game system.

My family got a Betamax VCR sometime around 1985. It had a long cord remote and a single tuner. Since our antenna fed into the VCR, that meant we couldn't watch broadcast TV and record on a different channel. And there was no on screen menu, so any timer/recording meant a series of button presses and reading the manual. It was all a really involved process and you never knew for sure if it would work.

We got a fancy dual-tuner VHS-VCR sometime in the early or mid 90s. We could actually watch one channel and record on another. It also had on-screen programming, so recording was a breeze. And back then, the TV Guide in the Sunday paper would print special codes for each show that you could program directly into the VCR and it would take care of the rest. It was super high tech.

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