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Pete Dillon-Trenchard, 37, had what he called a “fairly prodigious” collection of video tapes when he was a kid growing up in the U.K., but like many, he disposed of them when VHS tapes were outmoded by DVDs.
However, the pandemic got Dillion-Trenchard, a TV subtitler, thinking about the crackle, whirr, and thrum of analog media once more. “In the mid-winter months, I latch onto things,” he says. In the past, it’s been obsessively collecting Star Trek figures, scouring eBay for listings to add to his collection. But in late 2019 and early 2020, Dillon-Trenchard’s obsession was old VHS tapes.
“Sometimes I would watch these videos on YouTube that people had captured of old adverts or trailers,” he says. “I thought, That’d be a cool thing to have a go at.” Then he saw an online listing: Someone living elsewhere in London was trying to offload 50 VHS tapes, the majority of which were recorded from TV.
Pete Dillon-TrenchardTwitch
“I went: ‘Yeah, I’ll buy those,’” he recalls. There was just one problem: He doesn’t drive. Which made for a difficult trip on the London Underground light rail system. “I completely underestimated how much space 50 tapes takes up,” he adds. (He’s since moved from West London to live in Hampshire with his mother, who is equally concerned about space.)
Dillon-Trenchard thought about how he might share his collection with others. Initially, he considered starting a blog where he’d write down his thoughts as he pored through the tapes he was amassing. But when he pushed the first cassette into his VCR, that all changed.
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However, the pandemic got Dillion-Trenchard, a TV subtitler, thinking about the crackle, whirr, and thrum of analog media once more. “In the mid-winter months, I latch onto things,” he says. In the past, it’s been obsessively collecting Star Trek figures, scouring eBay for listings to add to his collection. But in late 2019 and early 2020, Dillon-Trenchard’s obsession was old VHS tapes.
“Sometimes I would watch these videos on YouTube that people had captured of old adverts or trailers,” he says. “I thought, That’d be a cool thing to have a go at.” Then he saw an online listing: Someone living elsewhere in London was trying to offload 50 VHS tapes, the majority of which were recorded from TV.
Pete Dillon-TrenchardTwitch
“I went: ‘Yeah, I’ll buy those,’” he recalls. There was just one problem: He doesn’t drive. Which made for a difficult trip on the London Underground light rail system. “I completely underestimated how much space 50 tapes takes up,” he adds. (He’s since moved from West London to live in Hampshire with his mother, who is equally concerned about space.)
Dillon-Trenchard thought about how he might share his collection with others. Initially, he considered starting a blog where he’d write down his thoughts as he pored through the tapes he was amassing. But when he pushed the first cassette into his VCR, that all changed.
Meet the amateur archivists streaming old VHS tapes online
Forget Netflix. Watching schlocky movie clips and vintage TV commercials on Twitch or YouTube is way more fun.
