Van Buren Boys

How's this for utterly sucky?

Before tonight, I had every Seinfeld episode on tape. Now, when the Van Buren Boys originally aired, I set the VCR because I was spending the evening with my girlfriend. Well, I watched the episode at her apt. and when I came back home, my VCR clock was blinking "12:00...12:00...12:00." So, my Season 8 tape lost it's continuity as I recorded the following week's episode where the Van Buren Boys was to be.

Then came the summer when NBC was showing season 8 reruns on Thursday nights. I hadn't received the syndication/rerun schedule yet, so I said to myself: "what are the odds that the Van Buren Boys will be showing tonight??" So, I did my stuff and went to the gym. What did I see playing on the gym TV?? The Van Buren Boys.

Today, 13 November, FOX put the Van Buren Boys in the weekly lineup. I was determined to tape it, dammit. And tape it I did. So, when the first commercial came around, I hit the pause button. When the commercials ended, I hit the stop button -- which is right below the play button and THE EXACT SAME FRIGGIN' SIZE AS THE PLAY BUTTON. When I couldn't pause the VCR 10 minutes later, I had realized that I wasn't recording the show.

Yet again I miss recording the Van Buren Boys.

Damn!

And we needed to know this because....?

Kevin C Welch wrote in message ...

thats sad news kevin.....thats the reason i tape the whole episode with the

commercials and then borrow my friends VCR to weed out the commercials on to a new one....call me crazy.....but it works.....

play

the

What you NEED is one of the newer VCRs with "commercial skip". Just let it rip, and screw that part of pausing the commercials out. I've been a victim of the Pause button....but in my case, I forget to Un-Pause it! Grrrr!

--SS--

Well i had one of those too......it doesnt quite effectively skip the commercials while recording. There is another feature called "commercial skip playback" where it automatically skips the commercials and gives a blue blank screen for abt 10 seconds (in SLP mode) instead of 3 mins of commercials.....

iam not sure how this works though!.... why would the broadcasting station send out something that would identify that its a commercial wouldnt they want the viewers *not* be able to *not* watch the commercials?

-chandra.

On Mon, 17 Nov 1997 16:21:11 -0800, Chandrashekar S wrote:

I believe the VCR looks for the fade-out to commercial sequence. You are correct in that the networks do not send out any signal alerting VCR's of upcoming commercials-though they could if they wanted to; of course new VCR's would have to be built that would recognize the signal.

Brandon Stockton ([email]) wrote:

Wow, Frasier would give any one of these VCRs congestive heart failure.

Actually, I think there is a signal that the VCR can recognize. The VCR puts down a mark at the start of the commercial and uses this as a guide mark later during playback. The ads are still recorded, just skipped at tape playback. I believe the VCR actually has to do a second pass of the tape in order to get the markers in place, after the recording is finished.

Of course, I could be full of shit.

--SS--

In article , [email] (Kevin C Welch) wrote:

Very much so!

Some years ago I had recorded the pilot for Dragnet. Sat down, watching, got to the final scene when they're ready to open this guys toolbox - will reveal the whole story. 'click' end of tape!!! NOOOOOOOOOOoooo!!

Had to wait almost a year before it showed up on cable again, and I finally got to see the last 5 minutes!

It was frustrating, but very satisfying at the same time...something to look forwared to....

[email] (Kevin C Welch) wrote:

Kevin, this was worth staying up way too late to read. Great narrative literature, in my (not particularly discriminating) opinion.

Dear boy, I don't think it is meant to be. It's not in your script. Some bad Karma going on there.

In , [email] (Kevin C Welch) writes:

Ouch! I am truly sympathetic, Kevin. There have been several times where forces beyond my control have conspired to prevent me from getting a much needed episode on tape (traffic, power failure, prior engagement, etc.) but NEVER 3 times on the same ep. Cheer up, though. They're not pulling the show off the air any time soon, so "The Van Buren Boys" will surely make another appearance eventually.

Quoth [email] (Kevin C Welch) :

SNIP

You aren't by chance studying to be a city planner, are you???

I am so sorry! Same thing happens to me with "The Soup Nazi"