My video machine has finally left the TV cabinet and here ends an era.

It started gradually I suppose when DVD's started replacing Video tapes in the video shops and I got my very first DVD player in the form of a Playstation 2. It was quite an exciting time, movies were crisp and all of a sudden I had Dolby Surround Sound - virtual bullets were flying through my living room along with a a stampede of horses. This was the true magic of home cinema I would no longer be able to go back to VHS after I had discovered this new and wonderful way of watching movies. Soon my video machines only use was for recording the odd program on TV I desperately wanted to watch. But alas - soon the poor video machine was no longer doing this when the Sky Plus box entered my household. Gone was the issue of ensuring you selected the correct channel on the video machine, setting the time on the video machine and finding it had recorded nothing but static. The Sky Plus box made recording live TV, pausing and rewinding it child's play. So much so the only job left for the poor video machine was to show the time. Later it was not even useful for this when it was replaced with a small LCD clock and eventually consigned to the loft. Maybe one day old videos machines will become expensive collectors items for watching old VHS video tapes not available on DVD?