Alert reader and longtime MSTie Courtney Hatch writes:

I would like to hear how other fans have organized/converted their episode collections. I still have all the episodes on VHS sitting in my childhood bedroom closet (except for ONE tape that was lost, with Gunslinger, Lassie, & I Accuse My Parents – so only Lassie is really “lost”) – the task of converting them is SO daunting! How have people gone about this? Or is it ok to just leave them on VHS forever – is there a time limit on video quality of that? I’d love to hear people’s suggestions.

Well, to start with, here’s my shelf.

All the Rhino sets are together on the top right. The rest are in DVD slimline cases, in order, starting with the KTMAs at the top left and ending with episode 1013 on the second shelf on the right. The Shout! Factory disks have been removed from their sets and filed, in episode order, among the recorded DVDs. The third shelf is Cinematic Titanic, (prerecorded) RiffTrax and Film Crew DVDs along with miscellaneous stuff. The bottom shelf is CDs with RiffTraxes on them. Scattered on top of them and jammed on the right are bad movies for riffing later.

My collection was once much larger in terms of bulk. Back then I had every episode from season 2-10 on its own VHS tape at SP speed. I taped the season 2-6 eps during the wondrous summer of 1995, when Comedy Central ran every episode, in order, at midnight, on a nightly basis. What a boon. My original season 1 tapes were three episodes per tape, EP speed — back then who knew they’d be so precious?! I was looking to save tape in those days!)

The result was about 200 VHS tapes (some of which dated back to 1990)! I moved several times after I assembled it. Packing it up and carefully moving it was a nightmare.

Eventually the jumble of unlabeled or only partially labeled tapes became too much and I bought a Seiko label printer and special spine labels (I still have a couple of boxes of spine labels somewhere, though the label printer broke a long time ago) and made neat labels with the spaghetti ball on each one. Only a few are left–check the third shelf on the right, next to Bender, to see what they looked like.

A few years ago DVD recorders finally got cheap enough and I broke down and bought one, and began the long process of converting every single dang episode that wasn’t on DVD. I chose DVD+R, by the way. I’m just a positive guy. :-) DVD experts are free to tell me if I chose incorrectly. The process took months but I finally got it all done. As part of the process, the first thing I did with each tape was fast-forward it to the end and then rewind it to the beginning. I’m told this kind of “wakes it up” and helps it play cleanly. Many of them hadn’t been played in more than a year. However, I should note that doing that caused five or six of them to break off the reel at one end or the other, requiring me to open the tape up and gently use scotch tape to reattach the tape to the reel. I got pretty good at it after a couple of times. Only one tape was actually broken: completely frozen tight and unplayable. It’s at moments like that that we depend on the kindness of fellow MSTies. A good friend sent me a replacement.

I did some quick Googling and the authoritative sites I saw said that VHS tapes are supposed to last 20-25 years under proper storage conditions (in their case, standing on end, not too much humidity, etc.). My oldest ones were about 15 years old and they had not always been very well cared for. Anybody with expertise on the care and feeding of VHS is welcome to chime in.

So, what about you? Tell us about your collection and how you built it. If you started on tape, have you converted to DVD? How did that go? One issue you have to face when you do that is the issue of “include the commercials or not?” I included them, seeing them as a bit of history to be preserved. What did you do?

About links: You’re welcome to post a link to images of your collection at whatever photo upload site you like (this one is easy and free, but there are lots of them). Be aware, however, that the site is gets nervous about comments with more than one or two links in them (it’s a spam-fighting thing). If your comment has more links than that, and it doesn’t show up right away, it’s because it was sent to us for confirmation before it posts. Be patient and if they’re legit we will release them before too long.