Yatsufusa 2025-01-25 23:52:25

I'm on the fence. Convince the editors on Wikipedia and I will agree with you on this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VHS

Axemanng 2025-01-26 15:51:53

A small piece of wisdom: https://xkcd.com/1726

(Also, since Yatsufusa brought it up, the Wikipedia article doesn’t actually contradict your interpretation on how the term is used. At most, they use it to describe the whole system of recording and playback, rather than one device.)

Yatsufusa 2025-01-26 18:29:17

@bonehead0 Not really. I set time aside for NG this weekend and tried how it would feel to be more active here again, but... Not happening anytime soon.

About the use of "VHS": Language is messy. People will use what they got used to. Like with the pronunciation of ".gif". ;)

@Axemanng & @bonehead0 They used VHS player/recorder further down in the Wikipedia article which I linked it as an example. In the beginning VHS players had no record function, which made it necessary saying more than just "VHS", I suppose. In longer discussions on the topic, you've got to look out for clarity, even if it makes the wording long and awkward.

"I've got this on VHS" is pretty clear on this own. "I've got a VHS at home" makes it clear through context.

But there are cases where it gets more tricky... "I liked VHS" could be referring to the VHS standard or the smell of the tapes or the visual grain or the very good quality of the audio (the father of a friend _actually_ used VHS for archiving audio).
"I've got a broken VHS. Can you fix it?" is also tricky.