Vcr

Talking to your video cassette recorder is nothing new -- or perhaps "muttering" better describes the rude utterances that might accompany a botched recording.But for all your remonstrances, your VCR has never listened -- until now. Stand by for a new wrinkle in video enjoyment, a hand held device called the VCR Voice Programmer. It enables you to control virtually all VCR functions by merely saying the word -- such as "play," "pause," "stop" and "rewind" -- as well as to order a programmed recording.

I have an old DVD/VCR combo. I use it a lot to record programs that I want to watch at my convenience. Also I have a large collection of purchased tapes. I know I will no longer be able to record more tapes. But ... will I be able to play the tapes I have? - Alice Roider Yes, the VCR will continue to be able to play all your tapes that it ever could play. I just got a new PC, and it came with Vista. Is there any way I can "upgrade" to XP? My printer and several software programs react badly, and I can hardly ever find anything.

County police arrested a Beltsville man Saturday and charged him with stealing a videocassette recorder worth nearly $350 from a Best Buy store in Annapolis.Gary Lynn Sutton, 38, of the 7500 block of Ridgewell Court was charged with felony theft.Kevin Day, a security officer in the 100 block of Defense Highway told police that he saw a man carrying an empty VCR box in the store about 10 p.m.The man told a clerk at the door that he was returning the VCR, and the clerk gave the man a sticker that read, "paid," to put on the box so that the man could take the box into the store, police said.

Friends tell me AVG Free 7.5 is going away at the end of this month. If so, what is your recommendation for another free virus program? - Geo Dzan It's going away to be replaced by the equally free 8.0. You can find it at http://free.grisoft.com. I recently purchased a digital TV set, which is using an existing outdoor TV antenna. The area that I live in doesn't even have cable line. I cannot pick up any digital stations on the new digital TV set. I get a message that I have a low signal.

Hate to mess with all those tiny buttons to manipulate your home video equipment?If you can talk, you can now train your VCR, TV and cable box to follow commands.All it takes is a new voice-activated remote control, the VCR Voice Programmer, developed by a small outfit called Voice-Powered Technology in Canoga Park, Calif.Using a sophisticated voice recognition sensing program that's interfaced with a modest, 8-bit microprocessor, this "speaker-dependent" system is smart enough to take voice command orders from four different users.

SONICBlue has introduced another combination DVD player and video cassette recorder in its effort to keep up with the times. This one adds MP3 playback to its list of features. The Go Video DVR 4200 dual deck ($230) enables you to watch a DVD while recording a television program with its four head Hi-Fi VCR. If you have a DVD that is not copy-protected, you can use the one-touch copy feature to make a VHS duplicate. The DVR 4200 has component, S-Video, composite and RF video outputs with both analog and digital output.

There's nothing like the VCR. They come cheap and ready to go," says Dallas businessman Jim Stewart.Last holiday season, Stewart came home from an electronics store with two VCRs for his study. Stewart, married with 6- and 10-year-old daughters, wanted a second and third machine for household harmony and flexibility.The girls can watch their favorite movies while their parents record and play videotapes on other machines.Stewart's little venture didn't cost much. Two videocassette recorders, $99 each.

Rebecca Wehrkamp owns more than 400 VHS videotapes. They're in special drawers her husband built for the family's home entertainment center, they're on bookshelves and they're piled in boxes. And Wehrkamp, like many other VHS lovers, is afraid her precious videotapes are about to become obsolete. Circuit City officials announced this spring that the electronics store chain would no longer offer new movies on videotape; current and future releases will be available on DVD only. Wehrkamp, who lives in Troy, Ohio, sees the writing on the wall: VHS videotape is about to go the way of Betamax tape, vinyl records and eight-track tapes.

POLICE LOG* Scaggsville :10800 Graeloch Road: A door frame was removed from the rear of a house. A VCR and an answering machine were taken.

POLICE LOG* Oakland Mills: 6200 block of Stevens Forest Road: A VCR and television was stolen sometime between Monday and Thursday, police said. Someone entered the residence through a sliding kitchen window.

OTTAWA, Canada -- You're not exactly a Luddite, but you're far from being a technophile. You realize high-tech is here to stay, and that you have to adjust. But it doesn't mean you have to accept it. Truth be known, you'd rather stick with early 20th-century technology. All you really want and need are the visible signs of technical literacy - not the actual knowledge. That's why the following products may be just right for you. The PVC. Everyone's expected to have a personal computer today.

My mother is not a control freak. She was perfectly happy with her five-button remote control: She could turn her TV on, move the volume up and down and change channels, one at a time. It did the job. So when I presented her with a new one - with what must have been 118 buttons - she did that silent thing she does, that reaction that consists of really no reaction at all. The new remote control came with her new DVD player, which I'd bought to replace her old VCR. But let's back up. At the beginning of this year, my mother turned 80 and moved from her house into a retirement community.

Reporter: You might have heard. Betamax finally bit the dust. Reader: Betamax, the video format? You must be kidding? I thought Betamax packed it in eons ago, along with Rubik's Cube and Billy Idol. Reporter: Wrong! At the end of August, Sony announced that it would discontinue production of Betamax VCR players, after making them for 27 years. Not that the company was churning 'em out. It only made 2,800 units in 2001, and those were all for the Japanese market. Reader: And this merits a newspaper story because ...?

Rebecca Wehrkamp owns more than 400 VHS videotapes. They're in special drawers her husband built for the family's home entertainment center, they're on bookshelves and they're piled in boxes. And Wehrkamp, like many other VHS lovers, is afraid her precious videotapes are about to become obsolete. Circuit City officials announced this spring that the electronics store chain would no longer offer new movies on videotape; current and future releases will be available on DVD only. Wehrkamp, who lives in Troy, Ohio, sees the writing on the wall: VHS videotape is about to go the way of Betamax tape, vinyl records and eight-track tapes.

SONICBlue has introduced another combination DVD player and video cassette recorder in its effort to keep up with the times. This one adds MP3 playback to its list of features. The Go Video DVR 4200 dual deck ($230) enables you to watch a DVD while recording a television program with its four head Hi-Fi VCR. If you have a DVD that is not copy-protected, you can use the one-touch copy feature to make a VHS duplicate. The DVR 4200 has component, S-Video, composite and RF video outputs with both analog and digital output.

CANNES, France - Talk of the Cannes Film Festival evokes visions of red-carpeted glamour, but the soul of this annual celebration of cinema, the essence of its mission to promote the artistic growth of the medium, has nothing to do with big names, black ties and multimillion-dollar budgets. It has everything to do with young filmmakers like Ade Ololade, who spent roughly $700 of his own money - no deep pockets finance his projects - to rent a small room in the basement of the Palais des Festivals, complete with VCR, in hopes that some studio executive or distributor looking for the next big thing might decide he's it. "You've just got to keep it out there," the 27-year-old says.

POLICE LOG* Scaggsville: 12000 block of Scaggsville Road: An officer responding to a complaint of suspicious noises Saturday found a home's rear door kicked in. A camera, VCR and jewelry had been stolen, police said.

POLICE LOG* Pasadena: Someone broke into a home in the 1900 block of Main Street and stole a television and VCR sometime between 6 a.m. and 4 p.m. Thursday, police said.

CLEVELAND -- A new Harris poll finds that America and technology seem to be having a little love spat. A whopping 60 percent of consumers polled say they will no longer buy the latest high-tech gadget. Nearly half think PCs are too complicated. And 28 million Americans say they have logged off the Internet for good. I don't know about you, but I think they're lying. I think Americans are swearing off technology like a drunk swears off booze when he's hung over. We're just exhausted, that's all. Half of us were just getting the clock on our VCRs to stop flashing 12:00 and now we have to buy DVDs.

Lovers of quality television need to clear their calendars for Saturday night - or, at the very least, set their VCRs. "Freaks and Geeks," the lovingly crafted high-school drama that was hands-down the best new show of 1999, gets a one-night reprieve. Canceled earlier this year (and how does a show like this get canceled, while stuff like "Profiler" just keeps going and going and going?), the show is returning briefly for a mini-marathon of three unaired episodes. The series stars Linda Cardellini as Lindsay Weir, a high-school student who's been suffering quite the identity crisis.