Planned Obsolescence

I've got a closet full of vinyl records, cassette tapes, VCR tapes, CDs and DVDs. During each transition, I resisted buying the new stuff until the old stuff became unavailable. As a result, I never got into the eight tracks, the digital audio tapes, or the Beta Max tapes, and I'm kind of proud of that. I'm not sure what Blu Rays are, but I've never gotten into them either, and don't intend to. We've still got our old CRT television from the 1990s. It worked fine until they reformatted their broadcasts to accommodate those new fangled flat screens. Now, if any text appears on the screen, it's chopped off at the sides, which makes it hard to read. Then there's those messages they run across the bottom of the screen. The beginning and the end disappears behind the rounded corners, but many of them are too small to read anyway. I thought the reason they made those flat screens was to get a better picture, but then they go ahead and clutter it up with a bunch of text. What are they trying to prove with that?

Some time ago, when our old VCR died, I bought a combination VCR and DVD player. Some time after that, the VCR part quit working. Those VCRs were prone to breaking down, and you were supposed to have them cleaned once in awhile anyway, but I don't know of anybody around here that still works on them. I couldn't justify buying a new one because the DVD part still works. I may have waited too long because I read somewhere once that the last company that made VCRs had discontinued production of them. I haven't checked around to see if they are still available. I might do that one of these days, right after I get my flu shot and buy a cell phone to keep in my truck, just for emergencies.