Dial Up. Yeah I know the sound and I know the time it took to load anything with. But it’s something I won’t ever miss having. I would much rather be on a 1MB connection if I had to choose between that or dial up ever again. I also hated how easy it was to be kicked off, if anyone called the phone, you were off it in seconds.
I gave up watching a show (Smallville) because it was too much of a pain to find a tape to use in the VCR, make sure there was enough room to record my show without recording over something else, finding which tape had which episode, and watching the episodes while still leaving the tapes at the start of my wife’s recorded program.
Once the era of DVRs and then streaming hit, watching shows became SO much more convenient.
Ugh, I basically never watched any show that closely before DVDs. Mind you, I was also pretty young at the time, but that worked even more against me as it was much less of an option to record anything when it was entirely on my parents’ devices. Plus only one TV had satellite and my dad basically monopolized it.
I basically only watched things sporadically, as I was able to. Which also meant story heavy serials weren’t viable. Everything had to be at least decently episodic so that I wouldn’t feel lost due to missing half the episodes and watching reruns out of order.
I’m genuinely glad kids these days have it so much better. How many times as a kid did I beg my parents to let me watch some popular kids show and it wasn’t an option? And if I ever did get to see something I liked, it could be months before the stars aligned to get to see another episode.
On the other hand, I do kind of miss the episodic scifi like star trek TOS or TNG. These days they’re all 40-hour long stories instead of 20 half-hour-long stories.
Ahh, the beloved VCR! Also while recording, pressing pause to leave out the tv commercials, forgetting to unpause, the station interrupting news breaks, a low-flying airplane messing up the tv reception, someone changing the channel while you went to go to the bathroom. And my all-time favorite… dad placing his big brand new stereo speakers right next to the little videotape shelf!