The same thing happened to me with an older VCR. What I did--cause the VCR was so old I felt I had nothing to lose--was to open up the machine. On mine (again, an old one, so don't know if yours is the same), there was a screw on each side of the VCR, i.e. 4 screws in all. I unscrewed them, and gently pried the top off. Then I gently, GENTLY (did I mention gently?) pulled the tangled tape out. If the tape had at all resisted coming out, I would have stopped, but the tape came out pretty easily. The tape of course was ruined, but the VCR was OK. I put the top back on, replaced the screws, and the VCR worked fine. A disclaimer: you are doing this at your own risk, but I am just relaying what worked for me,

Back in '57 ... ... when TV was about as young as YouTube now ... ... I travelled from Ithaca N Y where I was in University to Saskatchewan to visit my family for Christmas. After graduating from seminary in Saskatchewan in '53, I'd applied to do missionary and refugee resettlement work in Korea, was appointed as the Korean War was winding down and it had stopped by the time of my arrival. After 4 years (usually 5) I returned via Hong Kong, India, Palestine and Europe, where I attended an ecumenical conference near Geneva and had arrived in Toronto just before I needed to head for school in N.Y., so hadn't seen my family for four years. Drove my VW bug out through Chicago, taking a Greek student to visit friends in Minneapolis, with a rug over our knees to keep us warm. As I neared home, just after daylight, a fox was running across a field and I decided to chase him: bad idea, as I got stuck when trying to get to a different roadway through deep snow ... so I had to knock on our neighbour's door at just after daybreak to ask his help to get me out. Our small village church asked me to be guest speaker on the Sunday after Christmas and one of the nieighbours told the TV station in Regina about it, so they called me to ask whether I could appear ... but the line wasn't good, so I wasn't sure which news medium was involved ... ... until they gave me directions to their location, on a major highway on the way out of town. They asked me to come in next week ... but I was to return to N.Y. that evening, so they had me come in that afternoon. The interviewer hadn't been able to talk to me prior to my appearance and I was on after a cooking segment, so she apologized for interviewing me in the kitchen ... but I told her not to worry, that clergy people were used to talking to folks in their kitchens. I asked whether she'd like to hear about various aspects of the refugee situation ... and yes, she would ... then about what life in Korea was like ... and yes, she would ... and about other aspects of the aftermath of war, etc. ... so I pretty well took over the whole interview! That was over 50 years ago ... and I don't recall having been on, since. Not handsome enough, I guess. And now one pretty well has to be young: old, lined faces aren't in high demand, I hear. Hope you're all having a lovely week. One thing nice about retirement: every day is holiday. And if you wake up ... look out the window ... and don't like the blizzard ... you can say, "Oh, well - I didn't plan on going anywhere today, anyway!". ole joyful

I know everybody is advocating transferring your tapes to DVD, BUT... As a computer geek/guru, I must tell you that the lifespan of "recorded" DVDs is unknown, but probably much shorter than everyone assumes. One highly regarded computer security specialist recently stated that they may be good for 2-3 years, possibly 5 years, but should never be used for "critical" data beyond that. Yes, I realize your tapes are probably not "critical data", but bear with me. I think someone would consider their wedding video to be critical data. Commercial movie DVDs are stamped out. It's a physical process, like embossing. "Recordable" DVDs use a dye, which changes its reflectivity when "burnt" by a laser. The longevity of this dye is questionable. The lifespan of a VHS tape is another story. If kept in a temperature-controlled, humidity-controlled environemnt (not a garage!), maybe 10-20 years before deterioration. The answer? There is no good answer. The original Declaration of Independence is fully legible after 230 years. A copy of it on a DVD or VHS tape 230 years from now: probably unviewable. Another question: will anyone have a VHS tape deck or a DVD player 10 or 20 years from now? Will analog TV signals be playable, since switching to digital TV is mandatory in just a few years? How many of you have a 5 1/4 floppy disk drive? See the problem? This is an enormous problem which librarians are facing now. Microfilm machines? Microfiche? How about a disk from a WANG word processor from 20 years ago? An 8" floppy disk? I know I've gotten a little carried away, but all electronic media need to be copied to a new format every 5-10 years, because the formats fall out of usage. Got any out-of-print 8-track tapes? If it hasn't been reissued, then once that tape dies, IT'S GONE...FOREVER. I'm sure glad that the Declaration of Independence wasn't written on a word processor!

Here is what I would do: - Space the shelves real close, to have the tapes on their sides. (Perhaps I¢d need extra shelves though - if I could not get any I´d have a display area in the vacant space : framed art comes to mind for it) - Make boxes out of cardboard (I bet this wouldn´t cost much) open at the top, long as the shelves are deep, wide as the tapes are tall, tall as the tapes are wide. The labeled sides of the tapes would be seen from the top of the box (hope this makes sence). - You can make them as elaborate as you want, cover them in something patterned or colored to match you decor, attach handles, label them... They would function like drawers. - You could label the boxes alphabetically (provided you sort the tapes that way), or by genre, or using numbers (only this way you´d have to compile a list with the titles and the numbers they correspond to). - Drawer like boxes make it easy to take out AND put back in. In my experience, it is a PITB to have VHS tapes standing like books even 2 rows deep, let alone 3! Maria