It upsets me that my parents did not use 8mm film or camcorders when they were younger. I don't have any motion pictures of them in the hippie days or the 70s, etc. Wouldn't it be neat to record a continuously running videotape (or hard disk) which would start playback in the future and would keep going indefinitely? The camera would be located somewhere famous like Time Square and you could instantly locate your parents waving to the camera on a particular date or even your grandparents just wandering around the place 100 years in the past.
-- JohnnyE, Apr 14 2004

Well, Johnny, there's a reason your parents didn't record themselves in the 70's on camcorders...

But there are plenty of webcams out there, recording locations like Times Square (note spelling). Capture the pictures from those, and you've got the archive you want. Herky jerky webcam style, anyway.
-- DrCurry, Apr 14 2004


"...And just in case I don't see ya, goodafternoon, goodevening, and goodnight!"
-- RayfordSteele, Nov 05 2004


How about a warehouse you mail something to, and they mail it back 40 years later. The something could be a video disk.

They might want to check that you or your heirs are still alive, before popping it in the post.

(You might also send the player and player instruction manual. In Forty years the format will have been obsoleted 3 or 4 times. Try to find an eight track tape, let alone a player today. )
-- popbottle, Nov 25 2013


Sometime during the day of April 14 2004, [JohnnyE] acquired a Halfbakery account, posted this idea and two others, annotated once on one of [bungston]'s ideas, and then was never heard from again.

Perhaps we'll hear from him in thirty-one years.
-- normzone, Nov 25 2013



random, halfbakery