20 most worthless pieces of junk: #7 -- VCRplus+

There was a time when I was addicted to soap operas, and the ones I liked were on two different channels. Children of the new millennium won't understand the dilemma here. But for a certain period of time, this presented an impossible challenge. My VCR could be set to record for a certain period of time, but it couldn't change channels in mid-stream. So I could get Days of Our Lives but not Another World, or vice versa, but not both.

What was a young addict to do? Technology saved the day in the form of a little gizmo that attached to my VCR with an infrared device that could be programmed to change the channel at a certain time. Then came VCRs that accepted codes from VCRPlus+ -- printed in your local newspaper -- that could tell your VCR to record particular programs and change the channel for you.

It all sounds so sad now.