CD Is Probably The Same

Why didn’t VCR become its own verb like DVR?  

VCRs really got the short end of the stick on this one.  I almost feel bad for these non-sentient outdated machines.  Almost. 

So everyone knows that DVR is an initialization (which is subtly different from an acronym in that it's generally not pronounced as a single word) meaning "Digital Video Recorder."  It's the thing you use to record TV shows so you can watch them later while skipping the commercials for crap you don't need and cars.  Lots and lots of cars.  Especially now that it's nearing the Christmas season...we're all supposed to buy cars for people.  Yeah, good luck with that, everybody I'm supposed to be buying presents for.  

Before the world had DVRs, we had these thingies called VCRs (Video Cassette Recorder) which played TV shows and movies on things called cassette tapes.  Nobody ever recorded TV on VCRs because nobody could ever figure out how to set them up properly.  It was the dark ages.  On the few occasions that somebody managed to actually record a TV show, they then had to go and "rewind" the cassette tape back to the beginning of the show, based purely on a guess of how much of the tape the show had consumed.  They then spent the next 15-20 minutes futilely looking for the show's start before giving up and going to bed instead of watching TV.  

The very basics of the actions were the same.  Instead of watching TV in real time, you preserve it for watching at a later date so you can work TV around your schedule (instead of the other way around) and skip commercials.  Both types of preservation have the same term for them..."recording."  Hence, both initializations ending in "R."  Makes sense, right?  

Only problem is that nobody ever called this process "recording."  In the olden days, people set to record something on their VCR would say they were going to "tape" a show, meaning that they were going to record it onto a tape.  Nowadays, with tapes being obsolete and basically non-existent, the verb "to tape" doesn't really apply.  Many people still use "tape" to blanketly describe any recording, including that on a DVR.  Most people, however, have adopted the verb "DVR" which isn't a very at all...nor is it a gerund of any sort.  It's just a new meaning of the initialization.  As in, "I'm going to DVR that new reality show, because I'm a total moron."  

Nobody thinks twice about the poor VCR, who got left out in favor of the Tape.