Back in the day—before streaming, DVRs, or even DVDs—if you wanted to record your favorite show, you had to program a VCR. And yeah, it was kind of a pain. You’d punch in the channel, start time, end time, and date using those tiny rubber buttons on a clunky remote, praying you didn’t mess it up. If your clock wasn’t set just right, the whole thing failed. Early models from the late ’70s and early ’80s were manual, but by the mid-’80s, brands like RCA, JVC, and Panasonic added features like on-screen programming and VCR Plus+ codes (introduced in 1990), which let you record shows using a simple number printed in TV Guide. Still, most people never figured it out—hence the constant joke about the blinking “12:00.”