@nprofile1q... Wow. You are not going to believe this (or maybe you will).
Years ago (maybe early 80s), a friend of mine who was a music major in college asked me to go along with him to the Twin Cities to look for a decent cassette deck. I think he even took some microphones with him so that he could record piano somewhere (college maybe).
Anyway, at one of the audio shops we visited this guy was going on about digital recording on a VCR tape and he had a unit. How crazy is that?