Coping with Technological Obsolescence

My family has owned Sony TVs for about 40 years.  The one in our living room is over 10 years old and still has a very sharp picture.  When VCRs became popular in the 1980s we would tape tons of movies and musical specials and saved them.  Obviously DVRs have overtaken VCRs as a new technology relplaces an old one.  Since we wanted to keep and play our tapes, for years we have a dual VCR/DVD player,  We can record and play tapes, but only play DVDs.  Finally, this player conked out after years of heavy use.  So we bought a combination VCR/DVD player which records and plays both.  However, we found out that it is not compatible with the old Sony TV.  It looks like we will have to buy an HDTV.  That is technological obsolescence for you.