Programming a VCR was pretty trivial for me as a kid, but a bit annoying.

But then VideoGuide [1] was released (available from RadioShack). I begged my parents for that and honestly it was the most amazing product and worked flawlessly. I felt like I was living in the future.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWzJuqkQbEQ

Although the trope is hilarious I think most people just don't bother since it doesn't matter to them. I never had a problem setting the time on my VCR and using it to automatically record shows while I was at work.

Sure, but uncle (who drove a truck for a job) sat down with the manual for several hours one night and figured it out. He was probably the only person in the entire town he lived in. Most people could have as well - but it would mean spending several hours of study and most people won't do that unless forced (and rarely even then - see all the tropes about homework...)

My grandmother figured it out enough to make sure her favorite soap was always taped. It was a "set it up once and mostly forget it" thing, with the real hard part forcing grandkids to stop using the TV during the hour it taped to avoid accidentally taping the wrong channel. (VCRs at the time had their own tuner for OTA and that shouldn't happen, but her stories were important enough to her she didn't want to risk it, and had risked it in a brief period of having a cable box passed through the VCR.)

I was so happy when we got a VCR+ enabled VCR. Stupid simple to program. Just punch in a few digit code in the TV guide magazine and it would schedule it automatically.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_recorder_scheduling_code

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkXQqVMt6SE

The last couple of VCRs we owned even had automatic time setting. It read extra data in the vertical blanking interval from our local PBS station.