As I sit back and watch my episodes of The Sopranos that my DVR automatically records every Wednesday night from A&E, I sometimes think about days long ago when you either watched a show on TV, or you missed it. If you were watching Bonanza, and the telephone rang, or company came over, you didn't see the ending. Your only hope was catching the rerun.
If you can recall TV from the early 50's, even THAT was not an option. It was live, and the only recordings were kinescopes, which were films shot by pointing a camera at a television monitor.
The first kinescopes were useful for preserving performances for posterity, but they weren't suitable for broadcasts, although they would be later used to air shows three hours later for west coast audiences.
This all changed in 1975. That was the year Sony introduced the Betamax. This machine was instrumental in turning the world into commercial-skippers, thanks to that handy remote control. It also meant that you could watch TV programs ANY TIME YOU WANTED TO. That was pretty profound stuff the first time we realized it.
Of course, that convenience would cost you. The Betamax recorder, which came with a 19" Trinitron TV, cost $2495 in 1975. Yikes.
But VCR's were the devices that taught us that when something cool and expensive comes out, just be patient. It will soon get INexpensive, and still be cool!
By the next year, you could get a rival VHS recorder for less than a thousand dollars. By 1985, when I finally sprang for one, it was down to $299. And it played back in stereo, too, so I could watch movies like Days of Thunder and listen to the stock cars roar by from the left side of my living room to the right!
It also came with a digital clock, which, if you'll recall, usually flashed all zeros.
That leads to another new concept which arrived shortly after the VCR's themselves: renting movies.
We rented movies because they were too stinking expensive to buy. A movie on tape circa 1978 could cost over a hundred dollars. As a result, we signed up at video rental outfits, and didn't mind shelling out as much as fifty bucks to sign on! That seems outrageous today, but I recall my older brother, who obtained a VCR about 1980, ponying up that cash to join a store that required a 15 mile drive to get to.
Oh, and the movies we watched. Years before the world wide web, VCR's allowed you to watch ANYTHING you wanted to. The result was that many video rental places had a special "back room" that was opened to you by request only. You can guess what sorts of films were available in there. And, they generally were quite regularly rented.
In the meantime, Hollywood, in a rare moment of conscious thought, realized that the pricing structure for taped movies would have to be changed. Movie prices dropped dramatically, with many rental places being put out of business since you could buy a film for twenty bucks, the price of renting it four times. Paid memberships were also gone by the mid 80's.
The buyers of the original Betamax machines, which had visibly better picture quality, were dismayed to see the VHS format win out. By 1998, you had to go to Japan to find a new one. But Sony kept cranking out a few each year until production finally ceased in 2002.
Today, the same situation exists in the high-definition DVD field with Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD. If you invest in a player for either format, which are incompatible with each other, you run the risk of putting lots of bucks into a dead technology.
That's okay. My standard DVD looks pretty darned good on my modest 30" high-def TV. I'll be happy to wait a few years while the two technologies slug it out. When I finally sprang for a VCR in 1985, it was clear who the winner would be.
Comments (6)
The top photo looks something like the first player I had. That thing weighed like 40 pounds!!!!!
Posted by Rhea | May 6, 2007 10:11 AM
Posted on May 6, 2007 10:11
you rock dude
Posted by craplad | November 5, 2008 1:10 PM
Posted on November 5, 2008 13:10
I have a 1975 betamax sl7200a.........like new still in original box with dt 30 timer I want to sell it..........any advice?..........I had the belts changed a decade ago and it plays and records like new.......it's been in storage for most of it's life.......thank you .......mike
Posted by mike | May 14, 2009 12:01 PM
Posted on May 14, 2009 12:01
Well, Ron, you got of cheap in 85. We got our 1st VCR in 86 and it had come down to $400. Yahoo! That was low for a good Panasonic 4 track at the time in Maine. You had to set the approx. 14 channels to specific channels and then select 1-14 preset. Things got better a few years later so that the VCR could read cable signals and easily select any channel without presets and at $250 no less.
And 86 was a great year, perhaps the best for PBS stuff. It was just before the days of TLC, History Channel, etc. and PBS was the place for history, science, documentaries, etc. And the Panasonic had single frame advance slow mo. I was watching a documentary on John Lennon on PBS in maybe 87 and it dealt with his days going through Primal Therapy but I missed it. It showed a book too fast. So I backed up and went to slow mo 1 frame at a time. There is was. The Primal Scream. That book proved very influential and revealing to me as did its author. I had bought the book a year earlier, thinking there was promise in it but it sat on my shelf till that show.
Yeah, I really like the VCR. PBS eventually lost out to lots of competition from new channels catering to academic stuff once the exclusive territory of PBS. VCRs were nice cause there was no copy protection on broadcasts. Not so with digital. As I see it, the VCR gave us the best balance between freedom and options and convenience. I am not sure that the digital thing is as good due to less freedom.
But it is hard to hold back so called progress. VCRs are now nearly extinct. But I still use one. Call me a cave man. However, VHS tapes were terrible after 10 years or so of aging, if you tried to use them again. Nothing is perfect. I never got around to any “Back rooms.” I waited till the internet for that ;-)
But VHS changed our viewing habits. We could skip commercials, watch when we wanted, show others or save for reference. And you could replay good nude scenes, too. Isn’t technology great? ;-) How did we get by without it? I’ll bet they didn’t see that coming in the 50s!
Posted by Scott Irv | May 16, 2009 11:13 PM
Posted on May 16, 2009 23:13
I was a late bloomer on these new fangle items. I probably didn't purchase a vcr until late 80s. Real late. They were boat anchors for sure! I remember the betas too! Never had them! I did have a membership on one of the video stores, now long gone! I still have an extensive vcr tape collection. They are still working!
Posted by Rivers End | June 14, 2009 5:07 PM
Posted on June 14, 2009 17:07
I was a late bloomer on these new fangle items. I probably didn't purchase a vcr until late 80s. Real late. They were boat anchors for sure! I remember the betas too! Never had them! I did have a membership on one of the video stores, now long gone! I still have an extensive vcr tape collection. They are still working!
Posted by Rivers End | June 14, 2009 5:09 PM
Posted on June 14, 2009 17:09