VCR's in general

[Ridgeaxe]

Re: VCR's in general

My dad worked for a tv/video rental firm in the late 1970s and so we were lucky enough to have access to a video recorder at home .....legally ... I think! :-)

The company also had a small video library of tapes including:

Von Ryan's Express
The Posidon Adventure
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Jaws
Jaws 2
Grease
Capricorn One

.... and that was about it!

Video recorder rental costs were not cheap (I think my dad said it was about £ 18 a month in those days) and blank video tapes cost a tenner each!

I remember to this day the first thing we recorded off the telly. It was the 1979 Easter edition of Disney Time (remember that one?).

We must have watched that over and over again for days, purely because we could!

I also remember that we recorded the episode in 1980 when JR got shot because our family went to a party that day. We all got up at half six the next morning to watch it, so as to avoid hearing on the radio who had shot JR!

For those interested this is the type of video recorder they had in the 1970s:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVoBsw2ngIs

Enjoy!

[Morcar]

Re: VCR's in general

It was years before my parents had a video as my dad has always been a technophob.

My first video was a Ferguson brought it from a rental place that was cloasing down so I have no idea of how many hands it had been through before me. Cost me abnout £80 I think and I still have it and it works fine (Damn now I've said that it will probably break).

It's a great piece of kit - front loading - black (with all the printing on the buttons now long gone) proper remote control (now lost) so I'm the only one that can use it as I know which button is which.

[karenbrown18]

Re: VCR's in general

I remember the first type of remote control with all the bloody wires everywhere.... Don't think we bothered after trying it out, was easier to get up and turn the tele over. Can you imagine life now with a Remote??

[sixtyten]

Re: VCR's in general

Easily.
I don't have a TV or Video
Got one for the DAB but never use it

[Danny]

Re: VCR's in general

See these DVD players , they can be really annoying when you viewing a wide screen movie
You have to press buttons to change view format or zoom in, my old video just made the jump from standard to wide screen automatically.

Also you could 'fast forward' through all copyright warnings at the start , now the little not allowed logo pops up ,by the time you can see the film it's time to pause and put kettle on!

[jason h]

Re: VCR's in general

"Please rewind the tape before returning to the store" - Classic.
We got our first VCR in about '83 and the first movie we rented was Dirty Harry. It was a SHARP and it came with a remote control connected to the unit via a cable - so not so remote then. The dog chewed thru the cable later on. It was VHS and a front-loader.
Our model came with a special light on it called 'DEW'. I think this was some kind of warning light but it never came on and I always want it to, just once.

[stevef]

Re: VCR's in general

Our model came with a special light on it called 'DEW'. I think this was some kind of warning light but it never came on and I always want it to, just once.

That was when there was condensation inside the player, if the light came on you had to leave it sitting for a couple of hours until the 'dew' had evaporated. Then it was fine to play again. Found this out when someone gave me a VCR coz they thought it was broken.

[jason h]

Re: VCR's in general

They're so lucky.

[Mulletino]

Re: VCR's in general

Maybe it's just me, but I don't really see that much difference between video and dvd - and yes, I have a massive television.

It really depends upon what cables you are using and the quality of the video processor in the display (if HDTV as it will need to scale the picture to suit its native resolution). If just using composite the difference won't be as apparent as if you're using composite/RGB/HDMI. Even on S-video you should notice a difference. But, I digress from the fuzzy stuff we like here!

Going round friends houses for birthday parties to watch films on the video! I remember watching Jason and the Argonauts on video for one birthday (I'd also seen it at the cinema previously though). Then we'd go round mate's houses just to watch films, I remember going to watch the Exorcist and various other scary films round one friend's house, don't know how we got away with it really!
We were late into the VCR clan as our first one came from a friend who'd upgraded theirs. It was pretty old, big diving board buttons, top loading and a remote on a cable with one button which paused the thing. The first film we got on it was Zulu. It was such an exciting event getting our own VCR!

Do you also remember the fact that films took forever to be released on video? I used to love Martial Arts films so would often get them out at the local video shop. There was a point then that you could go into the shop and would have pretty much seen nearly every film they had! Can't do that now with blockbuster! One of our local ones also rented out Atari VCS games, then later they all cottoned on with Sega and Nintendo games.
There's a video shop near me with the best name in the world: Planet of the Tapes! How good is that? They even still have a few tapes in there.

Another video anecdote: Round the same guy's house where we watched Excorcist (in the UK), we watched a horror spoof called "Wacko". I could remember lots about the film many years later but not the name (I thought it was called "wierd"). It was about a pumpkin headed lawnmower killer and was a very early spoof of horror films. I'd spoken of it about 20 years later with a mate who'd never seen it, but he decided to buy it for me on my next birthday. He had real trouble getting it as apparently it had never been released in the UK and had been deleted years previously in the USA. So he eventually tracked down a single copy from a seller in America and bought it for me. Then, two years later I was in a cheapo shop in Woking while waiting for the watch repairer to fix my wife's watch and was standing at the counter buying something, only to look to my left and notice a DVD amongst all the rest (in a bookshelf arrangement) with a familiar look to it. It was the only singular film there, all the rest were multiple copies of the same rubbish. Anyway, it was Wacko!!
So I bought it for 1.99 and it sits proudly next to the rare(ish) VHS copy I also now have.

[Ridgeaxe]

Re: VCR's in general

There's a video shop near me with the best name in the world: Planet of the Tapes!

Going back many years the following video shops have come and gone in my local area:

Fast Forward
Rewind
Videodrome
Flickers
Family Video (How could anyone think that was a cool name for a vid shop!)
Filmarama
The Flicks

and my favourite......

The Video Shop! Straight to the point with that one!

Oh and who could forget my local spar shop (now a furniture place). They had a video section with tapes dating back to the dawn of the video age! They would stock a recent title every decade!

[soapy]

Re: VCR's in general

My local video shop was called Square Wheels for some bizarre reason. The first film i ever saw on video was Enter the Dragon but in 1983 we had our very own video and to celebrate we went out and rented the recently released 'The Thing.' I remember spending hour upon hour in our local shop browsing the films and planning which ones to watch next. Nowadays i don't think i ever go to the DVD store.

[Wil]

Re: VCR's in general

One of the early titles we rented out was Phantasm (you know - silver balls flying around with blades coming out of them). At the time we also had the school's b&w video camera so we stuck sellotape over the tab holes on the casette and, disguised with a rubber Adolf Hitler mask, did our own movie review on what was left of the tape after the film ended and then took it back to the shop.

I always wondered if anyone accidentally left the film going after the end credits and got an unexpected surprise.

Did anyone plug a microphone into one of those old VCRs and do their own soundtrack to a recorded programme? I remember me and some mates doing that to an old Tomorrow People episode.

[Ridgeaxe]

Re: VCR's in general

One of the early titles we rented out was Phantasm

I love that film! Even the tv trailer for it when the film was in the cinema was enough to scare small children!

Saw it on video way back in 82/83 and it scared the living something out of me!

A cult classic ......... BOY!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Did anyone plug a microphone into one of those old VCRs and do their own soundtrack to a recorded programme?

Back in the early eighties my brothers and I re-dubbed a couple of scenes from the war film "Where Eagles Dare" using a microphone! To this day I can't watch it without thinking of Clint Eastwood as 'Frank Spencer' and Richard Burton as 'Tommy Cooper'!

I wish I had kept it!

[barry21]

Re: VCR's in general

i briefly had a vcr back in 1994 ish, it was a top loader. i can't remember what make it was. I remember i was looking after it for a friend!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[yelever]

Re: VCR's in general

First vcr I had was in 1989. Got it for 40 quid of a mate and was made by Solovox or something like that, front loader as wel. Remeber asking my Dad to go into Woolworths and buy Elm Street 2 on tape as was only 15 lol.