One of the first Home Video prints of West Side Story (1 Viewer)

[Peter Apruzzese]

Was anyone in on LD early enough to have DiscoVision stuff where you used alcohol to remove the coating on the last side of a five disc CAV set to discover GM/etc instructional stuff? They used the "dead" side to back the last side so it would be the proper thickness. Unusual finds there....sometimes a title that was never released....and experimental thing.

Yes, I remember doing that with a number of discs to see what was there. It was usually on the under 90 minute movies. I seem to remember getting a few with an IBM video and others which were different sides of other films.

 

[Moe Dickstein]

Charles - We moved to Hoffman Estates (north of 90, between Algonquin and Palatine Rds) in 93 and I got my player in 95, so that store was gone by then. I'd have loved to have something like that so close! I know the corner you mean and I later lived in Schaumburg right near Golf and Barrington Rds. The triangle then (and now?) had a tiger direct/comp usa store where I got the stuff to build my PC.

 

[Mark Booth]

Since we are reminiscing… I was one of the first people in San Diego County to own a VHS VCR in 1977! In fact, not a single store in San Diego even had a VHS VCR to sell when I drove up to Orange County to buy an RCA VBT200 VHS VCR. That first model had a rudimentary clock/timer. You set the start time (which couldn't be more than 24 hours later) and the "stop time" was when the tape was all used up! That's right… if you had a 2-hour tape and only wanted to record a 30-minute program, you got 1.5 hours of stuff you didn't need!

As I recall, blank T120 VHS tapes back then were something like $30 each! Ouch! And I paid just under $1200 for the VCR! Double-ouch!

My first VHS video rental was an adult film from a place in San Diego called Video 2000 in North Park. Then, in 1979, a guy named Barry Rosenblatt opened his first "Video Library" rental store in La Mesa, CA. Back then, you paid a membership fee of something like $199 per year and it allowed you one VHS rental at at time and something like a maximum of four rentals per week. I was customer #06 for "Video Library". I remember Barry talking about how it was an investment in the future. And, sure enough, in 1989 Video Library (then, a public company with 26 locations in San Diego) sold to Blockbuster Video and Barry made a fortune (well over 1 million dollars!). His investment and risk paid off!

Of course, that was the beginning of the end. Blockbuster Video quickly eliminated all X and hard-R rated movies. I stopped renting from Blockbuster (boycotted them, actually) and instead chose to rent from mom & pop rental stores like Banana Video in La Mesa, CA. Banana Video's owners were very progressive and were one of the first mom & pop stores to embrace Laserdisc rentals! Banana Video quickly became my favorite video rental store. I wish they were still around today!

When I think about it, it's amazing how much money I've spent chasing my movie/home theater habit! But my wife is grateful that I'm not doing something REALLY stupid with the money, like spending it on drugs or chasing women!

Mark

 

[Ronald Epstein]

As I recall, blank T120 VHS tapes back then were something like $30 each! Ouch! And I paid just under $1200 for the VCR! Double-ouch!

Mark,
By the time I got into VHS (which was around 1979/80), Fuji T120 blank tapes were $15 each.
I clearly remember buying a case of 10 every few months for $150.
One of the first movies I bought was AIRPLANE. I was in high school at the time. I used to bring
a Super 8mm sound projector and show movies in class (the teachers sometimes allowed it). When
I was walking around with a current movie in my hand (AIRPLANE), it became a rather popular
curiosity as no-one else had a VCR in their home, or, they weren't buying these movies.

 

[ahollis]

Moe, did you live there, too? (Moe and I have done a pretty good job following each other around the U.S.A.)This store was in Schaumburg (or Hoffman Estates, I'm not sure where one becomes the other). Golf, Higgins, and Roselle Roads form a large triangle where there were shopping centers, a nice (long-defunct) single screen movie theater, and the laser store in a standalone building sitting along Roselle Rd. The building is a couple of stories high, and the laser store took up the entire lower floor which I think was a few feet below grade. I was there in 1985/86, still early in the scheme of things, and I remember the place bustling with excitement.

Are you talking the Golf Mall area? I went to that laser store a couple of times I the early 90's. A great store.

 

[KPmusmag]

Oh man so true. I was so lucky that my dad was into technology because he bought a VHS machine by RCA in 1978. My birthday present that year was a $25 blank video cassette to record The Sound of Music. And I hate to think how much I have spent on that one movie over the years culminating with the blue ray. At least two versions on tape, three laserdiscs, two DVDs and now the blue ray. Well worth it but not the only movie I can say that about! All of us truly supported the home video industry in those early days.

 

[Moe Dickstein]

Are you talking the Golf Mall area? I went to that laser store a couple of times I the early 90's. A great store.

Thats the second location, I think yeah.

 

[Mike Frezon]

I didn't buy my first LaserDisc player and discs until just a few yers ago at a yard sale.

But I bought a Sanyo Beta HiFi deck in the early 80s. It said on the side of it's cardboard box that it was an "Official Product of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics."

What a great machine. I used to blow away my friends with a pre-recorded Beta tape of Billy Joel-Live at the Nassau Coliseum (a release, by the way, which never made the transition to disc! ). The stereo recording was phenomenal and quite an aggressive mix. Liberty DeVito's drum cascades going from speaker-to-speaker were one of the many highlights.

 

[Moe Dickstein]

I found the same model Betamax deck at a garage sale here in LA 3 years ago that we had when I was a kid. It's in 2 pieces, one side is the tuner and timer and the other side is the tape deck, which you could remove to put on a strap on your shoulder and plug a camera unit into it. We had a tape of Xmas 1983 that I'd love to find again when I get back to my Moms. I've never plugged it in so don't know if it works, but I like looking at it on the shelf with all my other gear.

 

[Mike Frezon]

The first year of my oldest child's life is preserved on Beta tape.

I kinda gotta think about transferring those images to something a bit...newer.

Not to mention the rest of my kid's childhoods is sitting on VHS tape.

MUST get my act together.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I sincerely hope that posting this doesn't violate forum rules, and I will remove it immediately if it does (with apologies in advance) -- but one of my very earliest memories, not just of movies but of anything, was my dad showing me how you could hook up the full size VHS camcorder to the VCR to dub copies, and I had that figured out before I could even walk!

Remember how VHS tapes, especially kids stuff in the 80s, would often come in plastic clamshell cases housed inside an oversize cardboard box? And then non-kids movies were generally in those cardboard sleeves. I remember all the Gumby videos from the "Family Home Entertainment" label would come that way, so when I was at the video store as a small kid, I'd crawl around looking for boxes of that size… and once crawled into the "back room" where all of the adult XXX titles were also packaged, and my five year old brain had no idea what it was looking at other than "That's not Gumby!"

In elementary school, they used to have educational laserdiscs which had very rudimentary interactive features - basically they made these discs that had slideshows and short videos, and the teacher could press a number into the remote which would bring you to the next clip. In first or second grade, the teacher could not get the thing to work, and even though we didn't have a laserdisc player at home, I was so good with hooking up our VCRs and using the record player that I figured I could probably get it working -- I raised my hand, the teacher let me see the remote, and I pressed whatever the magic button was. For the next couple months, as teachers were getting used to this thing, occasionally the loudspeaker would start blaring throughout the building "Josh Steinberg, please come to the office" - whereas terror would usually be an appropriate response to that kind of summoning, in my case it was always on account of a teacher needing help turning the thing on!

Oh, the 80s… a magical time.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

The first year of my oldest child's life is preserved on Beta tape.

I kinda gotta think about transferring those images to something a bit...newer.

Not to mention the rest of my kid's childhoods is sitting on VHS tape.

MUST get my act together.

I converted all of my family home movies to miniDV tape maybe ten years ago, and recently did the same for some relatives and close family friends. Once you get started, it's not that much of a hassle, and well worth it. I'm thinking about digitizing all of the miniDV tapes and trying to edit them into something shorter and more watchable. I mean, how often do most people sit and watch old home movies these days? Probably not very often. I'm thinking if instead of a two-hour tape with a static shot of the family in the living room opening presents or whatever, I cut that down to ten minutes of the best moments with a little music underneath it, someone might actually care to look at it one day. Then again, I've been threatening to do that since I transferred the VHS to miniDV ages ago!

 

[JoshZ]

Then of course cane Dolby Digital AC-3 surround sound (first one Patriot games, I think...using a Marantz DP870 decoder box).

Close. The first Dolby Digital AC-3 Laserdisc was Clear and Present Danger.

 

[Patrick Hannon]

JoshZ:Right you are....mixed up the titles while composing the message...I remember the scene of the Coast Guard cutter hitting the swells at the start of the movie. Then there was True Lies in AC-3, thought the house was going to fall down. I saw True Lies in the theatre at the time and the presentation was abysmal, colours washed out (from red exit signs and light from the back of the theatre) and really lousy sound that may hve been in mono! The Laserdisc really showed how bad the theatre was treating the films and how awe inspiring they really could be!Cheers

 

[Mark Booth]

My third (and last) Laserdisc player was the Pioneer CLD-3070. That's one I still own (but it's sitting in a closet). It didn't have AC-3 RF output but I added it myself via a kit I purchased from somewhere (forget where). It worked terrific!

Too bad I can't currently say the same thing for the player. The belts rotted long ago and the drawer won't even open. And it simply doesn't make sense to get it repaired to watch the 5 or 6 Laserdisc titles I still own. Although, two of those titles are:

TV Toys - Television commercials of the various MARX and other toys I grew up playing with! Very nostalgic!

Criterion I Love Lucy - The only time (I'm aware of) that two episodes of Lucy (Lucy does a Commerical, AKA Vitameatavegimen & Job Switching, AKA Candy Factory) have been released on home video in their entirety, INCLUDING the original Phillip Morris commercials. It's a real hoot to watch a supposed doctor tell you that cigarettes are good for you! And Ricky & Lucy do their fair share of selling smokes. Yuch!

It's almost worth getting the player fixed just to transfer/convert those two discs over to digital!

Mark

 

[Mike Frezon]

For the next couple months, as teachers were getting used to this thing, occasionally the loudspeaker would start blaring throughout the building "Josh Steinberg, please come to the office" - whereas terror would usually be an appropriate response to that kind of summoning, in my case it was always on account of a teacher needing help turning the thing on!

I would be surprised if most of the posters in this thread weren't their school's resident A/V geek!

 

[davidmatychuk]

My third (and last) Laserdisc player was the Pioneer CLD-3070. That's one I still own (but it's sitting in a closet). It didn't have AC-3 RF output but I added it myself via a kit I purchased from somewhere (forget where). It worked terrific!

Too bad I can't currently say the same thing for the player. The belts rotted long ago and the drawer won't even open. And it simply doesn't make sense to get it repaired to watch the 5 or 6 Laserdisc titles I still own. Although, two of those titles are:

TV Toys - Television commercials of the various MARX and other toys I grew up playing with! Very nostalgic!

Criterion I Love Lucy - The only time (I'm aware of) that two episodes of Lucy (Lucy does a Commerical, AKA Vitameatavegimen & Job Switching, AKA Candy Factory) have been released on home video in their entirety, INCLUDING the original Phillip Morris commercials. It's a real hoot to watch a supposed doctor tell you that cigarettes are good for you! And Ricky & Lucy do their fair share of selling smokes. Yuch!

It's almost worth getting the player fixed just to transfer/convert those two discs over to digital!

Mark

That "Television Toys" laserdisc (from Voyager, not Criterion) is fantastic for silencing a roomful of rowdy 50 - 60 year-olds.

 

[ahollis]

I would be surprised if most of the posters in this thread weren't their school's resident A/V geek!

I actually wanted to be but I guess I was not geeky enough. I thought I was.

 

[Charles Smith]

Same here. I don't remember ever being the chosen one to operate the 16mm Bell & Howell.

 

[Peter Apruzzese]

I got to do A/V starting in 6th grade, used to spend free time in the A/V room threading and unthreading the projectors to see how fast I could do it with the 6 different models we had (B & H, Kodak, RCA, etc.)

By 7th grade I was training the teachers.