Are we Spoiled?

Re: Are we Spoiled?

I do not recommend trying to "Ram something down Someone's Throat". (I'm all sure we have been in a situation where that has happened to us! )

Lasy year we had some visitors at my Mother's House and on one afternoon I spotted them watching an Episode of a TV Show I had on DVD on a Commercial-Infested Channel, I got the DVD and showed it to them and they were impressed! The next day I showed them the next episode in the series, timing it to start at the same time the Network started theirs. They immediately noted scenes on the DVD that they had not seen on the Network Version, and when the episode ended there were still 15 minutes to spare on the Network Version. I told them those 15 minutes plus the time taken from the cut-off scenes was the time they were spending watching Commercials! I haven't seen them since, but I hope they saw how much better Home Video is than Network or Cable TV!

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I don't think this is true at all. Or if so, then I'm certainly in the minority and I'm very jealous.

I didn't even have a vcr when WKRP was on, and so those complete and unedited shows are lost to me forever, since they're never coming out on dvd.

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I've only read of a few people on these boards who make this claim of having everything they want on vhs. I can assure you that the majority of us do NOT have everything we want. Not even close! To be honest, it kinda comes off as boasting and school yard bragging akin to "my father/mother/home is better than yours" that little kids engage in. I'm not speaking to you personally, but of the larger message that says we should all have the series we want from taping 20+ years ago. Some of us just flat out weren't in the position to do that, for many, many reasons.

Gary "most of the 50's and early 60's shows have not been on tv for close to 2 decades, and unless you were quite well to do in the early 80's I don't see how the average joe could have taped everything they wanted" O.

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I had a VCR in the early 80s, but blank tapes were DAMN expensive. Maybe you dont remember the day when blank tapes were $20, or more each, for quality tape. But most important, those tapes would be 25 years old now, and i would like DVD resolution, not VCR quality.

You want to talk spoiled, this is what spoiled is:

I remember the day when i bought Star Trek on tape. It was 2 episodes on one tape. The next year, about '83, i bought an LD player. I bought those same 10 episodes again on LD. How excited was i to own 10 episodes of Star Trek, uncut, and looking better than the film prints that my local channels aired. Remember when local channels ran scratched, broken, and beat to hell film prints? It was so cool to own them, and looking better than my local channels! Now i get a laugh when people bitch that only 1/2 a season of something was released, when i remember the day i was excited just to get a handful of episodes that i could revisit anytime i wanted!

Of course i understand why people want complete sets...just remembering when.

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James, the only reason that you haven't been arrested yet is because the studios figure that you aren't worth the effort.

It is legal for you to tape shows to watch them later, but nobody ever gave you permission to tape and keep them.

Glenn

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They'll raid the Playboy Mansion before my house. Have you seen the tape library that Hef has on the shelves? He'll be serving hard time if they came after him.

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Rick,

I remember those days. I've had a couple of those two-episodes per tape in my hands, but I didn't start purchasing TOS seriously until the mid-1980s (the first single episode-per-tape edition, not the blue ones that came out shortly thereafter, although I do own a couple of those volumes as well). I now own the entire TOS series on VHS tape and on DVD (with regard to the latter, one half of the series in the two episodes per disc sets plus the complete series in three boxed sets).

Believe it or not, I may still spring one day to complete the two episode-per-disc DVD sets that came out a few years ago (in forty volumes). As I mentioned, I own about half of them. I just like the look and feel of those sets, and I'd be willing to bet that there are some people out there who would be willing to part with them since the boxed sets are now available.

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Oh, really? According to who, you? That's what I love about the internet, people are able to make any outrageous statement they want. And the great thing about the Home Theater Forum is that when you point it out, you get chastised for it.

Read the book, Fast Forward, Hollywood, The Japanese and the VCR Wars by James Lardner. Universal vs Sony lawsuit was decided by the Supreme Court and it was decided that home recording of television programs did not constitute copyright infringement. For the full decision, go to this link:

Sony v. Universal: US Supreme Court Betamax Decision (Jan 1984)

Don't quit the day job.

Re: Are we Spoiled?

Hindsight is 20/20, and unfortunately for many of the shows I wanted I only taped them from edited syndication or cable reruns if and when they came on, and I tried to find network copies of them but it often seems everyone who has what I want wants nothing I can offer. That's why I wanted to jump for joy when they started putting TV shows on DVD.

I was negative five years old when, say, WKRP began, and my mom and dad hadn't even met. We got our first VCR when I was one. I had no idea about syndication cutting until The Simpsons was edited, and I had had the foresight to tape that from Fox from day one. For other, earlier shows, I had no idea until much later the extent of the practice. Even for taping them off syndication or cable in the 1990s my mom started to come down on me for the quantity of tape necessary.

And even if you can find the uncut versions, there is no guarantee of the quality. I've seen recordings with more waves than the beach at Waikiki.

Spoiled? Not even close.

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I have access to tens of thousands of series episodes, from my 25+ years of collecting, from friends that I made over that time who are also huge collectors and from a couple of friends who passed away whose vast collections I inherited. And, even with all of that, I don't have close to everything that I want. For one thing, even if you were recording heavily in the 80s or knew people who were, there was so much classic rare product being shown that it was impossible to get it all. CBN, Lifetime, BET, USA, HA, WOR Satellite Feed, Fox Net, A&E, early TV Land. Stuff was everywhere and no 5 people could have recorded it all. There was just too much out there. But I can name you dozens of obscure shows I would want that never made it to air anywhere in the taping era, not to mention things that did which people missed recording. For instance Bravo in England ran a lot of great stuff but it was so hard to get a contact and they would just run through a show one time and that was it. But they aired things like Dan August, Smith Family, Saints and Sinners, Pruitts of Southhampton and loads of other rarities. And then of course there were shows that you killed yourself to get that are now readily available to everyone. Things like The Fugitive, The Invaders, Man from UNCLE, etc., were all hard to find shows in the early 80s. And this is in the 16mm days, not the pre-cut time sped airings from the 90s.

But regardless of what shows I got or didn't get, I had a blast with the whole hobby. The excitement of getting those tapes in the mail, of finding a market running a rare show, I wouldn't trade those days for DVDs of every series ever. Some of the best friends I have in the world I made through the hobby and I have friends all over the world that I made through tape collecting. That's something you'll never be able to get from DVD. Yeah, it's great to be able to click a mouse on amazon at 3 o'clock in the morning and have a whole series show up on your doorstep in pristine condition a few days later. But I'll take the fun of the hunt and the chase and the experiences and friendships I made over that any day. It kind of reminds me of the Twilight Zone episode, A Nice Place to Visit. Getting everything you want easily takes all of the joy out of it. It's the process and the struggle that makes it worthwhile.

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I don't think anyone is spoiled. Since many of us don't seem to have some of the series we want on dvd or released at all. For those that were able to record what they wanted, more power to you. I wasn't one of the lucky ones in that regard. Also, if you do have a series taped and want it on dvd I don't see how that would make you spoiled. Tapes get old and play crappy after awhile, where as dvds hold up better, longer. I can see the point from the perspective that we have a hell of a lot more released tv shows on dvd than we ever had on any other format. We want more is all. Our favorites the same as others favorites. When people complain about not having what they specifically want sometimes it's because others get what they wanted and it's only fair. Ultimately, there will be a great deal of disapointment in regards to what we won't get on dvd vs. what we have. People who express that are not spoiled in my opinion, however.

Re: Are we Spoiled?

If you're lucky that is.

Re: Are we Spoiled?

James,

Speakng for myself, I'm not in the group here that has a library of shows on media of any kind. I started collecting TV/DVD sets in '03. As for being spoiled I'm not sure what angle you were wanting to approach this part, but for me, I'm generally happy with the # of sets that have been released since '03. Having said that, I'm like everyone else here; I want more & more

There are a number of members here that I'd classify as serious collector/hobbyists of the TV/DVD market but I'm definitely in the "small potatoes" group here I'm too busy most of the time watching sports on TV The upside of that is that I won't deplete my DVD-viewing for a long time.

Where the # of releaes are lacking, IMO, are with a lot of the pre-'65 shows. That said, I've seen some shows released, a couple of the entire series, that I wouldn't have guessed we'd ever see them on DVD. Fortunately, a couple of those releases were on my "grail" list so that has kept me busy viewing the DVD collection. If the releases stopped completely after all that have been announced to date, I'd have enough to view for a couple of years.

If you were referring to being spoiled by the studio's releases, my take on it is that I can't complain if a TV/DVD release is done in an acceptable manner. That criteria varies widely here from what I read in this forum but as long as the prints are watchable and un-cut (no cut footage/scenes), I'm generally satisfied. I realize that we're not going to get 100% releases in the caliber of the Fugitive or Time Tunnel, Voyage....Sea, etc, as far as excellent xfrs. Where my line is drawn is with the PD or near-PD quality releases. I know there are those here that have no issue with those and that's great for them. I'm happy for those that can enjoy the releases of that quality, understanding that for them, a particular show's content overcomes the xfr/print issues.

Re: Are we Spoiled?

Hank - that decision is clearly only for time-shifting of material on TV. The original premise was that everything that was taped would be seen within 1 week, and then recorded over. Most people only had about 10 tapes that they used over and over.

I don't know if they have changed their minds on this yet, but the studios are capable of making over-the-air broadcasts unrecordable. I actually saw one local station "test" out their equipment for a few minutes by turning on a "flag" that would tell the DVR that it was not allowed to record this material.

Glenn

Re: Are we Spoiled?

God help us all if that comes to pass, we'll very likely have to stop watching about half or more of what we see. I really cannot see the benefit of this, Tivo would go out of business to be sure, the mind just boggles at the implications if this happens.

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I haven't watched anything other than sports while it was airing in quite a number of years. And even a lot of the sports I watch I time shift as well. Too many commercials. If I couldn't record them to my DVD hard drive, I just wouldn't bother. But realistically I don't see this occurring. And even if it did, I'm sure there would be a way to beat it as there is a way to beat every other copyguard.

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Nice post Hank. You know, i was into HT 25 years ago, it just didnt have a name then. Most people thought i was crazy buying TV shows on tape, and movies on LD. How i wished i had kept some of the shows i recorded back in the day. But like other have said, i didnt tape to keep, just to watch at a later time. I bought LDs to keep! I would pay good money for The Six Million Dollar Man (R1), and The Fantastic Journey. I saw FJ on Sci-Fi about 10 years ago, and i didnt tape it...stupid me!

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Here's something I don't understand and maybe someone can help me with this. I read all of the time on here about this show or that show being something someone is dying to get. Well, how is it that it never occurred to people to try to get the shows before DVD came about. Especially among the majority of posters here it seems that collecting TV shows wasn't something they thought to do prior to DVD. I don't get it.

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Dvd has made the shows more available than any other previous released format. There seems to be a ton of tv on dvd. I think people who missed the boat or didn't tape a program have come to see the dvd format as a ray of hope for what they want. Some may also have the opinion, considerring what's been released, that thier favorite shows are shoe-ins. The more time that goes by the more I believe tv on dvd may not give some what they want. That is truely sad, but, it's going to be hard to release every tv show ever on dvd. Not even all films have hit the format yet. Some will be left out and some will be rewarded.

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That's it. They became collectors when DVDs started coming out. Not everyone knows collectors who have a warehouse of 3/4 inch tapes of every network broadcast dating back to the 1970's and 16mm prints for everything else.

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I never wanted to keep most shows on tape. I had used Fantastic Journey as an example of something i wish i had taped to keep. But for me the problem was that it was edited, and the Sci-Fi channel is bad about putting commercial breaks where they dont belong. Yea, you can hit the pause, if you knew when it was coming. But if i didnt get a clean pause it made me mad, and would break the flow of the story if you got 5 seconds of a laxative commercial. Now as far as story edits done by the stations, or networks, sometimes they were so bad you could see and hear the start of something that was cut out. Now days they are so good at editing, like on Trek, that if you didnt know it by heart you wouldnt know stuff was missing.

Re: Are we Spoiled?

But i wish i did!

Re: Are we Spoiled?

Well a lot of it is age. I wasn't born when I Love Lucy was airing, and growing up, I watched it in reruns before their were vcrs. I was only 16 when WKRP first aired, and I didn't even own a vcr.

Post graduate school when I could afford things like LDs, I did buy that and began collecting. But at that point, there wasn't a ton of great tv on that I wanted to keep, and I was never enamoured of vhs, since the tapes would break or whatever.

Plus I will admit that I was not prescient enough to realize that unedited versions of WKRP would never come out because a studio was too frickin cheap to obtain the rights (SNL is just as music intensive, but they've somehow managed to do that one).

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Well, while I'm sure you aren't referencing me seeing as how I've gone over this myself on a couple of occasions, I'll still answer.

I was born in '65 and came from a divorced family. My mom and I lived on very limited means as she worked her butt off in the 70's to keep a roof over our heads. In the early 80's when vcr's really hit the market my family flat out wasn't in a position to afford one, and even after we finally got one I sure as heck couldn't afford tapes to archive things. On top of that, my step father had first dibs on our one tv and I wasn't allowed to tape just anything I wanted. He was one of those guys who didn't get into older shows (the 50's and 60's things I liked even as a young teen) so I really had no shot at archiving.

Once I left home (after two years in a community college) and went out of state to college I again had no shot at archiving while living in a dorm room. Just wasn't going to happen. I married right out of college and my wife and I used cheap WalMart patio chairs for living room furniture. We had nothing other than a little b&w used tv for the first few years of marriage. I wasn't in any position to start archiving anything until the mid-90's and by then a baby was on the way and once more finances made it impossible to engage in the hobby Hank has shared with us. And let's not be naive about it. What Hank and others here are talking about was very expensive! Unless you got things right off the tv you owned, any amount of trading and or pure buying from collectors was never a cheap hobby.

So I hope people will understand that it comes off very poorly to me when I read these posts where people act like it should have been no big deal for me to have all these old shows I want. Or act like I've been neglectful and that's the only reason I don't have the storehouse of things they do. Bull. It's not that simple. And mine is only one story, and one of many reasons that some of us don't have all these shows on tape. It's just not so easy, or cut and dry as some people here would have you believe. Let's just try to be a little more respectful to one another on this issue. I think it's highly unfair to talk down to people about this.

If we are talking about not having recent shows, one's that have aired in the last 10 years or so, I can at least understand the point. But it's absurd to tell me I should have all these 50's and 60's shows archived on vhs. I'm not made of money nor did I have the time to run around the country visiting collector's shows and such. God bless those of you that could. I don't begrudge you that joy one bit. But don't get on a high horse and tell me I should have been doing things 20 years ago that just weren't possible for me to do. It comes off really bad. Trust me.

Gary "ok, enough of this nonsense - let's talk about positive things, like the latest FUGITIVE release" O.

P.S. And for the record, I have been buying many older shows via collectors over the last several years (once finances allowed for such). I have a pretty decent collection of Christmas-themed television series and Mystery films from the 30's and 40's. I've not had the money to invest in complete series, but I have purchased tapes that had either just the Christmas episode on it, or maybe just that episode and one or two other episodes. So I have done some searching and tried to get what I can. Heck, I'll throw out an example of the stuff I'm talking about. I just discovered, via a good friend, that the old tv series WACKIEST SHIP IN THE ARMY had a Christmas episode entitled, "I'm Dreaming of a Wide Isthmus." I'd love to add it to my collection, but I don't think it's possible. Take care, folks.

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Gary, i sure didnt get the feeling anyone was talking down to anybody else. I am close in age to you, was born in 63. But my family, while they did OK, we were not well off. After HS i went right to work, lived in a cheap ass apartment, shoot i drove a $200 car! But, i bought myself a TV, and a VCR, in 1982, only weeks after graduating HS! I live in Oklahoma, not a great place to be if you wanted to collect, or trade movies and TV shows. In 83 when i bought my LD player i only had 1 store that i could buy discs from. By the time the late 80's came around i had to mail order them. I have been a Trek fan all my life, as a kid i used to think how cool it would be to own a 16mm print of an episode. I did audio tapes of Trek so i could lay in bed at night and listen to them. I had those tapes 10 years, and listened to them even when my local channel didnt show Trek anymore. Same with the animated Trek in 73. Like hell am i spoiled, and like hell am i better than anyone else for what i own. Not to mention how hard i worked to get what i have. But really, it doesnt mean a thing to me. Its fun, i enjoy my movies and TV shows. Gives me something to work for, expand on, for fun!

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Rick, I was a little harsher in tone than I normally am because this issue has been brought up several times in the last few months. There's a consistent message coming from just a few people that says, "You should have most of these shows on vhs anyhow, and if you don't it's totally your fault." I just see it as a very condescending, arrogant attitude that wrongfully accuses others of not being "with it" enough to have taped shows 20+ years ago. I reject the insinuation and generalization that us not having all these shows is due to our not taking a proactive approach 20 or 30 years ago. For some of us that was never a reality.

Gary "a condescending attitude comes off very poorly on message boards and I think we have to be extra careful with the way we word things if we don't want people to misunderstand us" O.

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You're exactly right. This was discussed recently in another thread and the feeling is "stop complaining, you should have taped it." I wonder why threads get started sometimes to ask for opinions, then, you end up getting blasted for it.

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You have to remember that many of the younger people dont remember a day without a VCR. They cannot understand that a time existed, and it was not that long ago, that you couldnt watch whatever you wanted. But when your 20-25, 25 or 30 years ago seems like a long time. And all the TV shows from their era, a majority ARE all out on DVD, or you COULD have taped them. Tape is cheap now. Another sad fact, that many, but not all, young people have never had to work hard for the "toys" they have. Mom and Dad would buy it. I see kids at friends or neighbors homes that have an LCD or plasma in their BEDROOM! Hell, my parents would never of bought me a TV when i was a kid, but they bought the grandkids TVs! Different times.

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My parents were bad tapers. When they taped animated specials for me off of network they would often cut out commercials and took heads and tails from the beginnings of acts with them. Eventually they didn't even bother to remove commercials. I still have a lot of tapes from the Disney Channel in the 1980s and early 1990s of stuff that is now commonplace on DVD, but some that isn't like promos and rare shows. They only taped stuff to time-shift it, which was rarely. And stuff got taped over. For example, my mom was apparently out one Friday in 1986, so she taped the whole day of CBS soaps, but three months later she taped a Disney Channel airing of "Oklahoma" and an NBC airing of "The Sound of Music" over them, pausing out commercials on the latter, and only that day's "Guiding Light" survives in its entirety on that tape. She taped an earlier airing of "The Sound of Music" a year or so earlier, leaving in commercials, but three years later taped over it with three Star Trek reruns with no commercials. Only the last 40 minutes remain.

Then there's also the plain and simple fact that VHS sucked. If it wasn't for the amount of time it could hold, it would never have made it into 1980. Beta tapes hold up better in terms of picture quality and physical resilience. Even 8mm video had slightly better picture.

For shows which aired in syndication I took for granted they would be gone, because at that time I would find another show I liked just as much or better. I had no idea of the onslaught of talk shows or court shows that was yet to come, nor that Nick at Nite (and later TV Land) would turn to absolute crap. Now I barely watch TV as it is except for DVDs, Blu-Rays and HDNet Movies. I don't watch reruns of my favorite shows because they are always edited, and now edited or time compressed. Now I only DVR a show if an edited episode made it onto a DVD and the rerun version has different scenes not on the DVD (as in an episode of Sanford and Son).

Later on eBay, I spent hundreds (possibly thousands) of dollars on Beta tapes and 16mm prints of TV shows. I even bought some 3/4" tapes and a few EIAJ reel-to-reel tapes. It was largely a grab-bag, and about 10% of what I got has any value to me.

The laws and regulations regarding music licensing need to change PRONTO. Film labs and telecine houses need to start offering incentives to studios to restore and remaster their back catalogues, as technology is coming around to make it easier and more cost-effective without cutting corners. Maybe those rumors of a 200GB Blu-Ray will become a reality. Then, and only then, will we be anywhere near spoiled. There is every ability to preserve one's favorite current shows. Trouble is, I don't like any of the current shows.