What started you on this hobby? (1 Viewer)

[Holadem]

My story is a little different I think. I was never interested in movies before I came to US in the fall of 96. Until I started college in Fall 97, I did pretty much... nothing. So spent my days reading and renting tapes from the local library. I averaged 2 a day, sometimes I would go as far as 4.
Soon, I realised that many movies had become very predictable and I started looking for original stuff. At about the same time I stubbled on this show where these two guys would just take a movie and totally tear it apart: Siskel and Ebert

. I pretty much started learning what makes a good movie, what I should be looking for, and develop a critical eye for the this, the same way I was thought to analyse a book in high school. And so it began
Now, I am FAR from being an expert, but I discovered a hobby that is so fulfilling it is like a freaking drug!
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Holadem - hum... I am going to start another thread on that subject

 

[Neil Joseph]

Seeing Star Wars on the bigscreen with big sound back in 1977, that made an impression on me and that got me into movies.
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Link Removed

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My Favourite Movie

 

[KeithH]

Back in November 1999, I decided to get a DVD player. At the time, I had a Kenwood stereo rack system that my parents bought me in 1989 and a two-year-old 27" GE TV that had nothing more than a coaxial cable input for cable TV (i.e., no composite video, S-video, or component video inputs and no RCA audio inputs). I quickly learned that DVD was best rendered in surround sound, which meant new speakers (full 5.1) and a new receiver. Also, I realized I would be best off with a TV that had at the very least, an S-video input, if not component video inputs. Once I got the DVD player, new TV, and 5.1 speaker set-up, I decided that my then-ten-year-old Kenwood carousel CD changer was no longer up to snuff (no digital outputs and sounded lousy). Setting up the home theater was a start, but buying a new CD changer was the beginning of the end.
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My:
HT Pics ; Equipment List ; DVD Collection ; LD Collection
KeithH: Saving the Home Theater World Before Bedtime

 

[PatrickM]

It was basically the DVD format itself. I've loved movies all my life but of course you could only see new releases for the most part at the movie theaters. And, old classics were only on certain TV channels and never in their OAR.
Once I heard about DVD I was hooked and I waited until players became somewhat reasonable and I've been hooked and upgrading ever since.
Patrick
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My DVD Collection
Patrick The 69th most popular name for boys according to the Social Security Administration.

 

[Jim_F]

'Long about 1990, I bought a new stereo TV and noticed audio outs on the back. I thunk to m'self "Hmmm... What if I was to hook these up to an amplifier and wire up some big speakers to it?"
I discovered Radio Shack already was on the case, and I bought a little Dolby surround amplifier for $100 and salvaged a couple of full range speakers for free. I ran some 20GA speaker wire to the other end of the room and concealed a couple of spare car stereo speakers behind the drapes. I hooked the whole mess up, and it was good.
And the rest, as they say...
[Edited last by Jim_F on October 09, 2001 at 05:19 PM]

 

[Kelley_B]

A Nightmare On Elm Street: Platinum Edition Box Set
And the desire to view my favorite series of films the way they were ment to be viewed.

 

[Steve Christou]

Well I was always a movie fan, cinema going was my favorite pasttime, I watched so much crap at the pictures in the 70's, at least todays crappy films are expensive with great fx, in those days it was just cheap crap with no redeeming qualities at all, just to balance things out a bit here the 70's had many great great movies, which I somehow managed to miss, I was too busy watching crap!
For me home theater started in 1982 I hooked up some speakers to my feeble 22inch mono TV and what a difference, louder clearer mono sound!!
I updated to a slightly better 26inch stereo TV in 1984 with weak stereo sound spluttering out of the TVs 2 crappy speakers, I attached my humungous hifi speakers to the TV and hey presto, louder clearer stereo sound!
It came to the point where friends were questioning why I was surrounding my TV with giant speakers, what was the point they said, are you deeef!
And the rest is history.......

 

[Glenn Overholt]

Those are funny stories. I did mine backwards. I've always had my VCR plugged into my stereo, and I was used to it until my receiver crapped out on me, so I went shopping and ended up with a Pioneer VSX-D606S.
It was only after I got it home and unpacked it that I figured out that it did this 5.1 home theater crap! I said to myself, what the fuck is that?
It didn't take long for me to figure it out. My widescreen Toshiba is over 4 years old, and still works great. I had over 40 DVD's at my house before I even picked up my first DVD player.
Glenn

 

[Ryan Wright]

I've always been into electronic goodies. Even when I was a kid, I had 10 speakers wired up to my little stereo system, placed all over my room for optimal sound quality. Hooked my TV up to it as soon as I could.
I started the HT hobby with a DVD player. My wife and I had a small house when DVD players first started appearing on shelves, and I got into multiplayer (PC) gaming. Setup 4 gaming stations in my living room and had to sell our TV, VCR & entertainment center to make room for it all. My wife agreed because we hadn't turned the TV on for a couple of months - we were always busy doing something else. Well, eventually we started to hunger for a TV again, but still had no room for one. So I bought a 21" monitor & TV card and hooked it up to one of my gaming machines.
Voila. Instant TV.
Not long after that we bought a DVD player for the same PC and started collecting movies, but it was you bastards (I love you all) that got me hooked on HT. All your big screen TVs and SVS subwoofers and 800 DVD collections and.... it was all too much. I had to have it. I was quickly assimilated into the HTF collective and have been dutifully stockpiling hardware and DVDs for the past 14 months. Even bought a new house to make room for my vast collection of HT equipment. The acronyms and OAR lifestyle and collective-wide hatred of Bose and commercial movie theaters has taken over my life. I have even partially assimilated friends and coworkers on behalf of the collective.
Today, home theater vendors. Tomorrow, THE WORLD!!! HAHAHAHAHAHA......

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-Ryan ( http://www.ryanwright.com )
Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in their shoes.
That way, when you do criticize them, you'll be a mile away and you'll have their shoes.
[Edited last by Ryan Wright on October 09, 2001 at 07:06 PM]

 

[Colin Dunn]

I can think of two things that got me into home theater...
1) I've always liked music - and stereo equipment to reproduce it. As home theater sound came along, that gave me an excuse to spend $$$ on a good sound system...
2) Before there were widescreen videotapes, I noticed that movies in the movie theater were wider - and not to mention clearer and with richer color. Getting closer to that "film" look pushed me to get a DVD player.
Previously, I'd wanted a laserdisc player, but the players and movies were too expensive for me to collect (especially when I was on a college student's budget). DVD players and movies, offering high-quality video and being much more affordable, got me hooked. Then I wanted a video projector...
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- - -- - -
Colin Dunn

 

[NickSo]

My dad already had a DPL home theater when i was growing up, so it seems natural i took it up...
Now i am the main HT guy in my family...
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The So Family Home Theater!
http://www.multimania.com/sonick182/ht/index.html
You're all entitled to your opinion, but you're all wrong!!! - Paul Dalmine
ICQ: 8593599

 

[Adam Tyner]

My father was a huge home video nut. He bought a Pioneer LD-700 Laserdisc player pretty early on in the game -- '84, I'd guess, considering the age of the player and the fact that "Metalstorm II: The Destruction of Jaryd Syn" was our first LD. We had a really strange television at the time, and I hadn't seen anything like it before or since. I'm not sure if it was this exact model, but it looked kind of like this:

I caught the bug, and when the opportunity presented itself (as in, when I had some money ) when I was in college, I took the cash I was saving for a new computer and bought a DVD player, a new TV, and a bunch of other stuff. The first thing I did when I got my current programming gig was to buy a 36" Sony VVega and MonsterVideo3 component video cables. It's not bleeding-edge high end, but I like it.
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My DVD list | My personal site

 

[Dome Vongvises]

The one that started it all...
Star Wars
God I love that movie.
As for collecting and watching movies with a critical eye? The only other HTF member from Pikevool, Kentucky, Wes Ray. Thanks a lot, Wes, you've figured out a way to waste my money.
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"I don't know, Marge. Trying is the first step towards failure." - Homer J. Simpson
"Stranger things have happened..." - Wes Deskins
My DVD Collection

 

[Alex Spindler]

I think I've told this one a few times on the HTF
Mine started backards. I would say that around 1996, I developed a craving for Killer Bee movies. There was just a time when I would have killed to watch The Swarm. So I headed to a the local Media Play and tried to find it. What luck, they didn't have it. But they did have some excellent VHS titles that I picked up. When I got Jurassic Park (as widescreen VHS), I bought a Pro Logic receiver and some cheak (RCA) speakers. A DVD player showed up in 1999 I think, followed closely with a DTS receiver. And now I have three VHS movies (People under the Stairs, Bad Taste, and Hardware) and 209 DVDs. And I still have never had the opportunity to own a Killer Bee movie.

 

[Eric Scott]

I have to thank my wife, she is totally responsible for my entire HT.
I normally sit at one end of a 24 ft long room at a table with my computer and watch TV at the other end while I’m online. Last summer I was getting tired of squinting at my little 27 inch Toshiba from that distance and in July I started looking at 32 inchers at about $500-600. My wife began objecting when I mentioned "36 inches" at $800-900. Soon I started browsing electronics sites and ended up at the HTF. The first RPTV I had my eye on in the stores was a 53" Hitachi 4:3 but soon I had decided on a widescreen.
Had my wife let me get the extra 4 inches last summer instead of starting a fight, I’d be watching a 36" right now, but noooo…she wanted to be a the big boss woman! The war had began, and the longer I was on the HTF the bigger my idea of a TV got. Of course by now I had discovered all of necessary components for a HT system and the TV size had increased to 56" and price tag jumped from less than $1000 to over $5000.
Now I’m remodeling my HT room and she has been quite the diplomat, hardly saying a word about the cost! The moral of the story is: Don’t start a war, unless you are prepared to win it!
WRITTEN BY ERIC’S SECRETARY (FOR HIS DEFENSE.)

 

[SteveGon]

What started me on this hobby? I think it was a subconscious desire to be poor!

Actually, I love movies and got sick of watching crappy pan-n-scan VHS tapes.
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He thought on homeland, the big timber, the air thin and chill all the year long. Tulip poplars so big through the trunk they put you in mind of locomotives set on end. He thought of getting home and building him a cabin on Cold Mountain so high that not a soul but the nighthawks passing across the clouds in autumn could hear his sad cry. Of living a life so quiet he would not need ears. And if Ada would go with him, there might be the hope, so far off in the distance he did not even really see it, that in time his despair might be honed off to a point so fine and thin that it would be nearly the same as vanishing.
-- Charles Frazier, Cold Mountain

 

[Philip_G]

I always enjoyed movies, but was never really into them until I quit my full time job and went back to college. WHen I needed a part time job I got hired as a projectionist in a 10 plex part time and got into movies.
as it was the only decent theater in town going to see movies "at work" wasn't fun anymore, and it got to the point that I preferred to watch something at home where I can eat or drink anything and not have a crowd to distract me, even though the theater and pop/popcorn was free..

 

[Andrew 'Ange Hamm' Hamm]

Hey, Glenn, how's that 606 treating you? Mine ROOLZ! I hope you have a DD laserdisc player hooked into that RF in!
I love it when this thread pops up every now and then. Everyone's stories make me remember how much I love this hobby and why.
In 1993, I had a college roommate named Chris Donahue, a cat I barely knew before he moved in with me and 2 other mutual friends. He ended up becoming my best friend of the three and an usher at my wedding, but that had very little to do with his introducing me to HT. OK, actually that's a lie. It had everything to do with his introducing me to HT.
Chris had a 27" TV, which I had never seen. He had a Pro Logic surround receiver and speakers, which I had never even heard of. And he had laserdiscs, which I had never even imagined. He introduced me to the director's cut of The Abyss, and that was pretty much it. This was a movie that I had loved already, but the added depth that came with the additional footage--not to mention the much less abrupt ending--just totally transformed it for me. We watched movies all the freaking time; he introduced me to some of my favorite directors and movies. The fact that we were in an acting program at VCU only enhanced it.
My brother Philip Hamm came down to visit once, and he was so impressed that a guy on a college student's budget could afford a decent home theater that he immediately decided to get one for himself. I was able to wait until Chris moved out to start to piece together my own, and I do mean piece. First came a 25" TV (best I could do at the time), then a hand-me-down LDP from Phil (I had LDs months before I had my own player!). Then I got married and was no longer able to use my other rommate's VCR and boom box. We got a HiFi VCR and later a cheapo mini-system to tide us over until we could afford the receiver. Always, Phil came through. We had his old DVD player for two years before we got our own, and my HT mains are Phil's old Interaudios. But MSN's BB rebate helped us get a great 32" TV that we otherwise would have been unable to afford, and SpiderGear helped me grow into Dolby Digital. The rest is actually not history but current. Throw in the new subwoofer (which I traded with my brother Patrick for that old DVD player) and we're up to date.
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Andrew Hamm's new album Link Removed is available now!
[Edited last by Andrew 'Ange Hamm' Hamm on October 10, 2001 at 09:16 AM]

 

[Glenn Overholt]

Andrew, no, a LD player I never got. I just skipped from VHS to DVD. The 606 has been super, though, and doesn't get that hot on top, but I did plug a DC fan into the outlet on the back. (with an AC/DC converter, of course).
I did get hooked on Pioneer though, and the control cable was the topping for the cake!
Glenn

 

[Mike Broadman]

Chain reaction story for me, my friends.
I was never a big movie nut. At one point a couple of years ago, I had sworn off the entire practice of movie-making as pointless, repetitive, and stupid (of course I didn't really know jack about real films).
I got really excited about DVDs when I learned about them, more for the technology aspect than anything else. My parents bought me a DVD player for my birthday/holidays (I'm one of those who has my birthday at the end of the year, confusing the hell out of everyone when they get me presents. I love it). This was all last December, also when I moved to Boston.
After renting a few DVDs, I figured that it was silly to have a fancy-schmancy DVD player and use an old 25" TV. So, I got me a 32".
I'm a hard-core music nut. While me brain was on this home tech thing, I figured it was silly for a guy with 800 CDs to be listening to them on a little component system. So, I went out and got the receiver, speakers, subwoofer, the whole deal.
Also, in the last couple of years, I discovered Stanley Kubrick. Sure, I knew of 2001, the Shining, and Full Metal Jacket, but never realised they were all the same director. The Kubrick box set is my favorite DVD possession 'till this day. Kubrick and Scorsese made me like movies again, and inspired me to get the receiver and sourround speakers instead of just a nice stereo. It also is making me do something I never thought I'd do: purchase movies. My collection is pathetically small, since I spend more of my $$ on music, but it's still surprising that I actually buy any DVDs.
No I have less money. But man, my shit sure sounds good!
In a few years, I expect to go through another home-tech revolution, when I get the widescreen HDTV and a new prog-scan player.