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

Vahan_Nisanain

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Not sure where exactly to put this thread in. But anyways, here's the opening to the 1981 Magnetic Video Laserdisc version of West Side Story. Take a look at the United Artists logo. You'll be in for quite a surprise, even though the film did not originally have this logo.
 

Ronald Epstein

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Wow...

Where to start....

First, thank you so much for uploading this. This was a fun watch.

Second, watching that Magnetic Video intro brings back memories of
my years with VHS. That logo was at the start of every Fox movie (as
well as some ABC movies)

Third, that United Artists logo. Always loved the evolving draw lines
that make up the United Artists Transamerica logo. You were lucky to
see it on a few DVD movies back in the day. Today, I bet it has been
completely removed and replaced.

Finally, laserdiscs. That is a format I really miss. I mean, it just brings
me back to a time when collecting movies was just that much more
fun (and certainly more expensive).

Thanks for a little retro this morning. Made my day.
 

Charles Smith

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Agree. It's always much fun, seeing samples of old tech. Love that stuff --..with home video, computers, and whatnot.

I wonder if any of my early LDs were Magnetic Video. I don't recall, but I'm going to take a look at the few early ones I still have.

Is that your own video clip? If so, may I respectfully ask why you seem to be s-t-r-e-t-c-h-i-n-g your 4x3 image to fill the screen, as opposed to zooming it?
 

Vahan_Nisanain

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Here are some more Magnetic Video releases with the United Artists Transamerica logo. Magnetic Video began making deals with United Artists in 1981, just before they were folded into 20th Century Fox Video.

Opening to Tom Jones laserdisc


Opening to The Black Stallion VHS


Opening to Raging Bull VHS


Opening to Let it Be VHS


And now for some non-Magnetic Video examples.

Opening to Cruisin' VHS


Opening to Fiddler on the Roof CED


Opening to Being There VHS


And no, none of the videos are mine. I don't have any laserdiscs. I wish, though.
 

Vahan_Nisanain

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I posted this thread in response to what someone said about Transamerica logos never appearing on Magnetic Video. Turns out they did. There were even some from early on in Home Video that weren't on Magnetic Video.
 

Charles Smith

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I don't generally recall which films were Transamerica till I get to the early James Bond films -- somehow or other, it made a strong impression there, and I always miss that opening logo on those.
 

Vahan_Nisanain

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All the James Bond films from You Only Live Twice to For Your Eyes Only originally had a Transamerica logo.

I love the variant for Raging Bull that I just posted. It was specially colored in B&W just to signify the fact that the movie was filmed that way. Woody Allen's Stardust Memories did the same thing.
 

Mark Cappelletty

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I'm just laughing that you still have the shrink wrap on your laserdisc! My few remaining discs (mostly ones that were autographed) are all in storage, along with my Pioneer 704 LD player, which doesn't work any more.
 

Mark Booth

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I started collecting Laserdiscs in 1981. By 1994 I had over 300 of them. In January of 1995 I attended the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas and got an early look at DVD. I came home from the show and, within days, I had sold 99% of my Laserdisc collection, recouping about 70-75% of what I originally paid for them. Laserdisc did a MUCH better job of retaining value. I put the money aside, knowing I'd someday buy a DVD player and lots of DVDs. I had no idea I'd end up repeating the process with HD DVD and Blu-ray (and, with DVD, I didn't recoup 70-75% of what I paid, I recouped maybe 25-30% of what I paid, ouch!).

I still own a Laserdisc player and a few select Laserdiscs (including the original Toy Story CAV set). They are stored in a closet and the player doesn't work anymore. I get the discs out every once in awhile and look at them to check for laser rot. So far, so good. :)

I never bothered with collecting VHS tapes. It was Laserdisc or nothing back then. In 1981 I watched my Laserdiscs on a state of the art TV, a Sony Trinitron. At some point I got the 27" model. I really thought I was living large! :)

In 1981, there wasn't much in the way of surround sound decoders. At first, I wired my speakers in a Hafler dematrixing circuit. Later, I spent something like $350 on a Dolby Surround decoder. I thought I was in home video heaven! :)

The very first movie I purchased on Laserdisc was 'The Jerk'. As a way of remembering my own home theater roots, I framed the cover and put it on the wall in our home theater room, where it still hangs today.

i-9rjDtzw-X2.jpg



Trivia: The movie 'Twister' was the first movie to be released on DVD and the last movie to be released on HD DVD! ;)

Mark
 

Wayne_j

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A couple of weeks ago I watched a well-worn cinemascope print of West Side Story. I think it was a Technicolor IB print as the colors were not faded at all.
 

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Wow, fun to see. Those were great days. To think - you could own a copy of a movie and watch it any time you wanted. That in itself was an astonishing idea.

As for West Side Story, I remember saving up for a month to buy Criterion's box set - which was letterboxed - the first time you could see the wide screen image at home. Those were heady days. I loved my laserdiscs so much.
 

Josh Steinberg

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Wayne_j said:
A couple of weeks ago I watched a well-worn cinemascope print of West Side Story. I think it was a Technicolor IB print as the colors were not faded at all.
Jealous! If you don't mind me asking, where did you see it? Unfortunately, the last few times the movie has been shown in the NYC area, it's been DCP projection.

I remember being gifted an early CBS/FOX-branded version of West Side Story on VHS by a teacher, which actually was split onto two tapes (two hours and ten minutes on the first tape, twenty minutes on the last, odd way to split it when you think about it). Laserdisc always seemed way cooler than VHS to me, but we never had Laserdisc in the house growing up.
 

Steve Tannehill

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KPmusmag said:
As for West Side Story, I remember saving up for a month to buy Criterion's box set - which was letterboxed - the first time you could see the wide screen image at home. Those were heady days. I loved my laserdiscs so much.
I too had that Criterion CAV box set, but not before seeing a 35mm print that was released a couple of weeks earlier. Then a few years later, I saw a 70mm print that had made the rounds quite a bit and broke four times. The theater refunded the ticket, but I stayed because the colors were like nothing I had ever seen before.
 

Rob_Ray

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I got into laserdiscs in 1983 and still have virtually every disc I ever purchased, except for the panned and scanned titles that I later upgraded to letterbox. I couldn't part with any of them, even the ones that have no laserdisc-exclusive features. Often when I pull out a state of the art BluRay such as The Egyptian, I will still pull out the laserdisc as well, to read the jacket notes and enjoy the larger-sized artwork. I still have nearly 2000 laserdiscs (including the Criterion CAV and MGM letterboxed WSS) and four working players, though each player has its minor age-related quirks.
 

Angelo Colombus

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I still have my 3 laserdisc players and 130 Criterion and close to 200 other discs and i do watch them from time to time. It was fun to wait for the new releases to come out and to see them in their original aspect ratio on most of them. Do not miss paying the high prices for them so i waited until they were on sale at stores or on Ebay so i did not pay full price on most of them.
 

bob kaplan

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LaserDiscs hold a special spot in my heart. First machine was a VP-1000. What a monster! At the time it was DiscoVision was the supplier for the media....and it is a real wonder that the medium made it for the duration. I purchased 11 (all CAV) titles when I first got the machine and I think.....8 had at least one defective disc. but they were neat!....And you did not have to rewind. Never owned a tape machine until 10 years later when kids made keeping a video record of the family necessary. There were always speckles in the DiscoVision discs....but the 1.5 hour drive with a friend was worth it to pick up a new title once a month. The discs, at least some of them, are in the basement along with a couple of machines. A couple of the titles have been put on DVD and I still get nostalgic when I see the white laser "L" and hear that "swish," hear the Mag Video intro, or see the big V open a movie....and remember the swirl.....! Life was good.
 

John Sparks

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Boy, I remember being at Ken Cranes in O.C. with a hand full of LDs and watching a DVD of "Mars Attacks" and saying to the guy next to me, "It'll never take off, it's only a couple clicks up in clarity!" Boy, talk about being so wrong!!!

I had close to 400 at one time but only have 2 left, both signed and framed (Robinson Crusoe on Mars-Paul Mantee and War of the Worlds-Ann Robinson.) I've never seen a DVD/BD case framed, have you?
 

Ronald Epstein

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John,

We were all hoping, at the time, that DVD would never take off.

However, I will never forget the day I went into New York City to walk
around Tower Records on 4th street just to get a glimpse of the new
DVD format.

I went into the store thinking that I would never buy into it. After all,
I spent weeks posting on our Prodigy forum in late 1996/early 1997
talking about how much I hoped the DVD format would fail.

...but when I walked into the video department of Tower Records and
saw the DVD of the 1989 Batman film playing on several displays, I knew
it was "game over" for laserdiscs.

I went home and ordered my first DVD player. It was amazing to watch
shortly thereafter how many other Internet forum members were switching
over to the new technology themselves.

The big player at the time was the Sony. The first release had switches
inside them that you could change the region coding. Those initial models,
I believe, were initially pulled once word got out about those switches. At
the time, it was a very big deal for the studios to have strict region coding
standards.

I believe there was a more significant picture difference between
laserdisc and DVD than there is between DVD and Blu-ray.
 

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