How long you been addicted to home cinema for? (1 Viewer)

I first got addicted around 1981, 34 years now and I'm addicted.

Connected up my dads Hitachi mono linear, with Dolby NR to the Hi-Fi separates after reading a simple article in What Video magazine. Looked around to see what cables was in the cupboard and found to my surprise RCA Y lead. Connected to VCR and to Hi-Fi amp on both channels so mono signal will be sent to left right speakers on AUX setting.

Not sure exactly what year(I was born at the end of 69. We always had A/V). We had an original top load VHS. It was connected to the Quadraphonic. When stereo/hifi vhs came along, my father used part of his Christmas bonus(it was well into 4 digits).

I can't remember when I didnt have an interest in HT. it got serious when DVDs came out. I kinda consider the HTF to be my friendly purveyor of HT crack. Yes, I'm addicted and I'm blaming you HTF!

When the first Sony XBR came out!!! 1200.00 for 25"

I was always into Hi-fi stuff.....

I'd think my HT interest was from when I bought my first black and white TV in 1973. I took it apart and installed an RCA jack for mono audio output. I connected this to my Dynaco kit amp and Rectillinear 11 speakers.

Dennis Nicholls said:

I was always into Hi-fi stuff.....

I'd think my HT interest was from when I bought my first black and white TV in 1973. I took it apart and installed an RCA jack for mono audio output. I connected this to my Dynaco kit amp and Rectillinear 11 speakers.

Click to expand...

Wow was that 10.1 or 11.0 wow that is ahead of the game of today.

No it was just a stereo system: the "Rectilinear 11" was the model of the speakers.

Dennis Nicholls said:

No it was just a stereo system: the "Rectilinear 11" was the model of the speakers.

Click to expand...

I see now.

I'm trying to recall first few films played on the Hi-Fi. Alien (1979) and The Final Conflict (1981) both rentals mono with Dolby NR.

I have had receivers for a long time, but I got serious when DVD was announced.

I was an audiophile before HT enthusiast. Got introduced to a VCR from a friend of mine around 1980, who at the time had a bootleg copy of Superman on VHS. I saw it and loved the idea of owning your own movie. I ended up getting a used VCR. This same friend had a laserdisc player (old Pioneer that was rather huge compared to what later would be) and I copied The Blues Brothers over to VHS (very few titles were available on LD). One night while playing it, I had the idea to use a splitter and send the mono signal to my receiver via the AUX input. While not great fidelity, it was far superior to the 3-4 inch TV speaker. Added bonus was I could watch regular TV through it as well. And that began what would be a long journey between audio and video format changes that would ultimately lead me here today.

And the human adventure continues...

Born in '59.

Got a 3 1/2" reel-to-reel recorder for Christmas when I was ten.

Got a stereo 7" reel-to-reel deck for Christmas when I was twelve.

Still have--in use--my old Techncis SA-200 receiver from college days. LOVE that thing!



I remember watching MTV in the mid-eighties with the audio running through my stereo system. What a thrill that was! TV with great audio! What a concept!

Got a Sanyo Beta Hi-Fi deck in 1984. And finally (begrudgingly) went to VHS Hi-Fi later.

And to finally answer the OP's question...I brought my first budget HT outfit from Circuit City back in 2000 (just a few months before I joined the HTF!). I just ran across the copy of that ad I kept in my files:



One of my first DVD purchases was the Ultimate Toy Box (Disney's Toy Story & TS2). My upgrades have been infrequent and meager...but now that the kids are out of college, I have been able to get some nice pieces in recent years.

probably for me it was in the mid 80's. My college roommates & I all pitched in for an Emerson Hi-Fi VCR LOL we had it jamming Top Gun and James Bond all the time.

Been an obsession ever since.

BEAUTIFUL Technics receiver Mike. Awesome.

I bought my very first stereo receiver, a Technics model, from Federated back in late 1984, which powered the audio for my records, cassettes, CD and, eventually, VHS tapes. That lasted me for all of nine years. Then, as I was seriously getting into VHS tape, and I learned about the wonders of Dolby Surround Sound, I decided to pick up a Sony A/V receiver with Dolby Pro Logic surround sound processing. I put a Hi-Fi Stereo VCR together with the unit from J.C. Penny a few months later--although I had purchased a mono VCR nearly a year earlier in late 1992--and I was off and running at last!!!!!! I got involved in widescreen VHS titles in mid-1997, beginning with Strange Days, and bought as many widescreen VHS titles as I could not the next two years. By decade's end, I added my first-ever DVD player on New Year's Day 1999, followed by an ancient Magnavox analog-only laserdisc player, which was built like a tank (then supplanted by a Pioneer 980 CD/LD player late that very summer), and I was really off and running, adding DVD and LD titles from that year forward!!!!!

Whoa, I also had a Technics receiver (with a simple 2-channel amp section) back in the 1980s. Good times... Buying records, making mix tapes for the car...

I got interested in home theater circa 1993, when I first saw that "widescreen" versions of some movies were available on VHS. From that moment, I always bought the WS version, even though at the time I was watching them on a 25" CRT television with zero anamorphic capabilities. Highlights since then:


First stereo VHS player: 1994


First time I disaggregated VHS sound from the TV (via a receiver and separate speakers): September 1996


First Laserdisc player: December 1996 (got in on the GROUND FLOOR of LD, LOL! But there were great deals then!)


First DVD player: April 1997 (First DVD player sold to anyone in Louisiana! Toshiba SD-3006)


First 5.1 or better surround sound receiver: September 1997 (the amazing Pioneer VSX-D606S - still working!)


First "widescreen" TV: January 1998 (the MIGHTY Toshiba TW40F80! Lasted until 2006)


First HDTV: 2001 (the awesome Toshiba 56H80, lasted until 2013)


First hi-def video player: April 2006 (Toshiba HD-A1 HD-DVD player - third one sold in Louisiana!)


First BD player: August 2006 (Sony PS3)


Anyway, that's early part of my HT story, LOL.

Movies are my addiction; home theater equipment is merely the syringe by which it is delivered.

When I was in high school (85) I started dabbling in music - nothing fancy mind you, just a few electronic keyboards. I bought a reel to reel off another student. Around this time my brother let me use his component hi-fi while he was in the army. After high school, in the dawn of the home video age, I bought a hi-fi VCR.


So, by this time in one corner of my room I had a rack of cheap keyboards, a reel to reel, a dual cassette deck, two turntables, a receiver, (eventually a CD player), an equalizer, my tv, vcr, two mixers, two large speakers on either side of the tv, and two huge speakers on either side of my bed. Everything was interconnected. I could record audio to and from any of these sources. It was amazing. My friend called it the Cockpit because of the series of switches I had to throw to route the audio correctly.


This set up, of course, followed me around for the rest of my life (so far). Equipment got replaced, and got downsized to what I have now.


Still have some of it in the basement...

My parents got me hooked with our first JVC VHS VCR back in December 1984. I was only 20 months old, still a helpless little baby. Still, it was enough to get my fix until 1990 when we got our second VHS VCR, an RCA model. But soon, even more of the same was no longer enough to get a fix. Enter our first laserdisc player (a Pioneer) in May of 1991. That took us to the next level. Soon, we were starting to care about original aspect ratios, digital sound and extra features. Or at least I was anyway. That served us well for eight years until the next stage of my addiction began: DVD. Our first player was a 5-disc Pioneer model. Eventually, it offered everything that was good about laserdisc and VHS, and more. And as soon as they started to offer TV shows. How could it possibly get any better than this, I thought? Well, there was this little thing called Blu-ray that did everything a DVD could do as well of plenty of things a DVD couldn't do, such as hold HD movies with lossless sound. By 2007, I gave into temptation, bought a PS3 and sailed it to Cloud Nine.