What was your very first movie on physical media purchase? (1 Viewer)

[Jeffrey:K]

My first VHS pre-record was the Nostalgia Merchant edition of Sam Peckinpah's CROSS OF IRON. My mother gave it to me as a high school graduation present in 1983. It retailed for $59.95 if I remember correctly. I still have the tape.

Later that same year I spent my own money on a copy of the Magnetic Video Corporation edition of THE SAILOR WHO FELL FROM GRACE WITH THE SEA. I believe that one was also $59.95. I still have it.

I became obsessed with both of these movies after first seeing them on HBO in 1978. So I had to own them. Since then I've purchased every new home video incarnation of each, most recently the Blu-ray releases from, respectively, Hen's Tooth and Scorpion.

 

[Patrick McCart]

I actually remember the first time going to a video store as a child, probably 1987-88. My mother picked up the Warner "Golden Jubilee" VHS of Pepe le Pew cartoons, as well as two public domain cartoon tapes for me. First VHS I remember buying with my own money was UHF, which was in a clearance bin at a local grocery store around 1998.

First DVD I received was the 2000 2-disc The Abyss (birthday present along with the DVD player I went 50/50 with my parents on). First DVD I purchased myself was either Airplane! (also my very first Amazon order) or North by Northwest (from local video store) back in 2001.

First Blu-rays I purchased were The Dark Knight, Wall-E, and 2001: A Space Odyssey back in January 2009 when I purchased my first HD display (and a PS3 to play the discs on).

First UHD was 2001: A Space Odyssey, preordered in 2018 along with my purchase of an LG player, which I promptly returned and exchanged for a Sony model.

Also, my first laserdisc was the Criterion CLV "no extras" Citizen Kane, which I found at a Half-Price Books for $2 and had only intended to put on display. Ended up finding a good deal on a used Sony dual-side player and now have a decent collection two decades after the format died...

 

[SteveJKo]

My mother purchased a Betamax as a present for the whole family for Christmas of 1981. Included with that she purchased cassettes of "Now Voyager" and "Barefoot In The Park", so those would be my first full movies on physical media. I say "full" because, as a kid, I would sometimes purchase those Super 8 "condensed" versions of movies ranging from Universal classic horror to Star Wars and Close Encounters Of The Third Kind.

 

[jayembee]

If we're talking about movies that we've repurchased the most, I haven't counted but as a huge James Bond fan, I've always purchased all the Bond films in whatever format I graduated to.

I realized, while watching the 4K SteelBook the other night, that I think the film I've bought the most times is Lawrence of Arabia. I never owned it on tape, but I bought both the Criterion CAV and CLV laserdiscs (the CLV edition had extras not on the CAV), the first DVD edition, later the SuperBit DVD edition, the first by-itself BD, later the Collector's Edition box BD, the UHD (included in the Columbia Classics box set), and then the UHD SteelBook.

 

[titch]

I realized, while watching the 4K SteelBook the other night, that I think the film I've bought the most times is Lawrence of Arabia. I never owned it on tape, but I bought both the Criterion CAV and CLV laserdiscs (the CLV edition had extras not on the CAV), the first DVD edition, later the SuperBit DVD edition, the first by-itself BD, later the Collector's Edition box BD, the UHD (included in the Columbia Classics box set), and then the UHD SteelBook.

I had the widescreen edition on VHS! Lawerence and Woody Allen's Manhattan on VHS must have been the first time I had seen films presented with a widescreen format for home viewing. Could hardly see a thing on my 20 inch CRT and was really irritated by the black bars!

 

[Thomas T]

I had the widescreen edition on VHS! Lawerence and Woody Allen's Manhattan on VHS must have been the first time I had seen films presented with a widescreen format for home viewing. Could hardly see a thing on my 20 inch CRT and was really irritated by the black bars!

My initiation to wide screen on home video was the Criterion laser disc of Blade Runner and I embraced the concept immediately although most people at the time balked and wanted their TV screens "filled up". How ironic that when wide screen TVs became the norm, people still wanted their TV screens "filled up" and would use the zoom or stretch feature to watch I Love Lucy in wide screen.

 

[Jeffrey D]

My initiation to wide screen on home video was the Criterion laser disc of Blade Runner and I embraced the concept immediately although most people at the time balked and wanted their TV screens "filled up". How ironic that when wide screen TVs became the norm, people still wanted their TV screens "filled up" and would use the zoom or stretch feature to watch I Love Lucy in wide screen.

Yes, like Friends complete series BluRay. Those shows were reformatted for 16X9, even though none of the shows were shot in widescreen.

 

[Guardyan]

Yes, like Friends complete series BluRay. Those shows were reformatted for 16X9, even though none of the shows were shot in widescreen.

Nah, not the case with Friends. It was not reformatted for the BD release. They filmed the show in widescreen but would concentrate the most important stuff in the 4:3 aspect ratio since it was the standard aspect ratio for TV in the 90s. Now we have several websites with clickbait style articles about "bloopers and many other errors from Friends you've never noticed before" such as a scene where we can see Matt LeBlanc hiding behind David Schwimmer to suppress laughter and get "out of the frame." After the show was rescanned for Netflix and the BD release, a lot of things like that "became" visible since they changed the aspect ratio to widescreen. We are now seeing a wider angle of the show, which is how these errors came to be noticeable. I'd like to know who was the genius though that foresaw that TV would go widescreen in effin 1994 and filmed the show in widescreen and preserved the originals. What a wise decision! Not only Friends became a huge sensation but the possibility of having it remastered in an aspect ratio that is prevalent now in the age of wide ultra definition screens has certainly future proofed the show without the need to zoom in the 4:3 to reformat it as widescreen. WB should cut another check to this person for such important choice.

 

[AnthonyClarke]

I can't remember the first VHS I bought, but it might well have been the same as the first DVD I bought ... 'Casablanca' naturally!

 

[Jeffrey D]

Nah, not the case with Friends. It was not reformatted for the BD release. They filmed the show in widescreen but would concentrate the most important stuff in the 4:3 aspect ratio since it was the standard aspect ratio for TV in the 90s. Now we have several websites with clickbait style articles about "bloopers and many other errors from Friends you've never noticed before" such as a scene where we can see Matt LeBlanc hiding behind David Schwimmer to suppress laughter and get "out of the frame." After the show was rescanned for Netflix and the BD release, a lot of things like that "became" visible since they changed the aspect ratio to widescreen. We are now seeing a wider angle of the show, which is how these errors came to be noticeable. I'd like to know who was the genius though that foresaw that TV would go widescreen in effin 1994 and filmed the show in widescreen and preserved the originals. What a wise decision! Not only Friends became a huge sensation but the possibility of having it remastered in an aspect ratio that is prevalent now in the age of wide ultra definition screens has certainly future proofed the show without the need to zoom in the 4:3 to reformat it as widescreen. WB should cut another check to this person for such important choice.

Thanks for that info. I just assumed older TV shows were shot at 1.33:1.

 

[jayembee]

Thanks for that info. I just assumed older TV shows were shot at 1.33:1.

The 90s were a wacky time. You had producers going forward and backward at the same time. Forward by shooting 16x9, and backward by doing a lot of post-production in Standard Def video, making it difficult, if not impossible, to create Hi-Def masters.

 

[Gerani53]

Actually, shooting something in 16x9 "wide" while still composing for the traditional square shape is another example of forward-backward thinking. Showing the wide version with tons of mistakes on the sides is akin to showing an 1.37 open matte version of a 1.85-composed movie, exposing stuff meant to be cut away and wrecking the composition. Unless one realizes what's going on here, these flawed 16x9 presentations of FRIENDS cannot help but make the actors (doing stuff they think is off-screen), the producers and the directors look like incompetent dolts. It's probably not the best way to preserve a classic series for posterity.

 

[jayembee]

Actually, shooting something in 16x9 "wide" while still composing for the traditional square shape is another example of forward-backward thinking. Showing the wide version with tons of mistakes on the sides is akin to showing an 1.37 open matte version of a 1.85-composed movie, exposing stuff meant to be cut away and wrecking the composition. Unless one realizes what's going on here, these flawed 16x9 presentations of FRIENDS cannot help but make the actors (doing stuff they think is off-screen), the producers and the directors look like incompetent dolts. It's probably not the best way to preserve a classic series for posterity.

Not if they protect the image for both ratios. While there are certainly examples of "full screen" transfers of (matted) widescreen films that show things like boom mics and such, most -- at least most of the ones I've seen -- have nothing beyond excess headroom to ruin the composition. Which, to be sure, is an issue, but not as egregious a one as having something in the shot that it absolutely not supposed to be seen.

If a TV series in the 90s was being shot in 16x9 to "future-proof" it, they would like have similarly ensured that there weren't extraneous objects and such in the widescreen frame. The widescreen versions of shows like, say, Babylon 5 or The X-Files, might have compromised compositions, but they don't have anything revealed in the widescreen frames that aren't supposed to be there. The biggest problem for shows with lots of CGI, like B5, was that the CGI only existed in 4x3 renderings, so those shots had to be cropped to composit with widescreen live-action shots.

 

[Gerani53]

Apparently FRIENDS did not protect the image for both ratios, which is why all these flaws are showing up in widescreen. That's why I called it a good example of forward-backward thinking. Why shoot in wide at all if the wide image isn't going to be properly composed? You'll just wind up with embarrassing errors in frame imagery that was meant to be cut away, doing a disservice to all the creatives involved.

 

[Guardyan]

Actually, shooting something in 16x9 "wide" while still composing for the traditional square shape is another example of forward-backward thinking. Showing the wide version with tons of mistakes on the sides is akin to showing an 1.37 open matte version of a 1.85-composed movie, exposing stuff meant to be cut away and wrecking the composition. Unless one realizes what's going on here, these flawed 16x9 presentations of FRIENDS cannot help but make the actors (doing stuff they think is off-screen), the producers and the directors look like incompetent dolts. It's probably not the best way to preserve a classic series for posterity.

Apparently FRIENDS did not protect the image for both ratios, which is why all these flaws are showing up in widescreen. That's why I called it a good example of forward-backward thinking. Why shoot in wide at all if the wide image isn't going to be properly composed? You'll just wind up with embarrassing errors in frame imagery that was meant to be cut away, doing a disservice to all the creatives involved.

I think that's like... overreacting a bit. I was too young to care for Friends when it originally aired and I never watch anything unless it's from the very first season, so I'm one of those people that got to experience it only when it was added to the Netflix catalogue. I'm very observant and can tell you that apart from the aforementioned Matt LeBlanc hiding his laughing and a stand-in for Jennifer Aniston, there wasn't any other major problems with it. I've read that a bunch of people actually missed most of those little things. Plus it sorta adds to the comedy to see some actors losing it while on stage like it often happens on SNL.

A completely different story is Fox making Buffy widescreen when both the creator and crew are effing unhappy about it. While Friends in widescreen just works fine, Buffy is a mess where you see the end of sets in the frame, crew and cameras on the far side of the screen, etc. It's disgusting really. But Fox had computers do the restoration for Buffy. Some scenes were color corrected by the computers and events that took place during the night suddenly was happening in daylight. Vampires walking in the sunlight... bizarre.

 

[JoshZ]

Apparently FRIENDS did not protect the image for both ratios, which is why all these flaws are showing up in widescreen. That's why I called it a good example of forward-backward thinking. Why shoot in wide at all if the wide image isn't going to be properly composed? You'll just wind up with embarrassing errors in frame imagery that was meant to be cut away, doing a disservice to all the creatives involved.

TV shows during this era didn't shoot widescreen for future-proofing. It was actually a cost savings.

Feature films at the time were shot on 4-perf 35mm, which exposed a 1.37:1 image onto the negative. That would then be matted on the top and bottom to 1.85:1 for theatrical release. (We're talking about regular spherical "flat" photography here, not anamorphic or Super 35.)

TV shows, however, only shot in 3-perf format. This used less film and was more cost efficient. The image captured was natively closer to 16:9, but the shows were composed for a 4:3 center extraction that would discard the sides.

 

[Worth]

Guess I should have held on to that VHS Back to the Future copy…

VHS copy of 'Back to the Future' sells for $75,000, setting a new auction record

Sometimes nostalgia comes with a big price tag. A sealed, near-mint condition 1986 VHS tape of "Back to the Future" recently sold at auction for $75,000, setting a new record for a videotape.

www.cp24.com

 

[BILLONEEG]

Really sorry to hear you don't enjoy 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, but that is no reason to shout it all over the place here...most of us like or love that Kubrick classic and we don't need all the negative comments. Thank you.

I'm sorry Dick for not being completely honest with my ""2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY" posting. I should have included my VUDU 4k streaming copy. Please forgive me.

 

[Osato]

Love this thread.

Now I wonder what was the last vhs tape I bought…..

 

[Walter Kittel]

Last he said...

I don't know if it was the last Laser Disc I ever purchased, but by 2000 I was mostly purchasing DVD releases so the imported Japanese Laser Disc of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace might have been my final LD purchase. Easily one of the best audio tracks I ever experienced on LD and a fitting way to close the door on that wonderful format 22 years ago. Damn.

- Walter.