Movies in Rewind: The first VHS/VCR encounter…

The article below was written by one of my co-workers, Keith, and he delves into his experience with VHS when it was first released. Enjoy this, and make sure you leave some comments about your experiences with VHS/VCR’s

I work with Scott and he was telling me the other day about Blu-Ray video – the quality of picture among other things. I mentioned to him remembering my first encounter with a VCR. It was 1982 (before he was born) and we had three choices for home video – VHS, Betamax and LaserDisc. Betamax was a smaller version of VHS but players were more expensive, usually running $800-$1000. The LaserDisc was too big; the player was huge and the discs were the size of LPs (you old folks like me will know) and there wasn’t a lot of movies to pick from. Fortunately, VHS won the battle and Betamax and LaserDisc were soon gone from the market. There was a small movie place that opened where I was living at the time – before Blockbuster, the grocery stores, or any other chain. You could rent a VHS player for $50 a week plus a $100 deposit. The player weighed about 30 pounds and was in a carry case. Hooking it up to your TV was difficult as televisions at the time didn’t have AV outlets – you had to plug the VCR in first then your TV and hope the unit would play. Sometimes it would, sometimes it wouldn’t. With salaries as they were back then, we didn’t rent this unit very often.

My wife and I married in 1985 and we purchased a VCR as a gift to ourselves. We paid around $500 for it and it looked like this:

It was a top loading unit, operated similar to a cassette player and you could record TV shows on a blank tape. We thought we were in electronic heaven! Little did we know the problems that would come – our unit didn’t have a remote so you had to operate the buttons manually. At least once a week, the VCR tape would get caught on the heads and when you ejected the tape, it would unwind as it was caught in the player. However, due to the size of the player, it was fairly easy to reach into the top and unwrap the tape from around the head. Once that was done, you would have about 25 feet of tape laying on the floor – we would then manually wind the tape so it would be in payable condition again. It also didn’t take long for the buttons to start malfunctioning. Pushing play would eject the tape, reverse would fast forward, and slo-mo would play. Once you figured that out, you could usually get it to play. You also had to find a place to put the player as they were so big they wouldn’t fit on top of the television unless you had a console (again, old folks will know) set. So know you not only had the cost of the VCR, you had to buy some type of entertainment center for the new toy.

Thinking back, it would have been cool to have scene selections, fast forward and fast reverse, freeze frame (you had to just stop the VCR but at least it would continue from that spot), and most important, a remote. And now with Blu-Ray, you can watch movies in HD. It’s just been 25 years, but the progress in home video has been quick to change. It will be interesting to see what the next 25 years will bring.