 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Lone Wolf McQuade, the film was so - so but the music by Francesco de Masi was wonderful, featuring Allessandroni's whistling and Franco de Gemini's harmonica playing.
I wore the tape out, just through listening to the score.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVQdV8jATc4
|
|
|
|
|
|
The first videocassette I ever WATCHED was CLOSE ENCOUNTERS. It was on my Uncle's Sony Betamax.
The first videocassette we ever rented in our own home was—don't laugh—GAME OF DEATH.
It's hard to imagine now, isn't it, that these things used to retail at like $99. No extras. Pan-and-scan. And with all the artifacts and limitations of analogue, low-band composite video recording on a magnetic tape, such as color bleed, video drop outs, lost tracking and fuzzy edges.
Who here remembers having to fiddle with the analogue tracking dial to get a picture to stabilize?
Anyone born after 1990 probably couldn't understand how extraordinarily privileged and ground-breaking it felt to actually be able to RENT and OWN your favorite movies. Even though they were these low-quality, high-cost, limited availability things, it was like—WOW, I can actually OWN some classic movies in my own home!
And we showed our friends and neighbors with pride. I remember gawping with envy because our neighbor had a cassette of PATTON.
We made dinner parties and family gatherings around these things. To this day, I remember dressing up and going round to my Uncle's for the grand home, extended family viewing of STAR WARS. I remember how we all waited with excitement for him to return with his reserved copy from the video rental store. When he walked in the door with the cassette in hand (it was a Betamax, which he had), it was like a Champagne uncorking moment. Or, being that I was ten, a fizzy pop opening moment. Probably R White's Lemonade.
Times, they were a different.
Cheers
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The very first movie I ever watched on home video was most likely The Werewolf of Washington starring Dean Stockwell at a friend's place. A video recorder was at that time an incredibly exciting device, one could watch a movie whenever one wanted!
I don't know why it was this particular movie; I assume it was because it was a "horror" movie and it was there (we were still kids at the time). VHS titles were very expensive back then, and the available selection of films released on VHS were but a microscopic fraction of what we're used to today on DVD and Blu Ray.
I have never seen it since, but I remember particularly the funny scenes toward the end of the movie in a helicopter.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Stephen, for some reason, I thought you were British, and as such would use a different system than VHS or Beta. (Is it called PAL in Britain?)
No, that has to do with the line system used to broadcast series across the cathode tube in Europe. Because of supposed deficiencies with the NTSC system used in North America wags dubbed it Never the Same Colour Twice (or Never Twice Same Colour or something) while PAL was Perfection At Last; sadly it doesn't make the quality of the TV shows any better, but that's another thread.
Correct, PAL, SECAM and NTSC were encoding systems for video data, VHS and Betamax were tape formats onto which the encoded videos went. So VHS and Betamax systems were used all over the world, but depending on the area, the releases were PAL or NTSC encoded.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
