R.I.P. VHS
I was reading today that the only company still producing VHS tapes will be ceasing production after the new year. End of an era. I remember our first VHS. We were one of the first in the neighborhood, and certainly the first among my friends, to have one. We weren't rich or anything, it just happened that my dad was the purchasing director for a major pinball/video game company. Some of his clients would give him gifts from time to time, just to show their appreciation for buying electrical components from their company. I'm sure it was completely innocent. No attempts at bribery at all. :)
Our first VHS was an enormous beast of a machine. Probably the size of three or for modern DVD players stacked on top of each other. Top loading. You would hit the eject button and it would pop up with a loud ka-CHUNK. The remote only had play and pause on it, and was connected to the VCR by a long wire. One of the coolest features was a audio dub button. You would hit it, and it would erase only the audio of the tape in the machine, which we would replace with the cheap microphone that came with the VCR. I wish I could find some of those old tapes to hear all the funny things we would say when replacing dialogue from movies. On second thought, maybe not. What seems funny to an eight year old brain is probably best remembered via nostalgia.
Our first store bought movie was Monty Pythons Life of Brian. They didn't price movies for sale back then. It was all about the rental. To buy a copy, it cost my brother something like 90 bucks. The guy kept trying to talk him out of buying it. But we had to have it. We watched that thing over and over. I actually still have that tape in my collection. It's brutal to try and watch it now. Worn out, grainy, and a risk of snagging/breaking in the machine. I'm actually sad to see VHS go, even though I haven't bought anything on VHS since the day I bought my first DVD player. I still use my VHS to record tv shows. I haven't made the jump to TIVO.