the early years of Betamax/VCRs and video stores.

[blackdragon6]

back in the day there were lots of mom and pop video stores (especially with a seedy XXX section lol), they're all but gone now. so i want to know when was your earliest memory of having a VCR or betamax and what did your family constantly rent or buy?

i remember vividly us getting this sleek VCR in the mid 90's. we kinda missed the boat when it came to the late 80's early 90's hey day of video rentals.

[godzilla2099]

Two of my biggest memories at the Betamax/VHS Stores:

1. Belinda Carlisle: I was a young kid but when I saw her on TV at one of the stores, I had such a crush on her, I couldn't even look at the screen I was so bashful

2. Of course its going t be the seedy xxx section, lol: I got caught looking in there and when asked to leave, I just kept saying "No speak English" Eventually, the teen girl thought it wasn't worth it and left me alone

[J. Robb]

I remember seeing a VCR (or maybe laserdisc) player on display in the late 70s. The part that amazed me was when someone fast-forwarded the movie, I thought they were fast-forwarding TV. I immediately thought about how great this would be, skipping through commercials, and past the farm report on Saturday morning to get to the cartoons. But then I realized this probably wasn't possible, since some shows like the news and sports are on live.

It's funny to think about how much time I spent in video stores and arcades in the 80s, now both are pretty much gone.

[The Black Guardian]

At some point in the late-70s, a rich friend had a Betamax. We went to his place for a Halloween party. The adults got to party, and the kids were locked in a room to watch The Omen on Betamax. Yes, for the kind of people my parents hung with, The Omen was kid's entertainment. It's about a kid, right?

Then in the early 80s--sometime--81/82: Stepdad bought this VCR/Camcorder combo that was in two pieces, and the camera (and battery pack) weighed a ton. I'm pretty sure it was VHS. He took it on a European vacation once, and went into the Catacombs in Rome, filming two whole hours of complete darkness. Heheh.

There was one main store to buy videos, but it wasn't "mom&pop." Well, it was family-run, but it was a huge, million-dollar store that sold all kinds of audio/video stuff. The place was called Sound Trek Audio and had the Enterprise in the logo (I very much doubt they got Paramount's approval for it) that you could see from the highway. I remember renting Caveman, Westworld and Futureworld, and a bunch of others. Nobody bought videos back then, if you wanted to own a tape, it was a hefty price.

[geddlo]

We got our first VCR sometime back in the mid 80's from a local electrons store, PC Richards, and would also rent from there as well. Pale Rider was one of the first movies we rented.

One of the first movies we recorded was Empire Strikes Back and I was young enough to believe that if anyone talked during the movie that their voices would be recorded just like an audio tape recorder.

[darkmetal]

I remember when I got my first vcr,IT was a wired looking one with a screen attached to it. I remember popping up Batman 89 in it.Then until my teens we got a nicer VCR but then I wanted to live in the basement(which bye the way I am still doing at the age of 27) and I got a six disc DVD changer.

[Stressfactor]

I remember my mom and dad went shopping and left my sister and I at home. I spent the afternoon watching a special on the upcoming movie "Back to the Future" (yes, the FIRST one) and when my parents came home the reason why they had gone shopping alone proved to be because they wanted to surprise us with a VCR!

At the time the only place that rented movies was a good 20 minute drive from our place -- it was one of a chain of stores known as Tipton. They had one set of shelving for VHS and one set of shelving for Beta and the selection kind of sucked but I remember being excited because it meant that I could finally watch the "Star Wars" trilogy any time I wanted to and uncut as opposed to having to wait for it to come on broadcast TV (we didn't get cable until the 1990's) and having it chopped up with commercials.

[Surtur]

Heck I still use a vcr. I have a vcr/dvd combo. I use the vcr to tape things since I don't have any programs like dvr that I can use to record shows I want to see. I still have my old betamax player too, though I don't use it. Also have an old video camera that uses betamax tapes.

[Tish-the-Scorpion]

man i would be here all day talking about renting videos. we had a betamax first then a REAL vcr in the late 80's (although i recall the beta actually LOOKING better). and my parents was freaks, my mom would actually buy and rent porn from the XXX section lol. afterwards she would watch it with my dad and her 2 sisters right in front of us!. but yeah my mom and my youngest aunt loved trashy genre films. it's why i love sexploitation/blaxploitation/kung fu films etc so much. it's also how i discovered anime, along with samurai films, and some of john woo's early stuff. some of these films got lost in time, like tears in rain.

movies i discovered on tape was


almost every Blaxploitation film

Cherry 3000

Dawn of the dead

Night Of The Creeps (i might have actually seen it at a drive-in first though)

Night of The living Dead

Alien

The Terminator (i might have saw it at the movies too i'm not sure)

Terror Vision

Critters 2. 3 and 4

Hardboiled, The Killer, A Better Tomorrow

The Blob (1988) but i have seen it at the theater/drive in as well

The Hitcher

and many many other movies that i didn't get to see in the theaters.

oh and i would steal my parents porn stash, they never kept track of them cause there was alot. i think they just didn't care after awhile. that's how i discovered actresses like Debi Diamond,

[blackdragon6]

my mom and dad would also get together with their friends (our next door neighbors) and watch those mid-80's porn films......in front of the kids no less!! i think it was because we were young and they didn't think it mattered, i was like 4 or 5 at the time. but some of those films i remember vividly. every time i tell that story people are like "wow that's crazy" (for instance poster i..mmmmchocolate on this very board lol). my moms friend is how i discovered those trashy Laura Gemser films. he would always rent them with the straight forward porn stuff from a store that also sold top line color TV's. yeah my mom was....different when it came to video rentals.

[jediracer]

ninja movies. lots of ninja movies.

[Romero]

We started with Betamax and then went to VHS. Betamax was smaller so I am surprised that VHS won. I don't remember a difference in quality.

The very first movie I remember seeing on tape was "Ice Pirates"!

We had local video stores in both the front and back of our neighborhood. Only one had a porn section, which was a small room separated by a beaded curtain!

My love of horror films and ninja films was facilitated by these stores and the VCR. One store had a surprisingly good horror section. Many of the movies I was reading about in Fangoria magazine were there. Lots of Italian stuff and "banned" stuff like "Make them Die Slowly"!

My buddy and I still kind of miss that store. Austin has several hipster dvd stores that of course have TONS of movies to rent, but it's almost overwhelming. And there is just something about the memory of riding our bikes up to the store to rent whatever we wanted...

[hulahulk]

Not only did we rent movies, we rented the VCR as well in the early days!

[Brainiac 3.5]

We got our VCR about '87. There was a video rental store, Video USA, right across the street. We rented just about anything that came out. No back room with a beaded curtain though. I really miss the "be kind, rewind" days.

[Sabrina_Fried]

My parents bought a VCR in the mid-80's. At the time it was considered state-of-the-art and cost around $500 or so. Most of what we rented (that I was allowed to watch) was disney movies in the old-style white cases that were far larger than they needed to be.

My parents still have that VCR actually. I don't know if the mechanisms still work, but they use it as a clock in their bedroom.