Cooper S

My dad had a piano key VHS recorder at work which I was able to borrow during the summer of '81 I think, to record HTV's screenings of Thunderbirds - many of which I still have. Most of them still compare pretty well to the recent DVD releases ! Regret taping over Artemis '81 though - all that I've got left is the end credits.

'I've only got one spare'

'Well, borrow one !'

clarence

I bought a Panasonic VCR in 1984 (model unknown, cost approx. £500) which lasted until 2000! Oldest recording - a programme on Skiffle. I watched this over the Holidays - quality still reasonable. New VCR 2000, DVD player 2006. Most of my old recordings are still watchable and a valuable record of programmes unlikely to be repeated. A great investment.


Clarence

Steve Crook

Reel to reel video recorders? I should hope not. They were the size of a small house and because of the speed they ran at they were very dangerous

Steve

penfold

They were...at a price. We had several in the Film and Video Department at our Teacher Training College in the early 80's...they probably dated from the mid 70's, Black and White only, were portable (In theory, they weighed about 100 lbs with the battery pack) and were more often used for videoing our mini masterpieces than recording programmes, though both were done. If our little department could get hold of them, they must have been commercially available.

Bit of a Bay Window, what??

cletus awreetus

Bit like early mobile phones, and only the late 70's early 80's.

Spin forward 25 years and I wonder if there will be discussions about how ungainly today's "slimline" models are

penfold

Those were for studio use....there were also reel to reel videotape machines on a smaller scale on a helical scan, so much slower tape speed and smaller reels. A reel was about 6" diameter, and had a duration of about 30 mins. if memory serves...they were heavy by todays standards, had a battery pack and we did take them on to the streets for videoing with cameras. It looked for all the world like the 1960's reel to reel audio tape recorders, except for the tape width, and that one reel was mounted at a lower level than the other to create the diagonal for the record/play heads.

Edit: I think this might be it actually; if so, it was from the mid 60's and now a highly valuable museum piece!!

Bit of a Bay Window, what??

Windthrop

My first machine was a rented Philips Video 2000 machine (remember them ?) in 1982. The first recording I made was an Agatha Christie play The Spiders Web with I think Penelope Keith in it. It taught me lesson very early on that the best systems do not always survive. Video 2000 was discontinued fairly swiftly and I haven't trusted Philips since. They developed the mighty Video 2000 with Grundig and it was going to revolutionise home video - 8 hr tapes - 4 decent length movies on one tape at a time when there were no 4 hr cassettes and half speed machines in other formats. The market was quite well saturated by VHS and Betamax but Philips and Grundig shot themselves in the foot from the outset by using different tradenames - Grundig's was Video 2 x 4. Within a year I switched to VHS and sold all my tapes (quite a few) to a teacher (I was still at secondary school). A sobering lesson because Video 2000 had it's launch delayed by 18 months and if released earlier using a unified title it might have survived. I know eventually there were half speed machines available before it was discontinued giving 16 hrs on a tape. I am sitting on my hands now regarding HD and Blu Ray. I just feel that discs are redundant in a hard drive, download world.

Winner of'There Is Nothing Like A Dame' Quiz revealed

samkydd

I've still got the final series of Not the Nine O Clock News from 1981, which starts with the end of The Marti Caine Show which used to go out immediately before NTNOCN, plus the first series of The Young Ones from the following year.

These were recorded on my mum's new £550 VCR, a Sharp front loading VHS model with a fast forward and reverse "remote" control on a wire, which could record one programme on one channel only! Blank video cassettes then were £10 each as I remember!

I've got boxes of video cassettes unlabelled stored somewhere so it would be interesting on a wet weekend in January sometime to see what's on them. I still record on to video now, I don't have any new fangled DVD recording technology, so tapes are just fine!

Lady Lois

1982 - my parents bought a VHS when everyone else up the street had Betamax - we rented it along with colour TV! So naturally we all seemed to tape a lot of black & white films - mainly Norman Wisdom and anything Ealing for my dad. Incidently we first films we hired were the two Python films "Holy Grail" and "Life of Brian".

However, I was a HUGE Beatles at that time and taped lots of snippets of Beatles in other programmes (yuk even McCartney's Pipes of Peace video on Top of the Pops ) but I remember very clearly taping "Birth of the Beatles" and playing it to death... much better than "Backbeat" anyday

Steptoes Son

I hope you still are a HUGE Beatles fan, Birth of the beatles is a great film, I agree much better than Backbeat.

batman

That makes three of us ... I really enjoyed Birth of The Beatles but found Backbeat very dull, especially as they couldn't use any Beatles music. Stephen Dorff was incredibly wooden and the only saving grace of the film was Ian Hart.

Bats.

I wish I had claws.

Lady Lois

Yes, I found Birth of the Beatles to be more likely, just a bunch of lads from Liverpool - Backbeat was trying to hard to make everyone seem so... 'destined to be great' and all that. Hart was excellent, but I don't think Lennon was permanently scowling and bitter!

Oh yes, I am still very much a Beatles fan... but as a 13 year old it was all so new to me and nothing mattered to me as much as the Beatles. I am more restrained now

cletus awreetus

Our school was split into two factions: Stones or Beatles

Steve Crook

What about The Who?

Steve

cletus awreetus

Well, yes, there were a handful of Who-ites, as there were Kink-ites, but generally it was the Stones or Beatles.
There was one pupil who like neither and when it was made public that he appreciated Irving Berlin, particularly Call Me Madam, well he was just asking to be humiliated and called Madam.
Schoolchildren can be so cruel.