Lord Brett

Two things might make those recordings especially valuable.

Firstly they have the original sound effects (as do the more recent 1990s BBC screenings, which I have recordings of) as opposed to the cack-handed efforts to give the episodes a stereo soundtrack on subsequent TV showings and the DVD releases (that's why any exposion on the show now sounds like someone has dropped a tray of crockery).

Secondly, it's just possible that those sceenings had the original ad break bumpers (the little piece of film and fanfare that announed the beginning and end of the ad break). These haven't been seen in decades, and if your 1981 copies have these, I'd really appreciate it of you'd PM me, as I edit the Gerry Anderson fan club magazine, and fans of the show would love to see these again.

bobsterkent

The oldest thing I had on a VHS was the QED programme from 1983 where Heinz Wolfe went back to 1948 on the eve of '1984'. its been transfered to dvd now.

Private Widdle

Earliest VHS tape I own is the BBC TV series 'The Paras' c.1982 I think. I also have the film 'The Bofors Gun' from about the same time complete with advertisements. I watched this film recently and was interested to see the adverts advertised real products like tea bags, soap powder, toothpaste, breakfast cereals and the like and not loans, financial services, no-win no-fee accident claims which seem to dominate nowadays.

Steve Crook

Adverts for things that are actually useful, and needed by people?
How strange

Steve

terry_mccann

Yep, that was back in 1984 I think...my first VCR was a Dual VR-74...the very first thing I taped was "The Professionals" episode "Black Out" in a german-dubbed version from ZDF station....

those were the days.....a hunt began for all 57 episodes that I only managed to complete at the beginning of the 90's as far as I can remember....DVD-boxes were sooo far away back then ;-)

Lord Brett

Ah yes, 'Die Profis', as I believe it is known over there. Austrian producer Erwin C Dietrich was keen enough to bankroll three films starring Lewis Collins. They start off quite well, but by the third one LC is visibly putting on weight and losing interest.

terry_mccann

Die Profis, that's right.....

This Erwin C.Dietrich later on went on to to cheapest C-Softporn-movies....THAT was real crap...here is his life's achievement:

Erwin C. Dietrich

Don't bother to translate the titles, you will laugh you a..e off ;-)
(e.g. Condom of Horror , Women in the Lovecamp...)

The movies with Lewis in you were talking about were "Geheimcode Wildgänse" , "Kommando Leopard" and "Der Commander"....also pretty crappy in my book. Got them on DVD somewhere...but never really bothered to watch them.

nickgilbert

The earliest recordings I kept were the 5 faces of Doctor Who repeats. Onto Betamax.

I loved the VHS/Betamax battle. My parents had VHS and I had Betamax so I got into tape trading by converting other people's tapes between the 2 format and getting my own copies as a by-product.

terry_mccann

VHS vs. Betamax , as in HD DVD vs. BlueRay ;-)

batman

According to the radio earlier today, the current battle is being won by Blu-Ray, one of the major dvd distributors (Warners I think, I can't remember for sure) has announced they will no longer be making HD discs.

Perhaps, after all these years, Sony will get their own back.

Bats.

There are 31 excellent quizzes to bamboozle you on the Quiz Page. Just click on the 'Quick Links' icon and scroll down!

julian_craster

HD players will soon be so cheap (£ 50 or less) that folks will be able to afford players for both formats (and there are already some players on the market that will play both Blue-Ray and HD discs ...)

terry_mccann

Well to be honest, if I had to name the one company that I don't want getting their own one back it would be Sony....but you are right, read this in our newspaper just yesterday as well...and yes, it was Warner.

dukdriver

I bought my first VHS recorder around 1980, a Hitachi top loader with a cable remote, I still have it. It was a lot of money and I can recall paying £8 for blank 3hr casettes at the time. I remember recording Donald Sinden's series `Discovering English Churches' and to my everlasting regret later recording over them. I still have some programmes recorded 25 years ago but the picture quality seems poor. Either the tapes were of dubious quality or the recordings degrade with time. It is noticeable how heavy an original VHS casette is compared with a modern one.

Bob

"He plays with the pixies"

tellingbone

My oldest recording was made in October 1982, it's an episode of Horizon called '25 Years In Space'.

It scares me to think that 25 years have now passed since I made that recording!

Steve Crook

Which means (does a quick calculation on the back of an envelope) that it's 50 years since Sputnik was launched - actually 4 October 1957

Who can remember that beep - beep - beep ?

Steve