Jack Horner in Boogie Nights was all against videotape. The Colonel wanted to get out in front of it.
Yes our shop had 3 racks of VHS for rental and only one of Betamax - and the Betamax rack vanished after less than a year. No point getting Beta if you wanted to rent films.
We where ordering in ~6+ of each popular movie because people wanted to rent them and we needed the extra inventory. Come Friday afternoon and Saturdays the video rental operation was very lucrative. We could pay off the purchase price of a VHS movie in 3-5 weeks at most and the rest was pure gravy.
Definitely my favorite Burt Reynolds’s movie - he was born to play that part! John C Reily and Philip Hoffman also were excellent.
Yes, lots of good acting in that movie. Philip Baker Hall that played Gondoli in that clip above passed away just this week at the age of 90.
I started that movie with low hopes and woW was I shown the way... Awesome movie.
It was NTSC, Never Twice the Same Colour
Beta was the better format technically but porn was on VHS
The same happened with DAT.
U-Matic was a Phillips system limited to 60 minutes playback and U -Matic machines were hernia inducing.
Correction:
Sorry U-Matic was a Sony format, Phillips was VCR.
Zambia was OK for power we were fed from the Mine’s power station. We couldn’t buy most consumer goods they weren’t available, finding food was more then difficult. Remember we got a consignment of Finnish tinned cheese came in courtesy of the UN. Obviously we bought some opened it eagerly and it seemed to be made from latex. If any readers of this want vibration isolation for their kit, this cheese comes highly recommended. Tripoli in Libya was a different kettle of fish you could go down the Souk and buy electronic items cheaper than the UK. Power supply was intermittent at best and most Americans living there used to bring in Voltage stabilisers, believe me they were needed. You would have black outs most days, so the Government decided to go from a 127V single phase / 220V three phase supply to a 220V single phase / 380V three phase supply. Unfortunately they never told anyone when the switchover was to take place they did it district by district. Got up in the night for a drink of water switched on the kitchen light and the lamp exploded, realised I was standing in water from my GE fridge which had burnt out. Luckily nothing else had been left on. In Tripoli Sony Beta ruled the roost and VHS machines we’re sold very much, don’t remember seeing any for sale in the Souk.Well, you are totally forgiven.
Back in around 1992, I exchanged a Gyrodec with Kuzma arm and Mr Brier cartridge and a Nakamichi 482Z for a brand new Marantz S-VHS VCR. I wanted it for the extended recording time as the 45 minutes of the Nakamichi weren't enough for the BBC Proms or their radio plays which were normally one hour. Used it for years until CD-R became available. Didn't use it for video much, but it did work very well for audio. Better than my previous Revox A77 reel to reel andat least as good as a well set up Nakamichi without the hassles of realigning the tape machine before every recording or change of tape type.
