VCR Machine

My parents got a VCR for the family one Christmas. We weren’t earlier adaptors like some folks in town. Some family friends across town always had the latest tech.  They had at least two VCRs and had thousands of tapes.  Tapes were everywhere with handwritten labels. The quality varied wildly.  You had to watch one movie with a window screen propped up in front of the television. 

We rushed downstairs to see what Santa brought us.  After the gift opening frenzy, I noticed a silver box on the television shelf.  It was about five inches tall and silver.  Our very own video machine.  I was so excited! 

These days it’s hard to understand what a VCR was and what it did.  Before it you had to wait for shows.  Take Star Wars for example.  I remember it on network television once during my childhood. Once.  So you had to wait until it was in a movie theater again or be lucky enough to have cable. With a magical VCR, you could watch all sorts of movies when you wanted to. 

Analog video recording on magnetic tapes has been around since the 1950s in the commercial world for the broadcast television industry.  They started off with reel to reel tapes.  Sony had a prototype video cassette in 1969 which allowed for the development of a consumer device.  Recording sound on magnetic tape was pioneered in Germany in 1923. Magnetic tape technology is still being innovated in the realm of data storage.  Bing Crosby was an earlier adapter and invested in the company that quadruplex videotape machine. 

It wasn’t until the 1970s, that the push for consumer based technology started in Japan.  Sony, JVC and Matsushita battled the early format war.  In the end,  Matsushita backed JVC’s VHS against Sony’s Betamax.  Commercial devices were released in the late 70s and the format battle continued into the 80s.   VHS won a later market share with its longer running tapes.

Our VCR was a VHS. It wasn’t just a machine,  it was an entire  new world inhabited with  video rental stores, taping shows and watching what you wanted WHEN you wanted.  Before that glorious machine,  you had no agency in what you could view unless you had cable even then your options were limited.  You’d clicked through all the channels until something caught your eye.  Not so with a VCR,  you could go and look at the available tapes and ask yourself, ‘What do I fancy today?’.    Indiana Jones?  Pumpkinhead?  Jean de Florette from the library?  

Media choice was stunning, gob smacking, world changing.  It started in the 70s and has never stopped.