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Petty Things That Get On Your Nerves...


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18 minutes ago, BFTD said:

Game rental seems even stranger than video rental now. If you were a kid with a free weekend, you could play right through a lot of games in the Nineties, but imagine renting something like Skyrim or Cyberpunk 2077 now; you'd barely be scratching the surface.

Game rental would never work now, but in the 90s it was brilliant. A new game every weekend, and could usually play them right through if they were that type of game. I loved Global Video, it was a ritual every Friday after school to go pick up a film and a game for the weekend.

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8 minutes ago, BFTD said:

Kid I went to school with in the late Eighties had a father who bet the farm on Betamax being the format of choice and refused to admit he'd made a mistake. Their local video rental van kept a small supply of about a dozen Beta tapes just for them to rent.

Told me that they'd watched Top Gun hundreds of times. Could've just saved the money and bought a VHS player and their own copy.

My dad bought V2000 (it was the other version).

Think it was a Phillips/Grundig thing.

The tapes were double sided like audio tapes so you could record more in better quality, but never caught on especially for video rental,

Video 2000 - Wikipedia

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1 minute ago, Craig fae the Vale said:

Game rental would never work now, but in the 90s it was brilliant. A new game every weekend, and could usually play them right through if they were that type of game. I loved Global Video, it was a ritual every Friday after school to go pick up a film and a game for the weekend.

When you look at how much games cost at the time, you can see why rental was so popular. The SNES was particularly bad; I don't think I ever bought a new game for that machine. Stuff like Super Star Wars was about £70 IIRC; that's almost £150 now.

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13 minutes ago, BFTD said:

Kid I went to school with in the late Eighties had a father who bet the farm on Betamax being the format of choice and refused to admit he'd made a mistake. Their local video rental van kept a small supply of about a dozen Beta tapes just for them to rent.

Told me that they'd watched Top Gun hundreds of times. Could've just saved the money and bought a VHS player and their own copy.

My old boy appeared home one day with a top loader from Radio Rentals, hired for the weekend. He had two video tapes in a bag.

One video was An American Werewolf in London (so looking online at release dates must have been shortly after June '82), which I watched about 3 times with my sister (I was 10 at the time so a bit of an eye opener).

The second video tape, to this day, remains a mystery but needless to say, my folks invited a few of their friends round on the Saturday night to watch it.

2 weeks later, he hired a Betamax and about a month after that, he went and bought a VHS player second hand from somewhere.  I'd never seen so many of our  neighbours turn up at 10pm on a Saturday night before. 

ETA: Pretty sure it was one of these bad boys. Recognise the sticky out buttons on the front. 

Vintage VHS video recorders. The JVC HR-3300, HR3300, The JVC HR-4100,  HR4100, First VHS video recorder. History

Edited by Melanius Mullarkey
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1 minute ago, Melanius Mullarkey said:

My old boy appeared home one day with a top loader from Radio Rentals, hired for the weekend. He had two video tapes in a bag.

One video was An American Werewolf in London (so looking online at release dates must have been shortly after June '82), which I watched about 3 times with my sister (I was 10 at the time so a bit of an eye opener).

The second video tape, to this day, remains a mystery but needless to say, my folks invited a few of their friends round on the Saturday night to watch it.

2 weeks later, he hired a Betamax and about a month after that, he went and bought a VHS player second hand from somewhere.  I'd never seen so many of our  neighbours turn up at 10pm on a Saturday night before. 

Were your folks fully paid up members of the 'Upside Down Pineapple Club' ?

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13 hours ago, BFTD said:

One of the few circumstances where read receipts might actually be useful.

 

The system my company uses shows me every time someone reads an email I've sent them and if they've looked at attachments, clicked on links etc - without them knowing that I know. 

 

Useful when they say "Oh I never got your email/haven't read it yet/there was no attachment"

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Just now, MEADOWXI said:

My dad bought V2000 (it was the other version).

Think it was a Phillips/Grundig thing.

The tapes were double sided like audio tapes so you could record more in better quality, but never caught on especially for video rental,

Video 2000 - Wikipedia

I remember seeing V2000 on the video cases that would accept multiple formats, but never even knew what it was  :P

9 minutes ago, Melanius Mullarkey said:

My old boy appeared home one day with a top loader from Radio Rentals, hired for the weekend. He had two video tapes in a bag.

One video was An American Werewolf in London (so looking online at release dates must have been shortly after June '82), which I watched about 3 times with my sister (I was 10 at the time so a bit of an eye opener).

The second video tape, to this day, remains a mystery but needless to say, my folks invited a few of their friends round on the Saturday night to watch it.

2 weeks later, he hired a Betamax and about a month after that, he went and bought a VHS player second hand from somewhere.  I'd never seen so many of our  neighbours turn up at 10pm on a Saturday night before. 

Ah, the early Eighties. Just as well Orwell never lived long enough to try renting Animal Farm.

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30 minutes ago, BFTD said:

When you look at how much games cost at the time, you can see why rental was so popular. The SNES was particularly bad; I don't think I ever bought a new game for that machine. Stuff like Super Star Wars was about £70 IIRC; that's almost £150 now.

Aye, MegaDrive games were like £40 minimum, which there was no way my family could afford at the time other than for a special occasion. £3.99 to rent the game for the week, brilliant. Got to play so many games I would never have been able to play otherwise.

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1 hour ago, BFTD said:

I remember Ritz being decent - it was our local in the mid Nineties. They'd do a thing where they'd shut down during the holidays and run a deal where you could rent ten tapes for a fiver and keep them for a few weeks; manager told me it was to minimise the stock on the premises in case they got broken into.

That sounds like a cracker of a deal. 

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5 hours ago, MEADOWXI said:

My dad bought V2000 (it was the other version).

Think it was a Phillips/Grundig thing.

The tapes were double sided like audio tapes so you could record more in better quality, but never caught on especially for video rental,

Video 2000 - Wikipedia

Woman in my office had one of those.

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6 hours ago, Melanius Mullarkey said:

My old boy appeared home one day with a top loader from Radio Rentals, hired for the weekend. He had two video tapes in a bag.

One video was An American Werewolf in London (so looking online at release dates must have been shortly after June '82), which I watched about 3 times with my sister (I was 10 at the time so a bit of an eye opener).

The second video tape, to this day, remains a mystery but needless to say, my folks invited a few of their friends round on the Saturday night to watch it.

2 weeks later, he hired a Betamax and about a month after that, he went and bought a VHS player second hand from somewhere.  I'd never seen so many of our  neighbours turn up at 10pm on a Saturday night before. 

ETA: Pretty sure it was one of these bad boys. Recognise the sticky out buttons on the front. 

Vintage VHS video recorders. The JVC HR-3300, HR3300, The JVC HR-4100,  HR4100, First VHS video recorder. History

My gran had a top loading video with a wired remote control. Her chair was in the middle of the room facing the tv, so if you sat to the right of the tv, you had to hurdle the wire on the way to the door if you needed to go for a pish

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7 hours ago, Melanius Mullarkey said:

My old boy appeared home one day with a top loader from Radio Rentals, hired for the weekend. He had two video tapes in a bag.

One video was An American Werewolf in London (so looking online at release dates must have been shortly after June '82), which I watched about 3 times with my sister (I was 10 at the time so a bit of an eye opener).

The second video tape, to this day, remains a mystery but needless to say, my folks invited a few of their friends round on the Saturday night to watch it.

2 weeks later, he hired a Betamax and about a month after that, he went and bought a VHS player second hand from somewhere.  I'd never seen so many of our  neighbours turn up at 10pm on a Saturday night before. 

ETA: Pretty sure it was one of these bad boys. Recognise the sticky out buttons on the front. 

Vintage VHS video recorders. The JVC HR-3300, HR3300, The JVC HR-4100,  HR4100, First VHS video recorder. History

Pretty sure the model number of that was 8922. 

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I think the reason VHS took off was because Thorn EMI invested in it & the EMI part owned rights to so many songs on the soundtracks & refused to license them to Betamax producers to protect their investment, might be utter shite, but that’s what I was told at the time. 

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7 hours ago, Craig fae the Vale said:

Game rental would never work now, but in the 90s it was brilliant. A new game every weekend, and could usually play them right through if they were that type of game. I loved Global Video, it was a ritual every Friday after school to go pick up a film and a game for the weekend.

The days of the Spectrum and Commodore 64 were great, buy a game, get yerself a blank cassette and knock out as many copies as you wanted. Halcyon days.

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