Be Kind, Rewind: The Home Video Revolution

Before we leap into the fray with gusto and abandon (and aplomb, of course), I have a brief follow-up to share regarding my previous column: Student Life and Sound Systems in the Seventies.

I was just on a video call with my friend Joe Farr, who hails from England. Joe said that he’d read the column (I was sure that someone was reading these columns — now I know who) and that it had reminded him of some things.

Joe reminded me that the late 1960s and early 1970s offered a very different musical landscape compared to today. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) ran the only legal national radio stations. The main outlet for pop and rock was BBC Radio 1, which launched in 1967. Radio 1 was influential but tightly controlled. With the exception of certain characters, such as John Peel, playlists generally avoided “off-beat” or controversial material, and airplay was skewed toward mainstream chart acts.

In the case of television, the BBC’s flagship music show was Top of the Pops (TOTP). This was very mainstream, focusing almost exclusively on the singles in the charts. If a band wasn’t in the Top 40, they wouldn’t get on the program, which meant that genres like heavy rock, reggae, and progressive music were pretty much ignored.

Joe told me that the tiny record shop in his home village was his only real exposure to offbeat music (no “off-beat” pun intended). Like he says, “If they didn't sell it, I didn't know it existed. I would wander into the shop, located above the newsagent's, perhaps once a month, and flip through the thousands of record sleeves stored in plastic wallets, organized in large, floor-standing tray units. You could pick a sleeve, take it to the counter, and ask to hear a track or two before purchasing it. The chap would plug in a pair of headphones into his record player, and you could stand there listening. The owner also knew his customers. I would pop in and he would say, ‘There's a new record from Iron Maiden’ or ‘Here’s a new group you might like.’ He introduced me to Jean-Michel Jarre and Vangelis — music you never heard on the radio or Top of the Pops. The amazing thing is that I could probably fit his entire inventory on my iPhone now.”

This triggered some memories of my own. I’d forgotten how limited the fare was on the radio and TOTP. This reminded me that Most of the bands I knew were introduced to me by word of mouth from my friends. I’d also forgotten all about listening to tracks in record shops before buying the records. I recall one record store that had a row of numbered alcoves along one wall. Each alcove had a pair of headphones wired into the wall. There were multiple record decks behind the service counter — one for each booth. When you took a record sleeve of interest up to the counter and told them the track you wanted to hear, they’d tell you which booth to go to. I remember that we thought this was space-age technology at the time.

Speaking of space-age technologies, one that blew us away when it became available in the 1970s was the ability to record television programs and play them back whenever we felt like doing so. You must remember that we had only three TV channels in the UK at that time: BBC 1, BBC 2, and ITV. If you missed your favorite program, you were out of luck. You had no expectation of ever being able to see that program again (we had no idea how things would change in the future). You were doomed to hear all your friends telling you what you’d missed and how wonderful it had been the next day.

Video Tape Recorders (VTRs), which used open reels of magnetic tape, first appeared in the 1950s, but these were intended for professional/studio use. In addition to being horrendously expensive, they were huge (the size of a fridge). Video Cassette Recorders (VCRs) intended for consumer use began to appear in the early 1970s.

Of course, nothing is simple. The “VCR Wars” of the 1970s and 1980s offer a classic tale of competing formats in the technology world. In 1972, Philips launched the first domestic VCR, the N1500. The machine was bulky and expensive. Its cassettes were chunky and box-like, measuring approximately 15 × 15 × 5 cm (roughly 6 × 6 × 2 inches), which gave the tapes a nearly square footprint. Each cassette held enough tape for about 1 hour of recording.

Sony introduced the pioneering Betamax home video cassette format in 1975. JVC (Japan Victor Company) released its Video Home System (VHS) format in 1976. The cassettes for both these systems were about the same size as hardback books. They were rectangular and around half the thickness of the Philips offerings.

These machines were nothing like today’s small and light Digital Video Recorders (DVRs). We’re talking about something the size of a small suitcase or microwave oven, weighing 30 to 40 pounds, so it wasn’t something you casually moved around.

Betamax offered higher quality, but shorter recording times (initially 1 hour, later 2). Also, Sony had a very restrictive licensing policy. VHS was of lower quality, but it had longer recording times (initially 2 hours, later extended to 4 to 6 hours). Also, JVC had an open licensing policy and they encouraged other manufacturers (Panasonic, Hitachi, Sharp, etc.) to make VHS machines, thereby flooding the market.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, as home VCRs (both VHS and Betamax) became affordable, small independent shops began offering films for rent. Many of these were corner shops, newsagents, or electrical retailers who put a rack of tapes in the back and charged by the day.

Remember that the video was recorded on magnetic tape wound between two reels. When you finished watching a movie, the tape often ended near the end of the reel. If you left the tape in this condition when you returned it to the store, the next renter would have to rewind the entire tape to the start before watching. To save their customers this hassle, video rental stores began posting friendly reminders, like “Be Kind, Rewind.”

Most rental stores initially carried both VHS and Betamax, since the market was split. However, by the mid-1980s, VHS began to dominate, and many stores quietly stopped replenishing their Betamax stock. By 1986–87, VHS had become the de facto rental format, and Betamax titles had largely disappeared from the shelves.

I purchased my first VHS VCR sometime around 1983. It had pride of place in my front room. It occupied a large shelf in the cabinet beneath the cathode ray tube (CRT) television, which itself weighed approximately 90 pounds.

It’s challenging to convey how different the user experience was with electronic products in those distant days. The user manuals were… interesting. Sony and JVC (as well as other Japanese companies) had major European headquarters and distribution hubs in Germany. Technical documents from Japan were first translated into German, as Germany was a large market with a strong technical publishing infrastructure. From there, the manuals were re-translated into English (and other European languages).

All this resulted in stilted phrasing, odd idioms, and intriguingly interesting instructions. In the case of a new VCR, the first thing you had to do was set the clock using a fiddly mechanical or digital clock-setting interface. Suffice it to say that the accompanying instruction manual was more of a hindrance than a help.

The next step was to tune the TV channels into the VCR itself. VCRs contained their own RF tuner, effectively duplicating the tuner inside your TV. This was necessary because the VCR needed to select which broadcast channel to record, and the TV only displayed whatever the VCR passed through.

If you had a sophisticated setup, you could watch one channel on your TV while recording another on your VCR. Well, you could do this in theory. In practice, it was not uncommon to record the wrong channel at the right time or the right channel at the wrong time. This resulted in much gnashing of teeth and rending of garb, let me tell you. The fun was only increased if your home suffered a power outage during a storm, in which case your VCR smugly returned itself to its unprogrammed state, flashing “12:00” until you reset the clock (hopefully remembering to lock in the correct “a.m.” or “p.m.” while doing so).

I still remember purchasing a new VCR sometime in the 1990s. I recall connecting it to my TV, plugging it in, powering it up, and watching in open-mouthed astonishment as it automatically set the time and tuned the channels itself. Unless you’ve wrestled with one of the early VCRs and their torturous instruction manuals, you can have no idea of the sheer wonder I felt at just how far technology had come.

As I reread what I just wrote — and think about the Digital Video Recorders (DVRs), cloud DVRs, Video on Demand (VoD), and streaming services of today — I want to travel back in time and tell myself: “You ain’t seen nothing yet, kid!”

How about you? If you’re of my generation, has this triggered any memories you’d care to share? And if you hail from more recent times, has anything here made you realize just how lucky you are to bask in the glow of today’s astonishing technologies?

As always, I welcome your captivating comments, querulous questions, and sagacious suggestions, all of which you can share on Hackster's "Throwback Thursdays" Discord channel. I look forward to seeing you there.

P.S. Don't forget that you can peruse and ponder all of my Throwback Thursdays columns here.

P.P.S. Please feel free to email me at max@clivemaxfield.com if you have any questions about this column or if you have any requests or suggestions for future articles.