Be Kind, Rewind (ITT: It is 1997 and we are at a video store)

Princess Alice

Wow...look at all the tapes...

Let's rent Matilda!

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Princess Alice

Pfft, Sega Genesis. Don't you know it's all PlayStation these days?

Anonus

But I've got a Nintendo 64!

Princess Alice

But Anonononus, CD-ROMs are the way of the future!

Just look at this AppleWorks CD-ROM I bought for my Power Macintosh!

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Corporal Forsythe

In 1997 I purchased my first DVD player and Sony WEGA TV but Wrath of Khan on DVD wasn't until 3 years later so I rented a very badly worn VHS from, uh, 

what was that service where you could rent movies and sodas and game systems and they'd deliver that stuff right to your door? Lasted less than a year from the dot com bubble but damn I loved that service

Obā-san

Letsee, when I was 3...


I'd get piggyback rides from my dad to the park, and we'd go a bit further to this store where I'd get a caramel Then we'd go to the video store and get Totoro (*With the number of times we'd rented it, we could have bought it a dozen times over*)


Those were the days, ignorance is bliss.

Salix Babylonika

Corporal_Forsythe said:

In 1997 I purchased my first DVD player and Sony WEGA TV but Wrath of Khan on DVD wasn't until 3 years later so I rented a very badly worn VHS from, uh, 

what was that service where you could rent movies and sodas and game systems and they'd deliver that stuff right to your door? Lasted less than a year from the dot com bubble but damn I loved that service

There were actually over two dozen of those services.

Nowadays most of them don't even turn up a Google result.

Princess Alice

When I was 7 (i.e., in 1997), my family used to shop at this then-new Kroger store over on Bethel Road, which had a complete video rental store inside. I recall it being "dark" in there; it had black walls and a black floor and a dark ceiling.

This isn't the same store, but it has the same layout. The section at the left were all the greeting cards are is where the video store would have been. (Thus the extra store entrance to right, despite this not being near the checkouts.)

Tre

Goo goo gaga...

Oh, wait, I was silent until age 3.

-is mute-

Justice4243

EAT A DICK, SUCKERS! WHERE' GOING TO CHARGE $5 PER NEW RELEASE FOR A SINGLE NIGHT, AND THAT'S THE WAY IT'S GOING TO WORK FOREVER!

WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?! WE'RE LIKE THE BIGGEST RENTAL CHAIN EVER!

NOTHING IS GOING TO CHANGE THAT! NOTHING!

Tre

My parents both worked at Blockbuster, once.

I don't like the chain much anymore and I don't think they do beyond the nostalgia, either, since we only go to BB Express sometimes and Redbox/Netflix have cannibalized the rest of our movie renting otherwise.

Imipolex G

Hm. I didn't realize DVD players had existed in 1997.

Well, unlike the Corporal, I owned a VHS tape of Wrath of Khan, so I didn't have to rent it or nothin'

lee4hmz

DVD players existed in 1997, but the real question was, could you afford one? They were still pretty new at the time. I also remember that my brother had one of the very first PC DVD players -- it used a separate MPEG-2 decoder card, because PCs in 1997 couldn't decode it in software in real time. :lol:

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Corporal Forsythe

lee4hmz said:

DVD players existed in 1997, but the real question was, could you afford one? They were still pretty new at the time. I also remember that my brother had one of the very first PC DVD players -- it used a separate MPEG-2 decoder card, because PCs in 1997 couldn't decode it in software in real time. :lol:

I'm still putting it together, but I went digging through the likes of Usenet and other dark corners of the internet to dig up the reactions of video and audiophiles whenever DVDs appeared on the horizon. That shit is golden. It really is. The snootiness, pretentiousness, and overall imbecility involved there peaked like never before. You'd think with the aftermath that we wouldn't have shit like Monster Cable around, but anyway. I should make a thread one day. 

Justice4243

"You'd think with the aftermath that we wouldn't have shit like Monster Cable around, but anyway. I should make a thread one day. "

You really should.

We have one Monster Cable that runs from our PS3 to our HDTV for the video.

Also a Monster Power surge protector.

Fun fact: I think Gabe and Tycho based that drawing off the exact model we own.

We got both plus a bottle of TV cleaner for about $100, which is about how much the cable and surge protector cost individually. 

Corporal Forsythe

Well, the whole big deal was that Laserdisc was not a very popular consumer option, and not a very good one either. Its design which is from the stone age is basically the same concept as a record player and a stylus to generate sound, except this generates video, making it an analog format -- but with a laser stylus.  This also rendered it a composite format, which basically meant that its video signal was never better (without expensive hardware filters) than a regular ol' cheesy RCA connection. So, in order to get the most pristine image possible, video enthusiasts would spend thousands of dollars on equipment that was expensive anyway because there was no mass market demand. The King Shit of all LD players was this Japan-only model that after shipping and importing cost the enthusiast well over $6000. 

Anyway whenever DVD showed up with its completely digital, HDMI-compliant self around that time and whose potential quality is like comparing Ferrari Testarossa to a Tin Lizzie -- and accessible and affordable to the average consumer (this is the big one really) -- the videophiles who invested systems that cost as much as a house were quite upset and their already addled mindsets which convinced them to spend thousands on useless devices to "improve" their home theater experience went to work justifying how DVD was a shit format compared to LD. 

Justice4243

I think most of my arguments would revolve around how much easier it is to kill someone with a laser disk.

lee4hmz

Yeah, and MCA, IBM and a cast of tens spent a good couple of decades trying to get the technology to work in the first place. Eventually they washed their hands of it and sold the whole mess to Pioneer, who lucked out when CD and DVD got big and it turned out some of the LD patents applied to both of them.

Tre

I think we have a Monster surge protector like that somewhere in the house, too.

I'm partial to my Belkin one.

Justice4243

We have a ton of surge protectors, but none that really compare to that one as far as price. We also needed a HDMI cable.

I'm sure someone made a tidy profit off of us getting that thing, but considering how much the HDMI cable cost by itself (Even one not from monster) it's still pretty hard to look at it as spending money on something frivolous.

Sredni Vashtar

The synth-punk group The Screamers wanted to release their first LP as a video album on Laserdisc back in the late '70s. They broke up before they could get around to it, which sucks considering how outrageous they were...

Corporal Forsythe

Well not in America, but in Japan Laserdisc enjoyed immense popularity. This was good and bad news for anime fans, because a typical 2-episode disc of a popular show typically ran $75-90. That's not adjusting for current inflation, either. I saw a friend of mine casually drop $3500 on the Urusei Yatsura LD box back at AX98. It was only like 3 years later for mp4 to finally be a viable option to trade shows around with, too. 

Funny note: LDs in Japan were expensive, VHS tapes of the same shit cost even more. 

Salix Babylonika

My Uncle actually had (still has, come to think of it) a laserdisc collection.

I haven't the slightest why he does, but there you go.

Sredni Vashtar

Corporal Forsythe said:

I saw a friend of mine casually drop $3500 on the Urusei Yatsura LD box back at AX98.

Holy Hell. Why.

Salix Babylonika

whoa whoa whoa

$3,500?

I could get a used car for that money.

Some people just amaze me.

Sredni Vashtar

I could buy seven copies of the Merzbox for that money.

Seven.

Salix Babylonika

dude why

Sredni Vashtar

Because Merzbox. Also, resale value.

Honestly, I'd probably get the Merzbox, the Klaus Schultze "Platinum Collection," and a bunch of instruments and gear and things. Maybe get all the Subterranean Press Ligotti reissues, and the box set for The Tatami Galaxy.

I could do a lot with $3500.

Justice4243

To be fair to CFs friend, what exactly where his options for owning a high-quality version of an Anime he loved in the late 90s?

Back then, us otaku would trade shitty quality tapes of fan-dubs around for our anime fix. Aside from the popular stuff that would actually get dubbed, you basically had to either know a friend who owned these or buy these shitty tapes yourself.

Eventually, higher company interest, faster internet speeds, better communication over the net, etc... etc... made it much easier for one to get their fix, but , if I had the scratch, and there was basically only ONE WAY I was going to get to watch high quality DBZ, then I could see dropping $3,500 to make my dream come true.

Salix Babylonika

But $3500 dude?

Like

that's....a lot of money.

I'm pretty sure there is not a single show I would pay $3500 to have. 

Justice4243

We're talking almost 200 episodes here, so that's a lot of disk, and (As mentioned) this was probably the guys only option at the time.

$3,500 is a big chunk of change, but if you have enough disposable income, you will spend A LOT on your hobbies.

You guys probably don't even want to know how much money Friday and I have spent on MtG cards or even how much my Alcohol collection is worth, for instance. 

Also, this guy must have already bought a LD player and all relevant equipment, I'm going to assume he had an income that even puts mine to shame.

Sredni Vashtar

200 episodes is... wow. Yeah. That's a lot of show. If I were to multiply the cost of the show I mentioned by that number of episodes...

Over $5000.

Yeah, not so sure how much he got ripped off now. God damn it, anime.

Corporal Forsythe

Also, UY was one of the few shows that was (as a whole) translated and fansubbed for laserdiscs.  I forgot to bring this up in my other thread because this was an obscure-as-hell way for english speaking fans to get their fix. Bear with me on this, it's going to sound more like a hack than anything.

In the 80's (and hell early 90's I dunno) there were two problems with distribution of anime: Videotape trading like Justice mentioned and actually getting the shit subbed. Translations of a show were a relatively simple matter by trading around a .txt file -- that is, if the translators weren't massive dickheads about it, and most of them were. Videotapes were the only practical way to get a show around, if you were loaded with money you would trade in S-video tapes. Having primo video quality and subs was quite a problem but Pioneer inadvertently provided a fix for this years before. 

Pioneer put out a few select players that had an RS-232 (serial) data port on the back. This port could be used for a lot of shit, including building your own Dragons Lair home arcade unit for the intrepid, and and timing bad-looking, but programmable text to the screen. By hooking your LD player up to your computer with some kind of shitty Amiga or DOS software, you could now experience subtitles on your LD. 

So if it was a popular show like UY or even Ranma, you could reasonably expect to find subtitles that you could wire in provided you knew the right people because they didn't hand out those files for free. Hell, even getting into the fansub trading community was difficult. Fans in the 80's and 90's delighted in watching people they didn't like beg for a copy of a show they have or have seen. 

Corporal Forsythe

Also tomorrow I'm sending in my LD player for repair to like the one place in the world that fixes them now. There's still a few anime shows from the 70's and 80's that have never seen a DVD release and I'd like to see a few of them digitally archived, at least. 

thenamelesssamurai

Justice42 said:

You guys probably don't even want to know how much money Friday and I have spent on MtG cards or even how much my Alcohol collection is worth, for instance.

Actually, I do want to know how much your alcohol collection is worth.

Obā-san

$3500.... damn that's a lot of money. For 3500 I'd get a pair of Sennheisers and a new lappy, and I'd save the rest.

Corporal Forsythe

That was $3500 in 1998 moneys. Which is, uh, just about $5000 now. 

Hell, 2 episodes of Ranma from Viz was $30 on VHS which is like $45 now. Shit was an expensive hobby. I took $700 to AX97 and didn't walk out with much. For a well-to-do-fan, that $3500 spent was a drop in the bucket. 

Then about three years later it became possible to trade and watch anime at a decent resolution over the internet. I can't speak for all that money burned but even today I would be wincing at dropping that much for something so stupid. 

Justice4243

"Actually, I do want to know how much your alcohol collection is worth."

Crap, someone called me out on this. 

It's a little hard to say because pretty much every bottle is open and partially drunk.

I think my most valuable beverage is some aged Tequila. That was over $100 for the bottle, I have three other bottles that where more like $50, and a couple that are at $20.

I have a bottle of Absinthe that cost around $70.

My Scotch is pretty low at the moment, but there's a couple of mostly full bottles that are about $45.

I have some Crystal Skull Vodka that was about  $50.

And just...loads and loads of Liquors, mixers, wine, and other necessary staples like Gin and Vodka. Also flavored stuff, like Vodka's and Bourbons.

If I had to guess...I probably have around 100 bottles of random stuff ranging anywhere from a little over $5 to $50. Given the amount of wine and mixers, I'd say the average value of those 100 bottles is like $15 (possibly a bit higher).

If I have the final amount accounting for the fact that much of the bottles are open and have been drunk from, it's probably $1,000 worth of liquid retail.

But obviously, I've spent double that just to have the bottles in the first place, not to mention all the things I've had to replace. I'm sure I've spent several thousand dollars on alcohol. Though, not all at once.

I also only tend to drink one or two drinks a night (more on the weekends), so stuff tends to stick around for a while (unless it's beer).  

Corporal Forsythe

Leaving Las Vegas ITT

Princess Alice

[insert "Liquid Assets" pun here]