Back in the early and mid 1980s I used to trade music videos on videotape with my friend Scott. I’d record them off of “Friday Night Videos” while he recorded them off of MTV (the cable TV didn’t come up the road until 1988, Scott lived closer to town). The big chore was the actual trading; my father had bought us a VHS recorder when they first came out, Scott had a Betamax machine. Of course the two tapes would never mingle so you had to jimmy up wiring to record between the two. We’d have an occasional discussion about VHS vs Betamax. VHS eventually won. It’s still winning up in my Dad’s neck of the woods.
In this round of another Betamax versus VHS fight, Sony won out today with their Blu-ray format of high definition DVDs. So Earl and I are on the Betamax side of the line this time with the HD-DVD player sitting in our living room. Anyone want to buy an HD-DVD drive for cheap? Hell, you can buy the whole tricked out Xbox 360, just drop me a line for details. We want a Wii.
I’m glad I’ve been to poor to jump and have had to wait out the battle.
Another one was cassette vs. 8-track. I was told back in the late 60’s that I was a fool for buying the cassette deck and not an 8-track deck. Of course, it really doesn’t matter much now.
BTW, your dad’s friends wouldn’t be interested in 4 4-foot shelves worth of home-recorded VHS tapes, would they? 😀