Monday, December 22, 2008

R.I.P. VHS

The L.A. Times has a nostalgic piece on the final curtain for VHS as its last distributor moves on. Well worth a read.

The above commercial references the RCA SelectaVision line of VCRs. My love of all things movies began with the RCA SelectaVision VideoDisc player that dad brought home some 30 years ago. They still have it, and it still works. (Check it out here. Move immediately to the 4:00 mark to skip the movie clips and see the ole "CED" in action.)
Posted by Splash at 5:40 PM

2 comments:

Daniel said...

Wow. The LaserDisc demo brings back memories of a "well-to-do" (his dad was a detective, his mom was a PE teacher, but he was, by far, the richest kid I knew)elementary school buddy of mine.

The first movie we ever watched on laser disc? Dr. No.

Those things STILL have tech advantages over DVD, not the least of which was the idiot-proof sleeve that never allowed a human to fingerprint or scratch the data.

7:19 AM, December 23, 2008
Splash said...

XDPaul, totally. If you maintained the stylus, I'll bet these things would outlast VHS. (I know my brother and I watched 'Star Wars' at least 100 times with less deterioration.)

I considered posting more SelectaVision CED links but didn't want to upstage the funeral for VHS.

But check out this remastered opening RCA jingle to really bring back the memories:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHlaDT4gG8I

Also see this behind the scenes tour of how they made these things. Feels like a Dharma Initiative training video, too.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6915995168252564491&ei=pUVQScfWDZaEqQP0reihCw&q=rca+selectavision+videodisc

11:54 AM, December 23, 2008

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