VHS Revolution

This is a 2017 video game.

This is bad.

You've gotta get here.

You've gotta ahh.

This is a video from 2016

by one of the world's biggest stars.

- Ooh, find your light, there, perfect.

Can you please introduce yourself--

And this is a 2017 commercial

for an ultra trendy fashion brand.

How should I call you?

You can call me Anthony.

In a world dominated

by super slick aesthetics the tracking lines,

dull colors, and grainy image of the

video cassette have made a comeback.

The last remaining VCR manufacturer

ceased production in 2016,

but new apps allow you to shoot VHS style videos.

It seems for an entire generation

the poor image quality makes the memory richer.

After all, for '80s kids this

little black box was a revolution.

In the 1980s one item had pride of place

in households around the world, the VCR.

Young and old alike spent their evenings

in front of a television set

which radiated a magic aura once more.

Almost unawares the welded experienced

a social, economic, and artistic revolution.

But the most profound social changes

are rarely the showiest.

They occur on the fringes first

hidden from the general public's view.

As often happens with consumer goods

it was in the United States

that the pioneers dived head first

into the video pool instinctively, enthusiastically.

- Three, two, one, I'm Ray Glasser, Cleveland, Ohio.

I've been collecting videos since 1976

one of the first true Betamax collectors

I guess you could say.

And as of right now in 2016 I still have

2,000 Betamax tapes and I have lots of blank Betamax tapes.

So if Sony stopped making earlier this year, doesn't matter,

I'll never run out of blank tapes.

The Sony Betamax.

Its only purpose is to serve you.

When the Japanese brand Sony

launched its new video format the Betamax in 1976

it sent shockwaves around the world.

In cinema or in television the moving image

had always been the stuff of professionals.

The first videotape recorders were the size of a room

and cost as much as the average house.

But after a fierce technological

and commercial race spanning several decades,

Sony suddenly abolished this privilege.

Betamax made video accessible to everyone.

Yet only a handful of enthusiasts understood

what a radical change this represented

and were willing to dig deep.

Wow, what is that?

This is the Sony Betamax.

The SL 7200 at the time cost somewhere

around $1,200 and for somebody like me

I was lucky to make $100 a week.

So imagine how much it took for me

to save enough money, and get into debt,

and buy a VCR like that.

- Back in 1976 I was working in a restaurant.

I took a second job to make some extra money

so I could afford one of these.

And in June of '76 I got my first Sony Betamax.

- If it boiled down to am I going to eat today,

or am I going to spend some money

on two or three blank tapes?

I'd choose the blank tapes.

- You're obviously a man who's having troubles at home.

You're constantly fighting with your family

over what TV shows to watch.

Well fortunately you're looking at

a simple solution to your problems, Sony Betamax.

At the time Sony marketed

its machine as a simple recording device.

For TV viewers in the '70s it was

nothing short of a miracle.

So you can watch it whenever you want.

I can record the eight o'clock movie

when I'm at work, or the TV show, whatever I wanted.

Come home at 1:30 in the morning,

rewind the tape, and watch it back.

And that was perfect for me.

The Betamax completely relieved me

from the tyranny of the TV schedule.

And remember at this time, 1976, 1977 this was a revolution.

No one could imagine this kind of thing.

Not surprisingly the

early days were exhilarating.

How ya doing?

This is the first annual VCR Plus Michigan Convention

in Fremont, Ohio, February, 5th 1979.

- Enthusiasts organized conventions,

a group of 50 video fans would bring along

their VCRs to record as much as their tapes would allow.

From the outset the little black box

had its own distinctive community.

The pioneers exchanged tapes too

with their peers all over the country.

Thanks to ads placed in a specialist magazine

that was just a few xeroxed pages at the time.

My friend Gary and I began running ads

in the Video Files newsletter for things

we were looking for as you can see right here.

In return for your favors,

this is so funny 'cause it's so dated.

I currently have 76 Betamax tapes.

In part my library includes 16 Star Treks,

15 movies including The Day the Earth Stood Still,

The Silent Earth, The Exorcist--

One of the first collectors that I got

in touch with in 1976 was Ray Glasser.

Live and Let Die, Diamonds are Forever,

Dracula Prince of Darkness--

- Who was this crazy, passionate, film fan in Ohio.

Man with the Golden Gun,

Colossus: The Forbin Project, Westworld--

And because we lived in completely

different parts of the country,

I was in Central Florida and he was in Ohio,

we had access to completely different kinds of programming.

- Time Tunnel, Voyage at the Bottom of the Sea,

and Mission Impossible.

But we would regularly start sending

each other video tapes back and forth.

And we made so many connections,

people would call us long distance on the phone

and this went on for years.

And this is how we got our collections to be so big.

Remember this is before video stores,

before movies were available for rent,

this is how you hooked up and contacted

other people and began trading tapes

and building your video tape library.

- Take three, this is Ray Glasser speaking from Cleveland.

I am real as you can see and now

here is your Betamax dubbing request.

But Ray Glasser and his gang

were too busy having fun to notice

the darkness on the horizon.

- It's a simple process just turn the power on,

set the time, put in a tape cassette,

push a couple of buttons,

and you are taping a movie off television

in the privacy of your own home.

There's only one thing wrong here, it's illegal.

- The video fan's uncharted interlude

had come to an end.

Seeing the revolution on its way the studios took fright.

They realized the industry's future was at stake.

TV content giant Universal took Sony to court.

For Hollywood, copying was akin to shoplifting.

It's always been our position

that the copying in home, or outside the home, is the same.

Copying is copying and it's illegal.

- Typically the entertainment establishment

was scared of changes to an arrangement

it had put in place decades ago.

Legend has it Universal's wrath stemmed

from a row mainly about fans of TV series.

One of Sony's big ads said you know

now you don't have to miss Columbo

when you're watching Kojak.

The television networks relied on being able

to program against each other.

The idea was people had to choose

and it was all about winning their attention.

And now all of the sudden there's

a technology let people watch both.

And that shifted the balance of power

between viewers and the studios.

And it was not something that the studios

and the networks were happy about.

- The fact of the matter is royalties

and the possibility of cutting out commercials

were the real problem.

The studios and networks feared one of their

main sources of revenue would dry up.

Watch it disappear.

- And to be honest they were not entirely wrong.

Back in the earliest days of home video

all of us religiously cut out the commercials.

- The problem with eliminating the commercials

from TV shows and movies is I'd have

to set an alarm clock and wake up

at two, or three, or four o'clock in the morning

and be very bleary, and sit by the machine,

and start the recording at the right moment.

And then the moment they went to commercial

I'd have to rewind the tape, and make an edit point,