Anyone do this in the eighties ?

porn ?

I did too many drugs in the 80s as well.

First person i've ever heard admit they purchased a Betamax!

I'd bet good money not as much as me crags!

No Slipster, I've never been a coke head

Didn't have enough money

That was the problem, I had muchos money in my early 20's and my mate was importing from Columbia. 10 grammes on a weekend and an ounce of sensemelia. Off my tits non stop, I don't touch anything now, got that out out of my system. I had a few beers at Selhurst Park this afternoon but that's as far as it goes now.I don't miss it.

It got to a point when I thought my nose was going to fall off, good and bad memories.

Ron-Russian    17 Dec 16 20:01 
First person i've ever heard admit they purchased a Betamax!


Why is that an embarrassment best system by miles, ours lasted around 10 years by which time we had to get a new one they were defunct, new vhs one top of the range, and guess what even then the picture was poorer than the betemax had been after 10 years of so called improvement.

The demise of Betamax had nothing to do with its quality, if it was down to quality then VHS would have gone 30 years ago

at the time, late 70's i remember people were either buying Betamax or VHS,

I had a Betamax as well and like pumphol much preferred it to VHS.
Lasted for years without any faults whatsoever and I only changed cos tapes were being phased out.

There is probably a long explanation somewhere as to why VHS won the race as the sole video recorder from the mid 80's, what I never really understood was why bring two similar versions out simultaneously if they really only  wanted one system on the market.

did they do a conversion or something for VHS cassettes to fit inside Betamax ones meaning
Betamax owners could watch VHS Videos but obviously not the other way around?

...Or did i completely imagine / make that up?

Can't remember that Ron.

Google is always your friend.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Videotape_format_war

Must have made that up then, must be thinking of something else.

First one i had was a VHS Ferguson Videostar
Quite a lump, but not as big as some of the contraptions!

https://i.ebayimg.com/00/s/NzY4WDEwMjQ=/z/Z54AAOSwzvlW8nC4/$_86.JPG

Betamex tapes were smaller than vhs & were never compatible

So a VHS one wouldn't fit inside then!

I was a heroine addict in the 80s until my mum made my take down my posters of Lucy Lawless and Lynda Carter.

wasnt there a third type of system maybe something to do with phillips maybe?

Yes I recall that BB. Much much smaller as well I'm sure.

im sure my sister had one of those & you could turn the tape around to get double the recording time over the other types.

Wasn't it slow record?

made the tapes double as long

VHS was great, but it certainly got interesting when your dad tried to sit down to his favourite episodes of songs of praise -

and found that you'd overwritten it with Debbie does Dallas and Animal farm.

heard similar cases like that

Dec 17, 2016 -- 2:08PM, crags wrote:

No Slipster, I've never been a coke head Didn't have enough money

FAO akabula, who doesn't seem to be able to read?

He said on another thread that I'd admitted to being a coke head.

just to clear things up.

Sorry crags I did misread it. 

Was getting mixed up with d1ckhead.

crags was more into glue

Despite being introduced a year after Betamax, VHS VCR standard had two very important advantages over Betamax.  The first was that the VHS standard was a third of the price of Betamax.  As a result it was more easily affordable for the masses and people began to sacrifice quality for affordability.  The second major advantage of VHS was its recording time.  Where Betamax cassettes could record for only an hour, VHS tape could record for two.  In 1976, a one hour Betamax cassette was a piece of high end technology that would cost $15 if bought in bulk, while some retail prices could go as high as $30.[2] While attempts were made, by Sony, to create a two hour cassette in response to its competitor, VHS took things one step further by introducing a recorder that allowed up to four hours of taping.[3] By 1988 Sony and the Betamax format had conceded defeat.

See, cc knows how to Google

Ron-Russian  • December 17, 2016 8:01 PM GMT 
First person i've ever heard admit they purchased a Betamax!

I did Ron.I did not know things recorded on B & W TV played back in colour!

I read the reports at the time and all said Betamax was better. The trouble was most rental tapes were on vhs.

I eventually gave in and bought a VHS.

I bought mine in a pub from a Del Boy type so wasn't spoilt for choice.

The first one I had in the 80s had a remote that was attached by a lead to the machine.

The first film i watched was Dirty Harry & Convoy.

probably 82 time i guess

all though i cant guess the time could have been before

I had bundles of football stuff. Wish I'd had them transferred. Just tossed them.

I'm tempted!

curious-cat    17 Dec 16 23:29 
Despite being introduced a year after Betamax, VHS VCR standard had two very important advantages over Betamax.  The first was that the VHS standard was a third of the price of Betamax.  As a result it was more easily affordable for the masses and people began to sacrifice quality for affordability.  The second major advantage of VHS was its recording time.  Where Betamax cassettes could record for only an hour, VHS tape could record for two.  In 1976, a one hour Betamax cassette was a piece of high end technology that would cost $15 if bought in bulk, while some retail prices could go as high as $30.[2] While attempts were made, by Sony, to create a two hour cassette in response to its competitor, VHS took things one step further by introducing a recorder that allowed up to four hours of taping.[3] By 1988 Sony and the Betamax format had conceded defeat.


That may well have been the case in 1976 but by the time we bought our machine in the UK in 1980 you could record three hours of programmes &  that was probably the case for all machines by that time.

Spotted my mistake.

Dec 17, 2016 -- 6:14PM, pumphol. wrote:

curious-cat    17 Dec 16 23:29  Despite being introduced a year after Betamax, VHS VCR standard had two very important advantages over Betamax.  The first was that the VHS standard was a third of the price of Betamax.  As a result it was more easily affordable for the masses and people began to sacrifice quality for affordability.  The second major advantage of VHS was its recording time.  Where Betamax cassettes could record for only an hour, VHS tape could record for two.  In 1976, a one hour Betamax cassette was a piece of high end technology that would cost $15 if bought in bulk, while some retail prices could go as high as $30.[2] While attempts were made, by Sony, to create a two hour cassette in response to its competitor, VHS took things one step further by introducing a recorder that allowed up to four hours of taping.[3] By 1988 Sony and the Betamax format had conceded defeat.That may well have been the case in 1976 but by the time we bought our machine in the UK in 1980 you could record three hours of programmes &  that was probably the case for all machines by that time.

pumpy, if you read all of the info on google, it explains further that Betamax were slower than VHS to offer longer recording tapes. By the time they had caught up, VHS had the lion's share of the market.

Must have been F@ck#d from the sales in the states then, when we got ours it was pretty new in the UK & defo had three hour tapes, I suppose those first few years were key in America & ultimately it was their sales that finished it off.

first time in a video hire shop the choices came down to Jazz singer (neil diamond) or kramer vs kramer, my sister was with me and it was a family choice? super boring.
Tons of exploitative axe murder films then. Usual cover was a girl with blood coming off her face with a dark figure in the background with an axe.
we watched the jazz singer.

Had a video shop and then a mobile video van. I think Warner Brothers were charging something like £70 a video for top titles when they came out.
Was always worried about tapes getting chewed up in the machines.

there was actually nothing wrong with betamax (for it's time) t'was sppsdly the better format  but they were simply bought out  - thats the story i got.

personally  i think every electroinic device from that long ago was a heap of sh1te  - our recorder never got used as it was a days work trying to set it up to record a programme  - worse still you sat down to watch Fools and Horses and ended up getting Songs of Praise 

and anyone who had a brick cell phone -   ..... why ?

and cars in the 80s were crap too

so were things like toasters , fridges  ,basically anything that 'worked'

music was good though

the old style food mixers -  the ones from the 50s and 60s 


now they are still going strong today - ;lots of old dears still have them

weird world

must be a reason for this

and why are car batteries still massive in 2016 ?  -   they weight a ton

i thought in 1990 that by now you would have some sort of micro chip  or solar powered battery

Coachbuster    18 Dec 16 12:04 
so were things like toasters , fridges  ,basically anything that 'worked'

Coach I think your find fridges & washing machines were better built 30 years ago than they are now, washing machines are purposely built not to last, when you think how technology has improved over the last 30 years this must be one of the biggest worldwide cons of our times.

pumpy lad

agree that things arent made to last - but back in the day  it was an outside bet that your house burnt down  if the freezer was over 5 years old 

i used to see mums hairdryers explode and catch light while she was using them  .

recorders used to chew up cassettes , cars frequently wouldn't start on wet or cold mornings - always woken up by that sound      televison screens used to roll - wtf was that about ?     

I like stuff today 

although they now need to find a cell phone battery  that doesn't run flat after 10 hours of non use - the reason why i have 2 and keep one perm on charge

Our fridge is 25 years old, still works perfectly


The wife is a lot older but is to say she still works perfectly would be optimistic

We had the Sony C7 Betamax, bought in '82.

The thing was as heavy as a pile of bricks. Solid full of components and superb quality.

The problem was that when it went wrong, it was a fifty quid touch every time, and later when the sound gain failed
we just gave up on it, and bought the all singing, all dancing Panasonic vHS which I still have.

I sold the C7 early this year, with the problem declared, for £85.00 which wasn't bad really!

I was perhaps referring to stuff manufactored in the late 70s  Pumpy.


Maybe things improved when we started to import from Japan /Far East ,maybe their standards increased with time.Or there was less to go wrong .

UK produced a lot of stuff in the 70s that simply fell apart - hence why we started to buy certain foreign goods  (as well as cost)

plus technology has improved 2million fold -

chewed up tapes - i mean to say

frustrating trying to piece together a cassette with sticky tape

Betamax came before VHS if I remember right. Always seemed way cooler cos we never had one but our neighbours did. Eventually we got a VHS but I remember bunking off school and going round to a mates house to watch all his old man's video nasties on Betamax.

i bought a V2000 in the early 80s which only taped off the telly which was p1ss p00r planning on my part as there was very little porn on the telly in them days, C4 excepted