Trek on VHS
- Thread starter Nardpuncher
- Start date
^ Yep. That was still a common practice at least into the mid-90s. By then, though, I was buying LaserDiscs.
So did anyone record any Trek and keep it on VHS during the TNG, DS9, and Voyager years; I think by Enterprise people were expecting the DVD release, but in the 90's those newer Trek shows were a little inconsistent in their release to VHS. I remember recording the first two seasons of DS9 religiously until they started screwing with the time slot for the show and it got harder to keep track of when it would be on with a new episode. Ahh, those were the days.
Here's how big a fan I am. I paid $90 for a VHS copy of Star Trek V the day it was released. When I bought the tape I saw in the video store clerks eyes a mix of shock and pity.
I taped every TNG and DS9, both from the very beginning. I still have them, boxed up along with my complete set of Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes.
Yeah, I did the same with DS9. And I taped most of TNG in reruns. Originally, I taped the first few episodes of TNG (on Betamax!) when they first aired, but I got bored with it in the first season and didn't come back to watching it until the 3rd season was in reruns.
Nardpuncher
Rear Admiral
I still have Encounter at Farpoint on tape back in Winnipeg from 1987. Last time I watched it was 2006 and the tape was getting old but not unwatchable.
I used to tape about 10 seconds of this one channel that would tell you the weather in text form because it would also have the date and time, so I'd know when I taped it. It's also cool to see what the weather was like on days when I watched TNG long ago.
I noe regret pausing during the commercial breaks...I'd like to see those old commercials now.
I used to tape about 10 seconds of this one channel that would tell you the weather in text form because it would also have the date and time, so I'd know when I taped it. It's also cool to see what the weather was like on days when I watched TNG long ago.
I noe regret pausing during the commercial breaks...I'd like to see those old commercials now.
Yep. Taped all of TNG in reruns and most of DS9 during first run. I'm too cheap and don't like TNG enough to upgrade so I actually still watch the TNG episodes on VHS.
I asked my dad to buy me TWOK and TMP on VHS back then, which were the only two out, since it was pre-TSFS. They were $24.95 each. The Voyage Home came out at a sell through price as well, I remember my sister buying it for me for my birthday for $20. I remember being totally accustomed to low prices that when TFF came out for $90, I had a fit. This was a more newly widespread practice as films got the rental prices first. Every Trek film was released for rental until First Contact. That came out on VHS priced to buy and in both standard and widescreen formats. It was also the last Trek movie I bought on VHS, Insurrection came out on a barebones DVD for $30.
As for the series, I have and kept the run in every format except beta and RCA CED Videodisc (SelectaVision). I have the complete series in Laserdisc, VHS single episodes (original black boxes with previews), Columbia House doubles, the small run of 2 episode paramounts from the early 80's, the individual DVDs, the DVD season sets (original and then enhanced) and now, finally Blu-Ray. TAS also, in VHS, Laser & DVD.
It's actually become something of an exhibit in my house.
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That, but also to line Paramount's pockets. They knew hordes of Trekkers would pay any amount of money to get those tapes right away and they took advantage of that. The hardcore Trekker might grumble, but he'd buy it anyway. It's just hard to imagine no one at Paramount was even a little red-faced at the $99.99 price tag on "The Final Frontier."
VCRs themselves were still in the $300 range throughout the 90s. It took DVD player prices plummeting down to almost nothing to cause the same thing to happen with VCRs (which, in turn, happened I think because PS2 forced competition by including a DVD player of its own).
Actually, I don't think they expected anyone to really buy the movie at $90, that's why they did it. It became pretty standard across the industry to release videos "priced for rental." If the price is too high, more people will rent it. When you have a movie tank at the box office, the prospect of high profits from people buying the tape at $20, is pretty slim. Yet more people will take a chance on a movie on "movie night" for $5 or less, especially when they have a few movies coming home.
Once the rentals brought in their maximum money, they'd lower the price for people to buy. Remember, back then the rental market was HUGE and a driving force in the video industry. It used to annoy me that most video stores did not sell movies, only rented.
Obviously, Paramount wanted to make as much as they could, but I don't think corporate greed made them think hoards of Trekkies would pay $90 for a film they didn't like. At the height of the video rental boom, nearly every movie - successful or not - was priced for rental. Even Batman. I had to buy that from the Columbia House Movie Club to own it at that time. I mean, did Warner Brothers really think Superman fans would shell out $90 for Superman IV: The Quest for Peace?
What you say is true for normal movie fans. But we're talking about Trekkers, a group of people who, whether they like a Trek movie or not still have to own it. You can be sure that the majority of people on this board who say they hate TFF still own the movie. I'm willing to bet many obsessive fans shelled out that much money because they couldn't wait to own it. I know fans who did -- who didn't necessarily even like the movie.
Gone into a Blockbuster lately? Since getting a blu-ray player I've started going again, and the change since back in the day is pretty amazing. Remember back when going to the video rental store on the weekend was almost like going to the cinema on the weekend as crowded as it was. You were guaranteed to stand in line forever, you had to get there early or your movie wouldn't be there. Now you go even on the weekend and there may be two or three others there. If they aren't playing a movie on their monitors it's as quiet as a library. It's no wonder they've closed so many stores in the last year. How the mighty have fallen.
Well, I didn't know a ton o'Trekkies back then, and everyone else I knew hated the film. Not to say I didn't ge the $89 tape, but my ex-girlfriend paid for it and I never paid her back. So I spent $0.
Either way, I really don't think a hated film like TFF with aprice of $89 would have gotten all that many Trekkies and certainly wouldn't have in the amounts necessary to make Paramount a lot more money. But, then again, I'm just guessing.
Actually, I don't really know what the rental thing worked for the studios. Did they get a cut of rental profits? Or did the stores buy the movies for a price and that was the studio income? Anyone?
I haven't been to a rental store in ten years. If I rent, it's through Netflix. I tend to buy films, especially since the rental fees are not much less than some DVDs. But yeah, the net merchants and rentals have really cut into Blockbuster. I can't say I'm sorry, they drove hundreds of mom and pop stores, which would carry films Blockbuster never would (and I don't just mean porn), totally out of business.
I have a boxed set of the first 5 films where the spines make a picture of the Enterprise. The VHS of ST VI actually continued the picture.
There was also a set of 5 VHS tapes that came out in the very early 80's, which were black covers with photos on them of the episodes on each tape. It had:
-The Menagerie, Parts I and II
-Amok Time and Journey To Babel
-The Trouble With Tribbles and Let That Be Your Last Battlefield
-Mirror, Mirror and The Tholian Web
-Balance of Terror and City On The Edge Of Forever
I still have them, and play them once in a while for nostalgia. IIRC, my parents got them for me as a Christmas present and they were $49.95 or $39.95 per tape.
-The Menagerie, Parts I and II
-Amok Time and Journey To Babel
-The Trouble With Tribbles and Let That Be Your Last Battlefield
-Mirror, Mirror and The Tholian Web
-Balance of Terror and City On The Edge Of Forever
I still have them, and play them once in a while for nostalgia. IIRC, my parents got them for me as a Christmas present and they were $49.95 or $39.95 per tape.
I remember some friend of mine's parents in the early '80s having wrath of Khan on vhs. I thought it was on tv, I didn't know what a vcr was, I couldn't even comprehend the idea of being able to watch something whenever you wanted like that. I was probably about six. We had HBO, and they showed TWOK all the time, and I was always watching it. I think we finally got a vcr in 1988, and I bought a heavily used copy of Star Wars at a video store for about 40 bucks.
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I believe these were the first episodes to be released on VHS (the Columbia House ones may have been later) in 1980. I think they accompanied the first video release of Star Trek -- The Motion Picture.
I have three of the 5, I love them! They are the last remaining examples of totally unremastered Trek. Bleeding colors, awful sound, and are only missing syndication cuts to make the trip into the past totally accurate. I need to track down the two I'm missing to complete the set.
I don't consider them all a waste as many were released before they'd been on TV over here. Besides £10-15 for approx 90 minutes was the going price at the time.
As a result everything on DVD these days just seems to darn cheap! Boxsets collecting is too easy in a way, I never have the time to give each set the time they deserve.
The full TOS,TNG,DS9 & Voyager DVDs (24 seasons) take up the same space two seasons used to take up!
A lot of stuff was more expensive in the '80s, anyway. Anyone remember how expensive Pizza was? Even for crappy pizza, the prices were outrageous. By today's prices, that would be like, 45 bucks for a large pepperoni from Pizza Hut. Add five bucks for each additional topping.And that's not including inflation - a $99 VHS tape in 1987 = $187 in 2008 dollars.
And what about Swatches? Those were the chintziest pieces of crap, but people forked over a hundred bucks for not just one, but several. I knew kids in my elementary school that owned like, 8 of them.Similar threads
