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Posted: 6/9/2023 12:15:47 AM EDT
[#1]
I remember this one.
 
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Posted: 6/9/2023 12:16:39 AM EDT
[#2]
back when $1000 was real money
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Posted: 6/9/2023 12:17:35 AM EDT
[#3]
$3 in tax on a $1100 purchase is the craziest thing.
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Posted: 6/9/2023 12:17:53 AM EDT
[#4]
Quote HistoryQuoted: Shit cost money back in the day. 1981 was the start of 20 years of total greatness, would live it again.  Attached File |
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Posted: 6/9/2023 12:18:28 AM EDT
[#5]
I remember paying that for a Panasonic HiFi stereo vcr. Hooked it up to my stereo system and JBL speakers . I could rock the house ??
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Posted: 6/9/2023 12:19:29 AM EDT
[#6]
Yes looking back on it — the prices we paid for electronics were pretty crazy
Growing up I lived near an Army base. The stores everywhere were super well-stocked with hi-fi stuff because soldiers bought tons of it. |
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Posted: 6/9/2023 12:20:16 AM EDT
[#7]
Quote HistoryQuoted: What were they using before vcr's , projectors ? |
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Posted: 6/9/2023 12:22:30 AM EDT
[#8]
Anyone remember the “be kind, please rewind” stickers?
Also, on tv watching, anyone remember that Rich folks used to have those huge satellite antennas in their back yard that were like 8’ in diameter? |
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Posted: 6/9/2023 12:23:45 AM EDT
[#9]
I seem to remember my dad saying he paid $800 for one similar if not this model Teac VCR. On screen programming! It lasted 30 years, so I guess that's not too bad.
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Posted: 6/9/2023 12:26:01 AM EDT
[#10]
i have a like new VCR ill sell you for 300 bucks
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Posted: 6/9/2023 12:27:06 AM EDT
[#11]
Quote HistoryQuoted: I think you rented the tapes and not the machine. I had an RCA VCR which cost about $900 when I bought it. Movies were around $50 when they first came out. There were mom and pop video rental stores as well as Blockbuster. Quote HistoryQuoted: Quoted: I remember renting VCRs from a gas station I think you rented the tapes and not the machine. I had an RCA VCR which cost about $900 when I bought it. Movies were around $50 when they first came out. There were mom and pop video rental stores as well as Blockbuster. @Bat15 no you could rent VCR's and movies from many places back in the day. I remember doing it on the weekends, lol |
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Posted: 6/9/2023 12:28:45 AM EDT
[#12]
bought a 42” 720p flat screen fresh out of college for around 1900 from circuit city
pentium 3 650 to take to college was around 2k including a 15” crt monitor |
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Posted: 6/9/2023 12:35:47 AM EDT
[#13]
Quote HistoryQuoted: Anyone remember the “be kind, please rewind” stickers? Also, on tv watching, anyone remember that Rich folks used to have those huge satellite antennas in their back yard that were like 8’ in diameter? Rich folks??? we had one, but were far from rich... I miss the old satellite too... this thread is kind of depressing me... |
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Posted: 6/9/2023 1:00:00 AM EDT
[#14]
Quote HistoryQuoted: Dad had one when they first came out. He used to record college basketball. I think it was around $700 Oh, you are definitely from NC! |
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Posted: 6/9/2023 1:09:28 AM EDT
[#15]
Quote HistoryQuoted: Shit cost money back in the day. 1981 was the start of 20 years of total greatness, would live it again. Yep. At that time, it never seemed America would fall. Whackos were derided on TV rather than celebrated. Tow parent households were still the norm. Most democrats of that Era would be called far right extremists today. People born two decades later won't have much recollection, if any, of the U.S. being regarded as a great country. |
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Posted: 6/9/2023 1:10:02 AM EDT
[#16]
Quote HistoryQuoted: I remember when Dad came home with ours - a Cannon. It was two separate pieces - the receiver/tuner, and the actual tape deck. The latter had a strap, so that you could carry it on your left shoulder, while your right shoulder carried the Cannon video camera he bought with it. So that we could watch it on the Hitachi TV he also came home with. This was in 1984 or 1985. If I remember correctly, it cost him something like $7k , all in. I will say this about the camera though - that thing out-performed just about every other "Camcorder" other people we knew were using, into at least the mid 90s. Oh WOW, wtf  I could substitute my dad for yours and the story is EXACTLY the same, down to the year. My pops bought the two piece canon VHS and tuner module and the SAME canon over the shoulder camera. What a cool coincidence! My mom was pissed!
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Posted: 6/9/2023 1:16:13 AM EDT
[#17]
Quote HistoryQuoted: I remember when Dad came home with ours - a Cannon. It was two separate pieces - the receiver/tuner, and the actual tape deck. The latter had a strap, so that you could carry it on your left shoulder, while your right shoulder carried the Cannon video camera he bought with it. So that we could watch it on the Hitachi TV he also came home with. This was in 1984 or 1985. If I remember correctly, it cost him something like $7k , all in. I will say this about the camera though - that thing out-performed just about every other "Camcorder" other people we knew were using, into at least the mid 90s. Oh WOW, wtf I could substitute my dad for yours and the story is EXACTLY the same, down to the year. My pops bought the two piece canon VHS and tuner module and the SAME canon over the shoulder camera. What a cool coincidence! My mom was pissed!
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Posted: 6/9/2023 1:25:02 AM EDT
[#18]
Quote HistoryQuoted: Oh WOW, wtf I could substitute my dad for yours and the story is EXACTLY the same, down to the year. My pops bought the two piece canon VHS and tuner module and the SAME canon over the shoulder camera. What a cool coincidence! My mom was pissed!Someone didn't want to be recorded. |
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Posted: 6/9/2023 1:26:09 AM EDT
[#19]
My brother paid that. $1000 and the blank tapes were $20 each.
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Posted: 6/9/2023 1:40:55 AM EDT
[#20]
That included 5 rentals though, the guy could watch Star Wars 5 different times.
(I don't remember any other tapes for rent in 1981. LOL) |
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Posted: 6/9/2023 1:43:14 AM EDT
[#21]
Quote HistoryQuoted: I paid $1300 for my first dvd player. Kept it for a couple decades because I paid so much for it. It held my basement door open the last couple years and then I tossed it. That reminds me of the first big screen TV my dad bought. I was in 8th grade, so it was probably 1995 or 1996. Big ass 60 inch projection TV. Thing was awesome, if I remember right it cost something like $3-5k. Most peoples idea of a 'big TV' back then was like 30 inches. It was massive and weighed a few hundred pounds. Technology quickly moved on. In the early 2000's he had moved on to something bigger and better. That thing sat in their house unused for over a decade. He just refused to part with it because it cost so much money. It didn't matter that he literally couldn't even find someone to come and take it for free. Nobody wanted that old thing that was a massive pain in the ass to move. Finally he got over it and one saturday afternoon we just busted it open, gutted it, then cut the wood case into pieces so we could easily just carry it out to the trash. The whole time he was going on about how it was just tearing him up inside to destroy it lol |
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Posted: 6/9/2023 1:50:44 AM EDT
[#22]
Quote HistoryQuoted: Rich people did, yes. Most people either went to the theater or just watched cable though. RCA actually tried to bring mass home video to market sooner, by using what were essentially vinyl records as a video format. They fucked that up so badly that despite starting development in the 60s, it wasn't released until '81, after both betamax, VHS, and even laser disks had hit the market. It financially ruined them. Quote HistoryQuoted: Quoted: What were they using before vcr's , projectors ? Man I forgot all about those. My grandparents had one. But I remember watching it as a kid in the 80's when I was at their farm. I never could figure out what it was called or find any info about it later in life. But your description gave me enough to search on... the RCA CED..haha. Basically a record looking thing that fit in a plastic sleeve that you fed into the player. I never saw another one of those again. |
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Posted: 6/9/2023 1:53:41 AM EDT
[#23]
Quote HistoryQuoted: I bought a VHS VCR and 19" COLOR TV in '82 for a little over $1,400.00, if I recall correctly. I recorded a lot of stuff, like motorcycle racing and movies, in "real time" and paused the recording during commercials. I also rented a lot of videos, and was kind enough to rewind. You could buy a machine that would rewind a VHS tape and do nothing else. I think people bought these believing they would save wear on the recording "heads" in their VCRs. Yep we had one because my dad believed it saved wear and tear on the VCR. |
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Posted: 6/9/2023 1:54:29 AM EDT
[#24]
We bought one in '82 or' 83. It was about $600.
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Posted: 6/9/2023 2:02:03 AM EDT
[#25]
Quote HistoryQuoted: Man I forgot all about those. My grandparents had one. But I remember watching it as a kid in the 80's when I was at their farm. I never could figure out what it was called or find any info about it later in life. But your description gave me enough to search on... the RCA CED..haha. Basically a record looking thing that fit in a plastic sleeve that you fed into the player. I never saw another one of those again. Quote HistoryQuoted: Quoted: Quoted: What were they using before vcr's , projectors ? Man I forgot all about those. My grandparents had one. But I remember watching it as a kid in the 80's when I was at their farm. I never could figure out what it was called or find any info about it later in life. But your description gave me enough to search on... the RCA CED..haha. Basically a record looking thing that fit in a plastic sleeve that you fed into the player. I never saw another one of those again. I had one of those videodisc players, I clearly remember the outer plastic sleeve that you had to insert and remove from the player so that the actual disc wouldn't get touched. I think I had 17 movies and no way to get more, and I'd watch them on the giant 19" woodgrain trinitron TV I had in my room. This was before I had a laserdisc player of my own (Sony laserdisc/5-CD carousel combo), which changed a lot of things. I still have a stack of Laserdiscs, but no player. |
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Posted: 6/9/2023 2:04:20 AM EDT
[#26]
Quote HistoryQuoted: Back when Betamax ruled Betamax never ruled |
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Posted: 6/9/2023 2:05:21 AM EDT
[#27]
I remember my first Jog/Shuttle Dial....
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Posted: 6/9/2023 2:06:16 AM EDT
[#28]
I paid about $1000 for my first "flat screen" type TV back when they were just starting to be sold. I think it was 32".
That kind of money will get you 75"+ now. |
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Posted: 6/9/2023 2:07:03 AM EDT
[#29]
Another side-tangent, I got my first real digital camera (not counting a Vivitar with no screen on the back) so that I could post pictures here 23 years ago. I remember the camera was 3.1 megapixel which was cutting edge at the time, and I used a stack of Best Buy gift cards to get a memory card for it. It was a "giant" 128MB card, and it was over $200. Yeah, 128 Megabyte.
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Posted: 6/9/2023 2:13:03 AM EDT
[#30]
The amount of Mil surp guns and ammo that could have bought back would have been…………impressive.
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Posted: 6/9/2023 2:19:20 AM EDT
[#31]
Quote HistoryQuoted: Another side-tangent, I got my first real digital camera (not counting a Vivitar with no screen on the back) so that I could post pictures here 23 years ago. I remember the camera was 3.1 megapixel which was cutting edge at the time, and I used a stack of Best Buy gift cards to get a memory card for it. It was a "giant" 128MB card, and it was over $200. Yeah, 128 Megabyte. My parents had a pretty early digital camera. I think they got it around 1998. I remember using it to take pictures of my car. That thing was a case study in not being a super early adopter..lol. It absolutely destroyed batteries. I think they would last like 15-20 minutes of "on time." So you basically had to pull it out, turn it on (which took a good minute or so), take some pics real quick (there was like a 3-5 sec lag from pressing the button to it actually taking the picture.. so each pic took some time), then turn it off real quick. You couldn't just use it to casually take pics here and there.. it was a huge ordeal just take take a quick pic. You couldn't just leave it on in case something can up that was pic worthy, or you'd have no battery power left in no time. It was a total pain in the ass lol. It was just completely different all around than using a film camera that didn't have to be turned on or off. Thankfully the digital camera tech progressed quickly from there. But those early ones were painful. |
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Posted: 6/9/2023 2:29:24 AM EDT
[#32]
When I was in Navy A-School in 1985, I won a 4-head VCR in a raffle. I was living in the barracks and didn't even own a TV, so I took it straight back to the Navy Exchange and returned it for $650 cash
Then immediately went out and bought a Colt AR-15A2 Sporter. 
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Posted: 6/9/2023 2:40:24 AM EDT
[#33]
I remember getting a VCR around '92-93. It was a zenith to match the zenith TV, the remote would work for both the TV and VCR. I don't remember what my uncle paid for it.
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Posted: 6/9/2023 2:44:34 AM EDT
[#34]
1981 WAS A INCREDILBE YEAR....................
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Posted: 6/9/2023 3:02:08 AM EDT
[#35]
Sounds about right.
My Apple II Plus, green monitor, and epson dot matrix printer setup was about $1,400. |
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Posted: 6/9/2023 3:41:15 AM EDT
[#36]
Quote HistoryQuoted: New technology at the time. First kid on the block to get it? I remember seeing them at Service Merchandise for $900-$1000 about that time. How much were the first home, big screen projection TVs, PCs, CD players, laptops, DVD players, iPhones? Like anything else, the prices came down as the technology improved and became more mainstream. https://www.walvisions.com/ArchiveImages/ADVB1c_1.JPG Advertised price was like $2500-$3000. I remember a friend's grandfather having one when they came out. https://www.walvisions.com/ArchiveImages/ADVB1c_2.JPG The original iPhone was $499. Yeah that's in 2007 dollars, but still it wasn't *that* expensive. The relatively low price is one reason why it was such a massive success. Now the other items you listed, yeah they went for way more when new. I remember my dad dropping $4k on a top-of-the-line PC in 1995. Not that seemed like a lot of money at the time, and it was! |
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Posted: 6/9/2023 3:53:28 AM EDT
[#37]
Quote HistoryQuoted: Back when Betamax ruled Then some idiot cornered the market and cranked the prices through the roof. Shortly after that, they found out the hard way that people would gladly accept lesser quality performance in exchange for a significantly lower price. |
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Posted: 6/9/2023 3:59:52 AM EDT
[#38]
I remember when a couple of neighbors that are now living in The Villages, FL paid over $10k for a computer setup in the 90's when Intel Pentium processors first came out.
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Posted: 6/9/2023 4:00:46 AM EDT
[#39]
Quote HistoryQuoted: I remember around 1986 renting one for a weekend from U Haul. Came in a big plastic kind of pelican case. 
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Posted: 6/9/2023 4:03:49 AM EDT
[#40]
Our first VCR was a JVC with big buttons. Gray forward? Red stop? Blue play? Used it for years and years. Back before 4 head vcrs and composite video and.... excuse me. I have to go out and yell at some clouds now.
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Posted: 6/9/2023 4:36:06 AM EDT
[#41]
Just look at televisions. I have a Samsung LED TV here thats just under 10 years old that I paid 2K ( or more ) for. I even remember the day I bought it, we had just had our departmental holiday lunch and I walked into Best Buy and bought it. A month ago I bought an LG LED at Costco thats the same size or a little larger and it's a vastly superior television. The price on that was just over 300 bucks with tax. |
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Posted: 6/9/2023 4:48:24 AM EDT
[#42]
Quote HistoryQuoted: What were they using before vcr’s , projectors ? Back in the day there used to be second run theaters where they showed movies that were 2 to 10 years old and changed frequently - often 2 or 3 different movies one after the other on the same day. IIRC we paid 50 cents admission in the mid/late 70's. It was either that or wait until you might see it on TV. I remember thinking that if someday I was really, really successful I would have a house with my own private theater room where I could watch what I wanted to watch. I would have a vault to hold the reels of film. That was just a child's dream back then. I didn't know anybody who had anything like that. |
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Posted: 6/9/2023 5:41:04 AM EDT
[#43]
I remember having a VCR like that, but I had no idea my dad paid that much for it!
 The cost of blank VHS tapes makes a lot of sense too. They were like a rare commodity at my house. We only had a few and there was often the difficult decision of which previously-taped show to sacrifice and tape over, in order to record something new.  Attached File |
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Posted: 6/9/2023 5:46:53 AM EDT
[#44]
Quote HistoryQuoted: My rich aunt spoiled my older cousin dirty rotten. I remember her buying him all the latest tech at the time (Atari, Commodore 64, etc) including an Intellivision gaming computer. I hadn't even heard of that machine until I saw one at his house. He would never let me play it, either. He probably never let you play it because he didn't know how to make it work. We had a Commodore VIC-20 that I wouldn't let my friends touch because I barely understood how it worked for a month or so. |
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Posted: 6/9/2023 6:05:48 AM EDT
[#45]
My buddy paid 1200 dollars for an early DVD player, when they were the size of a 33 RPM record.
I think my rent was 375 a month. |
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Posted: 6/9/2023 6:11:06 AM EDT
[#46]
Quote HistoryQuoted: Dad had one when they first came out. He used to record college basketball. I think it was around $700 Quote HistoryQuoted: Quoted: Back when Betamax ruled Dad had one when they first came out. He used to record college basketball. I think it was around $700 I had a Betamax but don't remember what I paid for it. I wanna say about 800. |
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Posted: 6/9/2023 6:14:00 AM EDT
[#47]
Quote HistoryQuoted: The mom and pop I rented always put out a flyer of movies to rent. If you got it in the store the titles included the porn movie titles. If there was a dirty episode of the old PBS show "Connections" with James Burke, he could easily make the connection between the availability of VCR's in the home and the explosion of the porn industry vs what it was pre VCR. |
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Posted: 6/9/2023 6:18:52 AM EDT
[#48]
He must have really liked porn.
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Posted: 6/9/2023 6:22:25 AM EDT
[#49]
College roommate's family did the same. It did have one very cool feature though, Mic input so you could overdub the voice track super easy. Taylor got good and drunk and overdubbed about 30 minutes of a Saturday Morning martial arts movie. I would pay money to have that clip today. It was hilarious.
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Posted: 6/9/2023 6:27:03 AM EDT
[#50]
Porn was serious business in those days. I knew a guy who made a fortune selling VHS tapes. He could also get you dynamite, really sweet short barreled Italian double barrel shotguns, Russian diamonds, football cards, and short term loans.
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