the Adventure game I played was on a station hooked up to a big mainframe. I saw “Star Trek” games for both mainframe and lab computers at college, and life was small enough for a lab computer. None of these were the then-really-primitive Video Games.
By “Lab Computer” I mean something small enough for an individual lab – a desktop computer that generaly didn’t really look or act like a modern PC. Some of these were DEC computers with actual tapes. By 1980 or slightly after you had Commodores that had Breakout and other games on them. Before 1983 you had small lab computers that actually ran pretty decent monochrome versions of PacMan (lots better than the crappy “Video Game” version they marketed circa 1982) By 1984 you had Macs, with stuff like Lode-Runner on them.
Of course, as a little kid I only really cared about “Monster Week” and “Planet Of The Apes Week”.
I vividly remember getting ticked when Bill Beutel would come on a commercial to let you know what the day’s headline would be. That wa a clear indication that the 6:00 News would be on in a little bit, so the movie was winding down.
In the 60’s, some TV stations would broadcast old (1930-40’s) movies all night (yes, they were talkies :rolleyes: ). After a first and second theater run of new releases, it would be many years before they would be shown on network TV, and then a long time again until they would be on independent stations.
16mm transfers of all major 35/70mm releases were made in the 1960’s, and one major outlet for them was the military. We would watch a different movie each night of the week except Sunday in our “theater” which became an army chapel on Sundays. These films were made available to the military about 6 months after general release. I don’t know if the public had access to them. They were even in anamorphic versions if the original was.
In the 1950s & 60’s, schools’ main educational medium other than books was 16mm film and sometimes filmstrips (35mm single images). We used to get a shipment of films every week to the projector club as ordered by the teachers. Several of these were shown every day in different classes. A few were copies of programs originally aired on TV like the Telephone Hour, which tried to popularize science and did a pretty good job of it it, using animation and clever graphics. Others were 20 minute B&W films produced specifically for classroom use, some by the US government.
The YMCA had a regular program series during the winter, perhaps 10 shows per season. Each was a 16mm silent film recorded by an independent photographer, with a single topic like “Bicycling thru the Swiss Alps” or “Bears in Yellowstone”. These were technically excellent, and for sound, were narrated live by the photographer. Sometimes they were supplimented by short audio tape recordings if the photographer was rich and well-equipped enough to lug around a 60lb reel-to-reel recorder on location as well as on stage. Of course the audio was not synchronized with the screen action, so native dances looked a little odd.
The site linked to says it was called “The Big Show” only for a few months, but I remember it being called that for quite a bit longer. They had title animation saying “The Big Show” and everything – you don’t give that up after only a few months – you run it long enough to make it pay.
They ran some truly awful stuff (“The Killer Shrews”, “From Hell it Came”), along with some really good stuff (“The Agony and the Ecstacy”), but the print quality of the good stuff was pitifully bad. Also, since they had to fit the movie AND commercials into a 1.5 hour time slot (the news came on at 6) they had to cut movies into two parts and run them on successive days and/or edit them unmercifully. I remember seeing The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad on it, an they cut out the ENTIRE OPENING SEQUENCE on Colossa (with the Cyclops and the genie) – arguably one of the best parts of the film – opening it with the frame that reads “Bagdad”, when they arrive there.
And the site doesn’t mention “Godzilla Week”. “Godzilla week on the 4:30 movie” is a running gag at our house.
Former AV Geek: In High School, we had a bank of either 3/4 or 1" B&W open reel machines, and IIRC, a fixture which allowed a 16mm film to be projected and simultaneously recorded on the video machines. We had multiple copies of every film, as classes wouldn’t always want “Brian’s Song” at the same time, so the six video players were cued up with each period’s video requests, and the instructor would then call the AV room to say ‘start the tape.’
Before VHS, we watched a lot of movies on TV. When I couldn’t be home for a favorite show, I would leave the TV on, set the microphone for my Philco/Ford 7" reel-to-reel tape recorder (still works great) by the TV speaker and let it run.
As neat as it seemed at the time, there are some TV shows that didn’t do to well as an audio only recording. In 1968, during the original summer run of “The Prisoner”, I had to be at school for an orientation of some sort (I was in the band) and had to record the last episode of the show. Now, the last two shows of “The Prisoner” don’t make much sense to anyone, even when viewed with a full picture, but it was totally incomprehensible listening to it as an audio only recording. It wasn’t until they re-ran it much later that it made any sense (and not a hell of a lot, even then).
A friend of mine worked at a local computer software company and had a console computer stored in his office. We would go in about 2am to play Star Trek on this thing. It was the neatest thing evah! The game was a tiny black & white screen, the stars were asteriks, the Enterprise was an “E” and the Klingon ships were “K”. He had it stored on an internally enclosed hard disk that must have been a foot in diameter. Took 15 minutes to load it into the computer. Man, were we using some kind of hi-tech!
When VHS recorders first became readily available, I couldn’t wait to get a hold of one. Bought a Magnavox top-loading VHS unit that is huge, heavy and has no features other than a timer on it. It cost $1000. Went in half with my parents to buy it. Blank VHS tapes cost $16 each back then. No freeze-frame, no visual fastforward/reverse, but it still works.
Man, do I feel old now. I think I’ll go take a nap.
We didn’t have TV in our house but we did have a movie projector and movies. Laurel and Hardy, Buster Keaton, Intolerance, …Pop would break out the screen and make popcorn. Good times.
We used to have that at my school, on our Apple][e computers. It was strangely popular, despite its inherent crapitude. This was the early 80s, we had much more exciting possibilities available (including the graphical adventure Transylvania), but everyone still got excited about playing Star Trek.
I can tell you this, that back in the day if the president was on TV you were screwed. He would be on every channel (all 7 of them here in LA)
No cartoons that afternoon.
Thank you. When I typed the line about Monster Week and Planet Of The Apes Week, I had originally had Godzilla Week in there as well. Then when I noticed that that wasn’t mentioned on the site I linked, I started wondering if that was Monster Week. But then I remembered watching all the old Karloff/Lugosi/Chaney Jr. flicks on The 4:30 Movie as well, so that must’ve been Monster Week. And then I said “Awww, screw it…” and posted it the way it was.
RCA also had a competing (sort of) version. It was actually vinyl and used a needle for playback. Failed miserably (more so even than Laserdisk).
Libraries had libraries of films which could be checked out. I never did this, but I believe that they had many selections on 16mm film and you could also check out a projector.
Actually, virtually all kinescopes (U.S.)/telerecordings(U.K.) were the products of broadcasters. While there are some known efforts to home kinescope, they tend to be fragmentary, of poor visual quality, and (quite often) silent.
Home video recording started in the late 1960s, but (IIRC) only blank tape was sold for the pre-Beta/VHS systems- If you wanted content, you had to record it yourself. There are a good many American and (especially) British television broadcasts that only survive in this manner.
The Avco Cartrivision VCR was first sold in June 1972, and production ended thirteen months later. The tape moved at 3.8 inches/second. Major movies like Bridge on the River Kwai and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner were available for rent (but not purchase).
The Sony U-matic videocassette format was introduced in September 1971.
Aww, that’s nothing. When I was a kid, not only did we have to walk 10 miles thru the snow to get a blank VHS tape, but since we lacked electricity, we had to hand-crank the recorder.
I remember being a little kid watching the demo of the laserdisk playing on one of the big TVs at Sears or some such store. The part I particularly remember was the guy dropping an ice cream cone on a phonograph record (Oh no! ruined!) and then on a laserdisk (no problem! cleans up easily). Even as a kid, I thought it was rather clunky the way you had to flip the disk by inserting the cover/container, pull it out, turn it over, reinsert it and then pull the cover out again (easy as pie!). Grease seemed to be the big title that they used to shill the product.
I wonder if local semi-interactive shows like Dialing for Dollars and Bowling for Dollars still air anywhere.
As for video games, I’m glad I’m not the only one that remembers this. PIX! PIX! PIX! PIX! PIX!PIX!PIX!PIX!PIX!PIX!PIX!PIX!PIX! The game used a Fairchild Channel F.
The high-end department store where Dad worked part-time (to help pay for sending his kid to a private elementary school ) sold Channel Fs in the men’s department, with the office toys like miniature chess sets and roll-out putting greens. This was around 1976-1977 or so. We couldn’t afford one, but I got to play it while I wanted for Dad’s shift to end. It seemed lame even by the standards of the era.
I was about twelve or thirteen when VHS began to pop up in various homes; until then you watched TV of course (very seldom theater), and the movies I saw on TV were mostly black and white American classics. Therefore, as an European teenager during the eighties, unsuspectingly Clarke Gable, John Wayne, James Stewart, Cary Cooper, et al, were more familiar to me than contemporary European or American actors. Moviewise, I feel like I grew up during the forties or fifties, because all those old American actors left deeper traces in my brain than any contemporary (with some exceptions, like de Niro).
) sold Channel Fs in the men’s department, with the office toys like miniature chess sets and roll-out putting greens. This was around 1976-1977 or so. We couldn’t afford one, but I got to play it while I wanted for Dad’s shift to end. It seemed lame even by the standards of the era.