I Remember…The Machine Of The Future!

Day 255

Before the brilliant Blu Ray, the definitive DVD and even the venturesome VHS there was The Machine Of The Future: The Beta

Tah dah!!

This looks very much like the Beta VCR that my family had!

It looks kind of bulky and awkward, huh?!

Does anyone even remember the Beta VCR? Beta Vision? Beta Max? Probably not. In fact, not everyone even remembers what it was like to have to go out and rent a VCR in order to watch a movie. That’s right all you youngsters out there - there was once a time when people didn’t own a VCR, so they would rent them at the video store. I remember that we rented ours at a store called Sounds Easy (cute name, huh?)

Here's one of our Beta video tapes!

Anyway, when we lived in Orem, Utah my dad surprised us with our very own VCR, a Beta Vision! We were so excited about the VCR because we soon found out that we could not only watch videos but we could also record movies and shows on TV! No way! This truly was The Machine Of The Future!

I remember that we recorded a lot of Disney movies that aired on The Disney Channel - this was back in the day when The Disney Channel showed all of the classic Disney movie, commercial-free. And we recorded a couple of TV shows and specials like Cheers and the Miss America Pageant (when Miss Utah was crowned Miss America!)

Our old home movies - I like how Dad labeled these tapes!

And the best part of having the Beta VCR was that we were able to watch home movies. We didn’t have a video camera, but we had a good friend who had one and he video taped a few home movies for us, including a very special event - Josh’s baptism. Afterwards, he was able to make copies for us and we watched these movies over and over again!

Of course there were some--shall we say--limitations, that made me doubt that Beta was really a machine of the future.

Let’s start with the fact that these cassette tapes were small and consequently did not have a lot of available space to record movies or programs. Notice that the maximum amount of available time on a Beta tape was 3 hours. So, you could record 1 movie or 6 half-hour TV episodes on 1 tape. Great technology.

Then there was the fact that when you needed to pause a movie the screen would just go blank - it wouldn’t freeze frame the picture, like with VHS. And when you needed to rewind a movie (remember doing that?) the Beta VCR would make this loud noise, and it would take several minutes to complete. The noise sounded like an airplane preparing for take off!

All of these years later my parents still have the old Beta tapes and that old Beta Vision is somewhere in storage, a remnant of the 1980s. I don't know if it even works, but I wish I did because I would love to look at those old home movies. I guess that when it comes to technology today’s innovations and inventions will inevitably become tomorrow’s artifacts and relics...