CQ27_FINAL_SPREADS (1)

book-sized cassette cases, all
laid facing outwards on skinny
little shelves. Forlornly poring
over the sleeve notes of endless
B-movies you’ve never heard
of and had no real interest in
watching, but determined not
to return home empty-handed
just because all six copies of
Battlestar Galactica had already
been rented out and were not
due back until Monday.
You’d select your movie by
picking the giant cassette box
off the shelf and taking it to
the counter where you would
present it, along with your
membership card, to a man (it
was always a man) who, after
an unfeasibly long search in
numerous oversized drawers,
located the right tape, popped
it in the case – pausing only
to record your rental on the
‘computer’ – and handed it over
for to you to carry home. Upon
getting home you inserted the
tape into a massive box-shaped
contraption (a video cassette
recorder or ‘VCR’) that was
almost as big as the television
itself. You would hit the play
button, and before retreating
to sit down (no remote control)
you’d await the start of the film,
though not before spending
several minutes twiddling with
the tracking knobs to try and
remove squiggly lines from the
screen. If you were unlucky
the tape might get chewed
up inside the player, making it
impossible to watch parts of
the movie without reeling past,
or worse still, the tape would
snap, causing you an awkward
conversation the next day with
the store staff and an extended
negotiation to avoid a £2 fine.
Renting movies was not that
expensive, but the purchase
of the consumer device to
play the movie at home was a
considerable investment. The
main conundrum of the day
was not so much which make of
player to invest in, but rather
which format. Alongside Sony’s
Betamax format, JVC launched
their Video Home System or
‘VHS’. Amongst others, Philips
also introduced a home video
cassette format, but VHS and
Betamax would go on to slug
it out for the then-lucrative
home video market. By today’s
standards, there was not a
great deal to choose from in
terms of the performance and
cost of these incompatible
formats, but in the end the
consumer made their choice
and the slightly less expensive
VHS format triumphed over
Betamax’s higher picture quality.
Despite its technical superiority,
Betamax became a byword for
failure and owners of the format
were ridiculed by smug VHS-ers
for wasting money by backing
the wrong horse. They also had
to fork out for a second machine
if they wanted to continue to
watch movies at home. Leading-
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