Life goals

$99.50 each???

Beta was better

Does anyone answer that phone number anymore?

I know right?! That's like in today dollars, three hundred bucks or more? Crazy.

Yep but they lost the marketing battle...

If you called that number 100% they’ll say vhs is better cause it’s the same number as the porn line and beta didn’t allow porn on it. It’s one of the things that really killed it.

Imagine if someone told people back then that porn would essentially be free later in their lifetime.

I’ll say. We had one. The picture was perfect. But you literally couldn’t rent a movie in Beta after about 1984

It says VHS or Beta right in that porn ad.

So it does. Odd. I remember (and have seen since) that beta was a closed ecosystem and specifically disallowed porn. Shows what I know.

Assuming 1975, each tape was $550 in today's money. But if you bought $2,200 worth you got a free one!

We didn’t have one. Only my friends with cool dads did.

Nothing cool about dropping $100 on porn

No more choking the chicken in the movie theater!

you can do it in your own home!

I suppose my Dad was “cool”. At least in the Betamax sense.

I had heard the same thing. The porn industry is what allowed vhs to win out.

My Dad had Betamax porn tapes

Any movies that were only available on 'tape' (adult or not) cost $100 as a standard, at least until DVDs became a thing.

My family had a Beta. Pretty cool. I liked the way you could jog frame by frame on the female skaters, gymnasts, swimmers - anything my hormone-riddled brain could find.

It seems like some kind of porno scam, but all vhs cost this much in the early 1980s.

This would be more like 1980. 1978 at the earliest.

That was the common price for all VHS back in the day. It’s what made Blockbuster and other movie rental places so popular.

Deep Throat was always such a simple yet effective title.

Must’ve been.

Is that Marilyn Chambers??

I think it is. She was in Behind the Green Door, and that’s a featured title. Back when porn stars looked like the neighbor lady and not a blow up doll caricature.

Am I the only one who can hear the song?

Betamax was superior in quality, but when it first hit the market, the platform had a 1 hour recording capacity- not enough to accommodate most full length movies. By the time they expanded it, VHS was already king.

Oh my. Marylin Chambers. Met her in Sky Harbor airport. Both heading to ATL. Oct 2001, crazy time to fly.

Imagine ordering anything then having to wait 6 weeks lol

Beta did allow porn but not as much was put on Beta as it was on VHS. Also, Beta was already a dying thing by the early ‘80s because the player was $1000 instead of $300 like VHS, and only held 2 hours instead of the 4 hours of VHS.

my dad got 1 of the first vcrs

$1,000

i think thats how dvd became the new standard medium aswell

Pretty sure Deep Throat could have just stayed as Deep Impact 😂😭

I've decided to watch all of these movies listed. Fapathon.

It appears that maybe these guys were copying the videos they licensed onto whatever medium the customer requested and shipped direct. Sony wouldn’t have any leverage over them as they didn’t go through any of their authorized distributors.

For perspective, $99 a video in 1976 would be the equivalent of over $500 today.

Right? That is ridiculously expensive now, let alone 50 years ago.

Those poor souls. Working all summer to buy A stroke tape....lol.

We had one too! The “remote control” was on like a 6’ wire…

TV shows like fringe explored If the hindinburg didn't explode. They really missed out on betamax timelines.

In the Flesh

Oh boy!

$99.50 for a tape in 1970s dollars.

In the US? In South America we had porn in Beta, American porn particularly.

MasterBeta. 😃

I recall watching first blood and rewinding so he walked backwards

In the 90's, I had an obsession with the Michael Bay film, "Bad Boys," and I was desperate to get a copy on VHS before it was available for home release. I went to Blockbuster asking if I could buy a copy, and they said yes, for 100 bucks.

No one is picking up the telephone.

and blu-ray

Godddamn!!!!!!

In the early 2000s I was in a meeting with about a dozen people and one of the older gents referred to a blackout period as when they would be behind the green door. It took a minute for that comment to settle in and I sat there wondering how many people realized what kind of reference he just made in an open meeting.

Maybe in the early days, but certainly not in the 90's they were normally priced, something like $20 for a new release.

No thanks, I’ll just stick to looking at the scrambled channel hoping to see a boob.

Wanting to see porn on your own TV is what drove early sales of video tape players.

Probably sold a bunch of computers and spurred development of the internet as well.

You damn kids today don't know how good you got it with your Xrodents and Crimsontubes and all that, bringing all sorts of filth flarn filth right into your homes and to your phones for free at any second of the day or night. Back in my day, you had to put on your trenchcoat and your hipwader boots (and only your trenchcoat and hipwaders), trudge out to the porno theatre at a set time, pay a seedy looking guy who looked like he'd sodomize you for a half-eaten sandwich for a ticket to a movie you'd only watch 10 minutes of, tops, find a seat equidistant from the other 4 pervs in there, openn your trenchcoat just enough that your cock & balls were breathing the sweet air of freedom but not far enough to remove plausible deniability should the vice cops raid the place, and rub one out at the same time those other 4 pervs were, all the while hoping you'd time it just right so you'd come while there was a flash of titty or some minge onscreen and not a hairy bobbin' man ass.

AND YOU LIKED IT!

😳

Beta:VHS::HD:Blueray

I just called the number for shits and giggles and it promptes you to talk to hot guys and girls from around the world like old school phone sex 😆

I choked Linda Lovelace

I did that too, you had to be a timing champion, you know what I mean

Funny how the number to get the facts from the professionals (about VHS vs Betamax) is the same as the number to order the porn tapes 😁

I remember the same. This company may have made their own home brew Betamax porn tapes then perhaps?

You know at least on one occasion shit got awkward when some put in Happy Days expecting the Fonze.

I bet you never lost the remote!

I hope this doesn't do any damage to the "connesuirs" out there, but Wet Rainbow is the worst porn movie ever made!

Hey, after you spend one thousand dollars, the fifth ones free

Looks like Marilyn Chambers

Yeah but with your first order, you become a member in INTERNATIONAL HOME VIDEO CLUB

Yeah dude I had plenty of vhs tapes as a teenager in mid 90’s, they were not expensive. Probably even before that

To be fair, the old timer may have been referring to a 1950s song called “Green Door”.

$99.50 each and I’m going to be in a membership program automatically, ouch!

Our first RCA VCR in the 80’s was a tank. It probably could’ve survived a nuclear blast. Lol

When VHS tapes emerged, studios treated them in a similar way they did reels with theaters. They sold them at a higher price to video stores, who would rent them to customers to recoup the costs.

In a time when people would go to a theater 3-5 times to see a movie they liked, nobody could see how it made sense to sell a movie directly to a customer who could watch it as many times as they wanted with whoever they wanted. So they made sure the price reflected that.

In the cumfart of your home

Yup. With a giant dial to shuttle forward or back.

Imagine ordering on wish in 1970's.

Funny if iPhone did a similar one now “free porn in the comfort of your own toilet”

It is singer/actress/model Marilyn Chambers.

Yes. I just called and it’s some medical center.

Jacking it was a group activity before the late 70's it seems

Yeah I only give it 1 1/2 nuts

This is way they had video rental place like blockbuster

Porn producers took the lead in making their films available on Videotape. The availability of at home porn created the market for VCRs. Hollywood didn’t get involved until there was enough households with VCRs to justify releasing films on tape. It’s all about market penetration

$100 bucks a pop? F**k that…

Ah the good old days… I only caught the last few years of having to go to porno theaters, but man the rush of watching porno…. Like biking before the days of helmet laws.

VHS did more for the porn industry than anything else. Not only did sales increase, but the quality of movies did too. Unfortunately, many of the actors (and mainly female) did not enjoy the financial rewards until much later.

However, all good things must come to an end. Remember the 1980 song "Video Killed the Radio Star" by The Buggles? One could repurpose that tune to sing "Internet Killed the Video Porn". Waiting for the next leap in porn: VR.

If inflation is right it’s $670

People outside of home video probably don’t remember this but initially they tried the same pricing with DVD. There was an early lost Highway dvd that was priced near $100 for the rental market. Fortunately it didn’t stick and we have what we have now

Wasn't the 70's a little early for the Beta or VHS debate?

The whole industry used to be run by the Mafia

The alternative was setting up your projector with a short, grainy 8mm film. Porn has frequently been at the forefront of new technology.

Oooofffff even crazier than I thought!

A portal opens up “choose VHS!”

Hollywood was reluctant at first because the business model had always been you had to pay to see the movie each time. Who's gonna go see Star Wars or a Disney movie in the theater again if they can just watch it at home over and over whenever you want. That's why the tapes were initially so expensive when they did come out, because it was for renting not owning unless you were rich enough to not care.

With porn there was the obvious appeal of privacy.

It wasn't marketing it was meeting the demands of consumers better. Beta may have had slightly better video quality and better made machines with better tracking and pausing in the first generation but they were also really expensive and initially they could only record one hour. The first prerecorded movies available had to be split onto two tapes.

In the early days of VCRs there wasn't much of a rental market, people mainly bought them so they could record their favorite shows on TV and watch them later while they weren't at home or while they were watching something else on another channel.

VHS sacrificed quality so it could record longer and because it was licensed to multiple companies you could buy a machine for less too. The slightly better picture quality of Beta didn't mean much to somebody with a shitty 15" late 1970s TV. All they knew was they could get a VHS player for half the price and they could record an entire movie or football game off TV. Sony realized their mistake and made changes but it was too late and they finally gave up in the late 80s. Also Laserdisc came out shortly after VHS and anybody who had the money and was a real movie buff wanted that for playback quality versus Beta.

Now porn is free and we pay for water.

nopes. beta didnt allow porn movies on the platform... which is why it died because vhs did

I’ll make that trade any day.

I still have my Betamax machine! Reportedly the superior machine. Sony really screwed up that whole thing.

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