Please. Please. I just want to press play on the remote, then the movie plays, we sit and watch it, laugh at the funny bits, and then move on. Thats not too much to ask is it?
Do you remember the old days when a movie was put on free to air television on a Sunday night and everybody waited in excitement for 8.30. As a child it was even better, Fat Cat went to bed at 7.30 in Adelaide, we know this because they broadcast it every night, that educationally muted cat yawning and putting his nightcap on and turning out the light, and it was used as a tool to get the children off the streets and into bed. It worked, Adelaide has a fine reputation for a good nights sleep, Adelaide also has a fine reputation for shallow graves, but that is another story for another time.
The point I am making though is, less is more. The networks would have just one movie that they promoted the bejesus out of all through the week, all the best bits on the add, Jaws eating the boat, Darth and Luke in a spark flying light saber battle, Mr T plummeting Rocky, you get the idea. When the movie started on the 32 inch, mono color tv if you were rich enough, black and white if you were not, you were captivated, hypnotized by the fact that you were watching this blockbuster film in the convenience and comfort of your own home. The next day you would discuss with your school friends who got to stay up the latest to see the end credits.
Then there was the video player. My dad chose beta. The HD DVD of the 80s. Eventually we were reduced to about three titles at the video shop but at the time, it was a emporium of wonder, all these titles and cardboard cutout promos, with every Herbie film ever made staring back at me from the shelves.
I cannot remember the cost of membership at the video shop, but it was more than $50, nor can I remember the cost of the rental, needless to say that the concept of 'cheap tuesdays' was more than a decade away.
Video was the perfect tool for the household, switch on tv, turn to channel 0, press play on video, fast forward through the warnings of jail and fines, maybe a bit of "Have you ever rented a video that wasn't quite right............." (which I have, but I don't think it was the copy's fault - Crocodile Dundee 3 I am looking at you), anyway the point is, convenience.
If there was a problem, the video may crinkle a bit, or even stop, you just fast foreward and all is good, and then there was the recording.....oh the recording. Sitting up in Mums lounge room late Friday nights watching Rage, remote in hand, finger poised over the record button, waiting for just the right moment to get the opening strains of Star Treckin', and Richard Wilkins on Australian Mtv doing a special on The Cure, that hair, what was with that? Robert Smiths was pretty strange too.
I had tapes and tapes of curiosity's, episodes of Married with Children, Ren and Stimpy. My friend, had a three hour tape full of The Simpsons, that was gold. That was passed around, and we learned every line....."My eyes, These goggles they do nothing!", I cant remember my loved ones birthdays, but I can recall in an instant the dialoge from any simpsons episode.
Then in the mid 90s DVD came along, the CDs of the movie world. $1000+ when they first came out. The picture, the sound, the convenience............but you couldn't record on them, and when they had a scratch, the picture didnt crinkle and wobble, it stopped...dead. Video players started to be ignored. At first the DVDs took up a few shelves at the side of the video shop, then slowly they expanded, conquering the video shop like an invading army, and the videos cassets surrendered to the back dusty corners. I do remember when I got my first dvd player though, I briskly walked past all the crusty, clunky videos to the promised land of the DVD isle like I had been invited into AV heaven.
I don't go to the video shop anymore.. It has come to this partly because of convenience but mainly because of late fees. You know you have a problem when you are shunned from all the video store major players, and you get your DVDs from the dingy indy video shop, with all the other lost souls who cant remember to return their movies on time.
Now the video shops come to me via the internet. I have a Xbox with Microsofts Media Center on it, a laptop, wireless router and a desktop computer. Let me explain. My LCD is connected to my Xbox, this runs Micrososft Media Center, that wirelessly connects to my router, this connects to my laptop, which has downloaded DRM movies from Bigpond movies, unmetered through my ISP. Confused? That was the easy bit. Then there are the setups, the passwords, the "cannot connect" messages, the license for the movie you are watching that expires in 48 hours. The remote control that takes 5 seconds to respond.... I cannot put in words how annoying this is.
There are thousands of movies on offer, all at a price, or if you hate freedom, Metallica, or just want to fund terrorism, you could just take them for free, like a pirate.
I cannot work out how they connect pirates with downloading movies off the net, I would have prefered the term "Ninja". Would have made it sound more sinister. "Police arrested a sophisticated team of Ninjas today and prevented thousands of copys of Family Guy from hitting the streets................."
Anyway, I have again digressed from the point, and this is, when there was less to offer, what we had was special. The first record I had, I listened to over and over. This was INXS 'Listen like thieves' by the way, now I have over 4000 songs on my ipod, some I have no idea where they come from.....ninjas probably. They are not special, not like that INXS record or that showing of Star Wars at 8.30 Sunday night some time in the mid 80s, they are just a collection of ones and zeros on my computer.
This feeling may change the day they open a second hand MP3 shop, but I doubt it.
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