Little Things That Make You Smile 6: Nowhere To Go But Up

[JazzFunk]

Yep, Granada here as well! Wooden box colour tellies! Also remember renting VHS tapes from a telly shop that only seemed to have ten movies (this was very early 80s).

Let's just say STAR WARS got rented loads. As did BRITANNIA HOSPITAL, for some reason...that reason being a VHS rental library consisting of a piddling ten tapes!

[kryss]

My grandfather got ours from the place up the street.

[wheelaa]

Radio Rentals!

There were loads of VHS rental places round my way, for a few years most newsagents / convenience places had a few tapes. Not always official copies. Usually just over night, had to be back by a certain time the next day regardless of how late or early you rented it. One time...just epic...the film I wanted, desperately wanted, was late being returned. The shopkeeper chased up the tardy rentboy, gave me a call, stayed open late just so I could pick it up, and I got the tape for whole weekend, for the price of a night. Epic indeed. The film...Masters of the Universe. Hahaha.

[gunrock]

We had a great big wooden telly with a sliding door on it (what was the point? "No, its not a telly, its a big hunk of wood!") from Granada.

As for video rental shops, there were loads of ex-corner shops and newsagents that converted to being video rental places. Funniest story was when I was about 12 and Madness released a compilation album 'Complete Madness' and a pop-video compilation on VHS.

I took it to the counter to rent and the old-bloke initially refused to rent it to me, "because, sunshine, its probably one of them video-nasties. Complete Madness?, sounds 'orrible". He only relented when another customer told him they were a pop band! But he wasn't happy about it and went off muttering.

[randombs]

We had a telly(Hitachi, I think) which had a dock for the remote. The remote had an extra set of buttons along the bottom that would basically become the TV's buttons when docked.

I remember the remote broke and my dad got a replacement which had a button 11 in place of button 2!

[QualityChimp]

I remember the remote broke and my dad got a replacement which had a button 11 in place of button 2!

Roman Numerals?

[Dogg Thang]

Roaming numerals, more like. Am I right? Huh? Huh?!

[JazzFunk]

Remember when an old, obscure cop show called HARDCASTLE & McCORMICK had just premiered, we'd recently acquired (rented) our first ever VHS recorder and this was the very first time we'd attempted to record something by cutting the ads out.

The first time we used the 'remote control'....

....which was a box with a single up n down switch for pause....and it was WIRED to the VHS.

Yeah, one bloody switch on the remote control. And it wasn't even remote, it had a wire!!!

[QualityChimp]

Our first telly with a remote control was a Philips and the remote had 2 buttons on it, mute and channel up to flick through the 4 channels available.

I used to cover up the letters on it.
Philips
hilips
ilips
lips
ips
ps
s
Philips
Philip
Phili
Phil
Phi
Ph
P

Thus illustrating how boring telly was with only 4 channels.

[gunrock]

Yeah, we had a BetaMax, Sony C7 with a wired remote!

[CMcK]

Yeah, we had a BetaMax, Sony C7 with a wired remote!

My Gran had something similar. It seems ridiculous now having to use Velcro to attach the box for the wired remote to the side of the VCR.

[Anpanman]

Yeah, we had a BetaMax, Sony C7 with a wired remote!

The Sony's were great, think it may have been C5 though, am sure the C7 and of course top of the range C9 had IR controls.

[Golgo]

Ah, video rental stores, them were the days! My old girl liked horror films, X rated stuff like Poltergeist and Halloween etc., and sometimes let me watch. I remember going to our local once and spotting a film marked XXX which I thought must stand for mega-horror or something. It was Russ Meyers' Supervixens. "Ooh, look mum," said I in all innocence, my tummy feeling a bit funny all of a sudden, "this must be well scary, let's get it!" Wasn't allowed.

[JazzFunk]

POLTERGEIST, that was it!!!!
That and DEATH SHIP.

That was it. Only four films my telly rental place had on offer. Only notable ones, anyhoo.

I think KLUTE might've been somewhere on there. I've still never seen KLUTE, despite owning the Beta orig AND a working Betamax player back in 1993/1994.

Can you believe it was only a tenner, from the car boot, at the time? Still working. It weighed so much I could only manage half a mile walking to my home, I had to stop off and phone a taxi for the last half-mile, my arms were ****in DEAD!!!!!!

Tbh, it worked great for like eighteen months to two years, I used to tape 6pm BBC2 reruns of THE NEW AVENGERS on it for yonks!!!

[Blobcat]

There was one weird dodgy video rental place that I can only describe as a walk in stationary cupboard on the high street. But instead of deep shelves with boxes it had hand made recycled wood shelves with a pillar in the middle, 1 vhs wide as shelves had framed this random load bearing wall dodgy pillar to have a use. As a kid with my sister and I it was a tight squeeze to get into that shop with my dad. I always remember seeing the care bear 2 movie (the one with the cousins in at the start on the ship) vhs on that weird pillar and as it was one of the only child friendly ones I could spot we often rented it.

My dad has us on some weekends and we mostly watched vhs taped off the tv so renting was a bit of a treat. His vhs player (or his mums as he lived with her and still does in his late 60’s) had buttons almost like piano keys which I loved to press and a tv remote that was almost comically fat we called it the Fat controller like from Thomas the tank engine.

We didn’t get a tv with a remote until around the late 90’s.