TOD:
First Record Player: I still own and use my first personally owned turntable. When I graduated from high school, my parents took me to Wall To Wall Sound to pick out the components of a new stereo system for a gift. Aside from getting a Pioneer receiver and speakers, I also chose what was then the latest, greatest and nifty turntable on which you could place a stack of albums and be able to program or select any of the tracks (that were on the top side of the LP.) Unfortunately, this item turned out to be a gimmick and the novelty soon gave way to the overall flaws of the turntable: it was cheaply made and delivered crappy sound. I packaged the thing up and exchanged it for what was then the top-of-the-line Pioneer state-of-the-art (remember that term?) turntable. It was and continues to be a sturdy piece of machinery that still plays incredibly well.
First CD Player: Pioneer, again, bought in 1986. I was working at Strawbridge and Clothier and saw it was on sale and brought it home without any CDs to play on it. That weekend I bought Peter Gabriel's SO and the OCR of THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD. DROOD was great fun because you could program the different endings of the musical.
First VCR: Panasonic, right after the New Year in 1984. I bought it for the sole purpose of taping the PBS broadcast of the RSC NICHOLAS NICKLEBY mini-series. It lasted me for years.
Never got a LaserDisc player.
First DVD player: Sony, again right after the New Year in 2000. I had gotten a number of DVDs for Christmas--people had thought that I already had a player. First DVD I played was SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE.
First portable "walkman"-like music player: For Christmas in 1982, my sister gave me a Toshiba cassette player/recorder. It was the size of a thick paperback. To play the AM/FM radio, you had to snap in a module into the cassette player. It was pretty heavy but it could take a beating--I dropped it tons of times and it kept on playing.
First portable CD player: Sony--thick black heavy box that ate batteries. Fragile and not practical at all...
First Mp3 player: A little gadget from Sensory Science--it was 512K and could hold about 2 albums worth of songs. It also had a built-in FM radio. It served it's purpose.
First cell phone: Another Christmas gift from another sister in 1996 or 97--Toshiba brick with an ironclad two-year contract with AT&T. Couldn't wait till I got rid of it.
No Blu-Ray player, yet...I'll wait till I get an HD TV.