In 1979/80 I lived in a friend’s condo while they were traveling, and my first experience with a VCR was their VHS — an early RCA top loader with the piano key controls. I don’t recall us renting then, but their first purchase of a few tapes (at around $80 each!) included a few classics like The African Queen. Even to my eyes then, that and the off-the-air recordings we made looked pretty abysmal.
Back my own apartment after that, I didn’t think about tapes for a couple of years. In 1983, living in Redondo Beach, I was ready to take the plunge, and a surprisingly good salesman at The Federated Group guided me to something of quality, the recently developed Beta HiFi, for optimal sound as well as a somewhat better picture. I dropped something like $1200 on a really good one that wasn’t even Sony, and I loved that machine until the day in 1989 that it was stolen.
So, rentals. My first ones were from a Wherehouse in Torrance, where every tape was $1 per day for up to ten days, the best deal and the simplest rental arrangement ever. First movie was Raiders of the Lost Ark, and I’d keep getting it whenever someone was visiting because it was so enjoyable and it made for an impressive demo tape for those, like my family, who were still new to the whole thing. That opened the floodgates, and I couldn’t begin to recall what all my rentals were over the next couple of years.
