[jamess]

Forget all the mega-size widescreen HD capable plasma and LCD TVs of today. Forget digital cable with DVR, surround sound and multi-disc DVD players. Definitely forget the home computer as an integrated home entertainment device, with high speed internet and more computing power than early spaceships.

This is about growing up in the Eighties, when black and white TVs were still common on store shelves and that new VHS recorder (VCR) cost hundreds of dollars. I remember my family's setup was as follows:

19" color TV in the living room
VCR
Cable with 40 channels and clunky wood-grained corded "remote control" (try running through the livingroom and you would trip everytime)

We also had the quintessential family computer, a Commodore 64, that was kept in my parent's room. For a while, a record player/8-track recorder sat in the livingroom. This was done away with around the same time we got the VCR.


In the late Eighties, I got a 13" color TV. My NES followed soon after and my very own VCR came around 1990 or so. The times were changing and my family got it's first 25" TV. Just like the Jeffersons, we were "moving on up".


Through the Nineties, I made a couple of small improvements to my home entertainment system. I got my first CD player in 1993 or so, with one of my first paychecks. Well before CD burners and music software for PCs became widely available, I was making tapes for my friends with my CD player. A favorite method would be taking the sound bites from the Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction soundtracks and throwing in other songs. A portable cassette player and car AM/FM cassette did not get replaced by CD variants until 2001 or so. It wasn't until 2002 that I finally gave in and got a DVD player. Even then, those first couple of years were spent watching it on a good old-fashioned console TV from the Eighties.