Jaws 4K UHD (1975) 45th & 50th Anniversary Editions

[captainsolo]

For me it was getting into roadshow films that started to have letterbox VHS presentations and buying the rare variant letterbox tape copy of OHMSS at a record store growing up. As for a specific shot it was seeing the letterbox Thuderball and finally seeing Count Lippe screwing on a silencer hidden behind the door on the extreme edge of frame when Bond finds the body on the traction table and understanding the implied threat of the scene finally which was gone in the P/S version.

LD was something I knew of and would occasionally see in stores with absurdly high price tags behind glass growing up. I knew it was the elite thing but never got to experience it much outside of the fleeting glimpse in classrooms or commercial usages. Eventually I got interested in college when making a detailed research into video format histories and trying to get the best performance out of a handful of VHS items and old transfers different to what was available on DVD. One thing led to another and I got interested in LD fully and that became an obsession and extremely worthwhile learning experience. I've now built up a massive library for virtually nothing and learned a whole heck of a lot while developing a true connection to each disc.
However I do freely admit there is a certain thrill about buying an LD boxset with a $149.99 price tag for nothing these days....

[Neon Rabbit]

Originally Posted by crissrudd4554

I thought widescreen was better even watching it on VHS as a young kid on a 4:3 TV. Even at 9 or 10 years old I got it.

I think that's why I jumped so heavily into DVD as soon as I had gotten my own player and could afford to by things on my own. With VHS I took what I could get. I was still basically a kid through most of the VHS era so although I knew Letterbox on VHS was a thing, they weren't all that easy to find unless you went to a specialty store, and since most of my income was from doing chores, I often chose to buy other things then movies.

Sometimes places like Target or Walmart would carry a letterbox VHS for a few weeks if it was a big new release like Titanic, but to me the best thing about DVD when my parents got a player was the wide availability of widescreen titles. As soon as I was able to get one of my own I started buying as many DVDs as I could, even ones I wouldn't have cared about on VHS just because I could finally see then in OAR and sometimes with a plethora of bonus content.

[Bobbyjoe766]

Originally Posted by captainsolo

However I do freely admit there is a certain thrill about buying an LD boxset with a $149.99 price tag for nothing these days....

I missed out on the whole LD experience up until when the format was almost dead. I bought up a few of the then expensive boxed sets (JAWS, ALIEN, ALIENS) for next to nothing, along with a SONY player, and got to finally see what I had read reviews about in issues of VIDEO WATCHDOG.

I wasn’t disappointed. No way I could’ve afforded the boxed sets when they were originally released.

[mastadge]

Originally Posted by crissrudd4554

I thought widescreen was better even watching it on VHS as a young kid on a 4:3 TV. Even at 9 or 10 years old I got it.

Yup. I was so disappointed when a "widescreen edition" wasn't available.

And now my huge pet peeve is how easy it is to "fullscreen" with Apple TV. I accidentally watched 20 minutes of a 2.35 movie in 16:9 by accident the other week before my brain caught up with my eyes.

[meremortal]

Originally Posted by HarcourtMudd

For perspective, I was a college student during these years, and was by no means rich.

[Show spoiler]Once a friend introduced me to LD, I never looked back. No, I didn't have the top of the line players, and I did not amass a huge library, but I saw LD for what it was: the creme-da-la-crem of home film presentation, at a time when "home theater" largely meant wealthy people with a 35mm projector in their living room. I was more than willing to shell out the inflated prices for films in widescreen, and with much better audio than was possible on VHS.

I tend to get rather annoyed when some people recount the history of HT as VHS --> DVD --> HD DVD/Blu Ray --> UHD Blu Ray, entirely skipping over LD as if it was nothing. In point of fact, it was the grandfather of all the pretty little shiny discs we have today (the fact that it never really broke through in market share just reflects the P/Q priorities of J6P; it is no coincidence that "those lack bars" were such a perceived problem at the time).

Fun story. I never put 2 and 2 together with regards to widescreen vs P/S until I saw Star Wars in widescreen for the first time. When I saw Star Wars (not "A New Hope") in theaters in '77, I was fascinated by a crane that is visible on the left side of the screen when the Falcon is first pulled into the Death Star (don't ask me why, but I thought it was the neatest thing). Years later, when I saw Star Wars on VHS in P/S, the crane was gone. So when I saw it in widescreen for the first time on LD, my beloved crane was back, and all was right with the world once again. Seriously, that was when the light bulb went on.

That's really interesting. The average disc was $50 for $29.99 titles and $67 for $39.99 titles, each, when adjusted for inflation and I can't imagine supporting it on a college salary other than the very occasional purchase. Perhaps it might've been doable if there were used discs for sale, but I never once saw any until after the format ceased operations and that was at a video liquidation store. I used to hunt high and low for used dvds at pawn shops for around five bucks and that was how I built my dvd collection in the very early 2000s; couldn't really afford new titles and catalog titles which tended to be around $20 new or $30 with inflation. Even today it's extremely rare for me to pay $20+ for a movie. It's also amusing how terrible our first dvd player was by today's standards since it only had composite and S-Video connections. And it's crazy to think how different money is today from just a couple of decades ago. For example, a doctor like a pediatrician only earned around $80k/yr then and there were plenty of tenure track college professors with a PhD working for around $30k-40k a year.

[Kristian Idol]

Originally Posted by Neon Rabbit

...and sometimes with a plethora of bonus content.

Ah, a *plethora* of content.

I just would like to know if you know what a plethora is. I would not like to think that a person would tell someone he has a plethora, and then find out that that person has *no idea* what it means to have a plethora.



(Gosh, now I hope you know the reference...!)

[Ernest Rister]

[HarcourtMudd]

Originally Posted by meremortal

That's really interesting. The average disc was $50 for $29.99 titles and $67 for $39.99 titles, each, when adjusted for inflation and I can't imagine supporting it on a college salary other than the very occasional purchase. Perhaps it might've been doable if there were used discs for sale, but I never once saw any until after the format ceased operations and that was at a video liquidation store. I used to hunt high and low for used dvds at pawn shops for around five bucks and that was how I built my dvd collection in the very early 2000s; couldn't really afford new titles and catalog titles which tended to be around $20 new or $30 with inflation. Even today it's extremely rare for me to pay $20+ for a movie. It's also amusing how terrible our first dvd player was by today's standards since it only had composite and S-Video connections. And it's crazy to think how different money is today from just a couple of decades ago. For example, a doctor like a pediatrician only earned around $80k/yr then and there were plenty of tenure track college professors with a PhD working for around $30k-40k a year.

Yea, I know. My entire LD library totals a whopping 151 titles, and that is over an 11-year time span... Many of the titles I obtained by working for a friend at his LD store, with LDs for pay. Others I obtained by playing the Disney/vault market (ie. I traded my p/s copy of "The Little Mermaid" for both the T2 and Abyss boxsets, just before it was re-released from the vault in letterbox form). It also helped that I had no life to speak of outside of the books...

[captainsolo]

Oh boy just wait...if you buy some and start collecting now that it’s very niche and obsolete...I’ve been buying discs for roughly ten years and am nearing 1200...and I only started looking for two things. This is after I slowed down drastically years ago. They’re just so darn cheap sometimes and if I don’t save them who will?

[koberulz]

Originally Posted by Fjodor2000

Well, what would you rather have for the premium formats (4K UHD Blu-ray in this day and age):

1. Low price, high volume.
2. High price, low volume.

Assuming 1) results in high enough volume

But it doesn't.

[Fjodor2000]

Originally Posted by koberulz

But it doesn't.

If you say so.

[Agent Kay]

This is a laserdisc thread now.
It was the first laserdisc release after all.

[RalphoR]

936.jpg

Bruce is 45 years old.

[Dickieduvet]

Originally Posted by RalphoR

Attachment 239039

Bruce is 45 years old.

I'm 45, still got all my teeth too

[RalphoR]

Originally Posted by Dickieduvet

I'm 45, still got all my teeth too

I'm thinking shark years and human years aren't the same otherwise we'd be screwed

[buckeye1]

Originally Posted by RalphoR

Attachment 239039

Bruce is 45 years old.

[WBMakeVMarsMovieNOW]

Originally Posted by meremortal

It's really staggering how expensive LD was when you account for inflation. To use The Lion King as an example, in 1995 the standard edition was reportedly $29.99 then ($50 w/ inflation). And if you sprung for the box set that would have set you back $124.99 ($212 w/ inflation).

A solid non-elite player might have been around $999.99 during that time as well or over $1600 adjusted for today.

And those prices were after the format had been around for over fifteen years.

I feel like certain types of buying power have decreased since the 80s for the poor, lower middle class and regular middle class and maybe a bit for the lower upper middle class, if maybe not for the super upper middle class to rich. I mean there were a couple times in the mid-80s I got birthday stuff (computer setups) that would total easily well over $5000 now and we were hardly rich. Kids today, at our same relative income level, don't get $5000+ birthday presents much. And just thinking of the VCR I got in the early late 80s, I think it was like $800 then or something? The fancy Canon camcorder must've been like $1200 or something. One vacation was over $7000 and that was 1980 and we had even less money then than in the mid to late 80s.

Anyway, I never had LD back then. Didn't have beta, got VHS a little late in the game, didn't get LD, switched to DVD extremely early on, switched to HD DVD super early on and blu-ray somewhat later (didn't feel secure during the format fight going for a format that was not yet cracked, wanted to be able to back up to hard drive in case one format went away and drives for that format broke down), switched to UHD after some large delay (basically until I could play it back from my PC the way I wanted to with MadVR and the trick to get 24bit not getting downsampled to 16bit just because you don't have stupid PAP). Although we never got LD and were a little slow even to VHS we did get CD player early on, I think it was in 1983.

[crissrudd4554]

Never had the pleasure of owning an LD player I’m afraid.

[Markgway]

What we take for granted now...

I used to get so excited when a title I liked was announced for a letterbox VHS.

My first purchase:



and this was the ad that sold me...

Widescreen VHS trailer 1991 #2 - YouTube

[Cholly]

Just placed my order for this and the Columbia Classics set at deepdiscount. With these, the Cameraman and the Jorowsky set coming, June is going to be pretty damn sweet.