Eldergays who were serious movie collectors back in the day, did you have multisystem video equipment?

I bought one of the first VCRs, made by Mitsubishi. It cost me close to $1000 in 1977 dollars. And, yes, I took out a bank loan to buy it. The store where I bought it also had a few VHS movies for sale. My first was Risky Business. I think store management was spooked by how slow the movies-on-tape business was at the time, because they soon sold off their modest inventory. And this was way before they heyday of Blockbuster.

I then gravitated toward Laserdisc. I bought a refurbished model at Sears and it quickly broke down. At the time, Sears had a very generous return policy. The salesman said he would refund my money or give me a brand new Laserdisc player "in the box." I opted for the newer model. A local store in town rented laserdiscs and, after several weeks, would put them in a clearance bin at 50% off. New discs cost around $35-40, so the half-off deal was, IMO, a good deal. I still have a player and about two dozen discs.

By then, VCRs were really cheap. So, I bought a couple over several years, The players were solid and a bit heavy, suggesting a quality that soon disappeared with the lighter and cheaper models that followed. I still have many VHS tapes in my collection.

Movies on DVD were next. And the quality far surpassed VCR technology. Before the advent of Blu-ray, I bought dozens of movies on DVD. Then it was onto replacing the DVDs with Blu-ray discs.

And now I am slowly replacing the Blu-ray discs with Blu-ray 4K. I guess I am obsessed with physical media. I do have a Netflix subscription, but prefer having control of watching what I want when I want.

R1 I was asking about multisystem equipment, not the standard NTSC only stuff sold in regular US stores. Like for example, back in the old days, if you bought a VHS tape in Europe and tried to play it on your North American VCR, it would not play. You had to have a special VCR that could convert the picture. That’s what I’m talking about.

I started off with VHS which was a crap picture but it was available and not cheap. I liked the feature of recording tv shows like All My Children while I was at work. Yes, I was addicted to a soap. There were also a lot of movies on VHS you could rent. Looking back, it was quite primitive but a start.

Can any of you read? This thread is about MULTISYSTEM equipment.

Apparently not, R4. Looks like you're going to have to teach me. Grouch.

I had a standard VHS and a multi-system VHS that played SECAM, PAL, and other non-US formats. I had a DVD player and a Laserdisc player. Everything was hooked up to my stereo system, which had a CD recorder as well. When 1776 and Lost Horizon were released on Laserdisc in their full-length forms, with an isolated orchestral channel, I made complete soundtrack CDs and karaoke CDs. I got the international VHS from a catalog -the rest was purchased from local stores. I later added a DV bridge and a DVD recorder to the mix so I could convert the VHS taps to DVD.

I was a nerd.

I just had an 8-track player. I watched all my movies on that.