jarrett...and several degrees of separation

it's 1978 and your favorite show is coming on. what do you do?!? what do you do?!?

i'm sure many of you have tried to picture yourself growing up in a different time or place. my dad's best friend says that he feels like he was meant to be born out west in the 1800's. working in the grit and grime, sans technology and the hustle and bustle of modern-day life. i guess i can dig that. i love to go tromping around in the woods; but i do love my computer, and my shower.

anyway, that's not my point. my point is, recently i started digitizing some beta tapes for a friend of mine. he told me that when beta came out, he and his friends would get together after recording a cool show (eg. letterman canceling the rest of his guests because james brown asked if he could play another song). they would connect all of their machines and bootleg their own copy. it was a completely new way of watching tv. and as with most initial iterations of technologies, it was overly engineered. in this case it was determined that the tape must be snug against the cylinder head (or whatever you call it) at all costs. how do we do that? we pull out two miles of tape and wrap it at least 180 degrees around the cylinder. as i recently found out, this can cause some serious problems upon ejection.

problems with this technology aside, i can definitely dig the excitement of new functionality. yes, i can even see myself growing up in the late 70's, having the ability to finally watch tv on my own time. of course, i'd rather have a dvr, and a la carte cable...or really just on demand tv. maybe i need to live in the future.

posted by jarrett @ 5:04 PM