The Original Home Theatre

I was reminded tonight how cool my childhood was when telling a story.

In the very early ’80’s the video recorder was a very new toy for any household. My Dad, being a complete movie buff, went out and bought the top of the line Sony C7. Dad worked at the ABC and had spoken to his more technical mates and this is the one they recommended.

Before you laugh at Dad for investing in Beta remember that this system is still considered far superior to VHS and was used by EVERY TV station for ENG (Electronic News Gathering) in the pro format, BetaSP. My show reel is still on SP and it was THE format for production companies when shooting and editing TVCs.

Above is a SP camera being mounted on the front of a Porsche Boxter. This was a corporate video I was producing/directing for a hotel conglomerate. Spookily, this photo was taken on the morning of 26 July 2000, the day an Air France Concorde crashed into a hotel owned by the same conglomerate.

Anyways, no matter how good Beta was it failed in the ‘cheap to market’ category and eventually VHS won the format war with video shops gradually and then increasingly stocking more and more then only VHS movies for rent.

But before then we had a much cooler entertainment experience at our house. Dad ran the Film and Tape Library at the ABC’s Gore Hill Studios complex. The tape was mostly primarily news or BBC imports and on broadcast standard formats such as 1 and 2 inch.

But the film was mostly 16mm. Now, Dad started his working life as a projectionist at the Metro theatre in Kings Cross (that’s where he met Mum who was working as an usherette – so the story goes). So Dad would bring home from the ABC movies and series on 16mm film, throw a screen up at one end of the family room and then load up the Bell & Howell projector.

We had a home theatre before there was such a thing as home theatre. And I only just realised how cool it was.