No, Mister Bond, I Expect You to Buy Another Copy

I can’t remember where I found this link, but it’s a fine read on the history of home video — from Super 8 to DVD.

My great grandfather Bernard von Hoffmann owned one of the first 16mm color cameras for civilian use, back in the ’30s. And he traveled pretty much everywhere — so I grew up on pretty cool home movies. We had a Super 8 camera when I was a kid. 50 foot spools of Technicolor glory with no sound whatsoever. Then my grandfather Macon came home from the appliance store one Christmas with the Betamax he’d been specifically ordered not to buy. I think spending my teen years trying to defend a product no one wanted is why to this day I don’t like Macintosh. Then a long progression of VHS, Hi-Fi VHS, S-VHS, DVD, and Superbit DVD. And when Hi-Def DVD comes out, I’ll buy that, too.

Turns it out, all this “progress” was just to make us buy more copies of Goldfinger.

Check it out.