1997's Starship Troopers

Phil, I'm curious to know how much you know about what I'm going to talk about here.

Because nothing at this point.

I know nothing.

Because you grew up with a black box.

Yes.

I want to talk about VHS.

Oh, okay.

I'm quite familiar.

So I know you still would rent them.

Absolutely.

You weren't fully dependent on the box.

No.

I wonder if you knew how to rig it up where you could record what you rented.

Absolutely.

Okay.

Oh, yeah.

Were you the guy or was your brother the guy? I think my dad may have been the guy.

Your dad was the guy.

Yeah.

In my family, I'm pretty sure it was my brother.

Okay.

With technology, it's interesting with parents, is that if it's something new and they don't really know about it, they don't really care if you're doing it.

My parents were pretty by the book.

So if it was illegal, like, no, no, no, you can't do that.

Of course.

But because they're not really familiar with what we're really doing.

They're just kind of dumbfounded by the whole thing.

Like, okay, sure.

Whatever you're doing, I'm sure it's fine.

No, the FBI is not a fan of this.

You've seen the warning.

Yeah, yeah.

But it's all about those tabs that get punched out, similar to cassette tapes as well.

And we covered them up with masking tape, rigged up, I believe, two VCRs.

One to play, one to record.

Yeah.

And I think my brother was in charge of it.

And I'm surprised, looking back, that we partook in it.

Because it's not something that we would do as a family.

Break the law.

Yeah, exactly.

It's a real family

gathering.

We didn't have any of those kind of restrictions, as you can imagine.

And so we just did it to do it.

Wow.

If your dad's like the ringleader.

Yeah, my uncle was...

My uncle was another one.

I remember going often to his place.

Was he a

bootlegger? Well, he just would have whatever movies that he rented.

So we would borrow from him often what was available.

It's so easy to do.

I guess you have to invest in a second VCR, which is, back then, a $3,000 investment.

But it pays off all those rentals that you would rent again.

Well, I think that's the trade-off, yeah.

And

so if you didn't want to wait, back then we're talking about DVDs and VHS and the box.

Beta, yeah.

um the modern world doesn't understand this obviously but there were such big gaps so i would pay my 10 bucks to see it in the theater and then i would have to wait six months at least to get a home video version so the box came and it was like well actually i had to wait three months for that and then another couple months and i would get the vhs and i always was very very good about if i loved the movie i would often go to see the theater and watch it in the box, and then pay to rent it or buy it afterwards, certainly when DVDs and VHS became more accessible.

You did your part.

Sure.

It was maybe

breaking the law,

but it was done with, I thought, so little malice or it was just I don't want to wait.

So you lacked patience.

I did.

I still do.

So do I in some regards.

It's funny because my brother, who in our family was the orchestrator of this, He has a ton of physical media.

I love this guy.

Why isn't he here on the couch? We're very different personality-wise.

Sure.

I think similar to your brother.

So I wouldn't like him as much as I like him.

Actually, you might like him.

But when it comes to TV and movies, we cross paths.

Our interests are very similar.

Oh, okay, so I wouldn't like him.

Yeah,

no, TV.

A lot of that physical media is TV.

He's the one introducing me to Red Dwarf.

I see.

All these things.

So, yeah, he might not quite get along, but he likes movies as well, but not to...

Not enough to host

a movie podcast.

No, and I'm certainly not qualified either.

We know that.

We know that.