The Adventures of "Electronics" Bashny.Net

Household Soviet VCR "Electronics VM-12" was sold to the people of gostsene 1,200 rubles. The right to purchase were war veterans and heroes of labor. Ordinary citizens were recorded in a two-year, or all, or used the services of speculators. The cost of this miracle of the Soviet videomagnitofonostroeniya evaluated hands in 1800 rubles. For comparison, a scholarship student in the area was 45 rubles, the salary of workers - 200, and very good if 300.





Swindlers often veterans waiting at the exit of the shop "Electronics" on Leninsky Prospekt, and offered for VCR 1800 Veterans often disagreed. But when buyers disappeared from the tape, sellers found that they foisted only 1,200 instead of the promised 1,800. Run and call the police for help was useless - it is paid to you in accordance gostsene!
Import video recorders cost two to three times more expensive. They can be exchanged for a car or apartment. Such cases are known.
The cassette of "Electronics VM-12" is pulled mechanical button. But of more advanced imported machines - electric. When the valiant police at poderzhku aviation and vigilantes laying videopriton home, the first thing cuts off electricity. Cassettes of imported Vydac get was impossible. And if there was detected "Godfather" or "Greek fig tree", you end. No kidding.
I then studied in Moscow in the not the most prosperous schools (directors, for example, we have changed each year). VCR schoolchildren was not found. Video clubs in wide use also came a little later, 86-87 years. I was the first in the school, who came home VCR, the same legendary "VM-12". Because all went to look at Chuck Norris and The Terminator to visit me. Comes in 3 days, leaving at 3am. Usually 10-20 people sitting in the same room. Smoked so much that the rear "series" because of the smoke is almost nothing to be seen on the screen.
Money for views from anybody did not take. I only remember that one day I asked all those present to chip in on the ruble - I brought from the United States blamed Iron Maiden, and I did not know where to get the money for it.
Soviet television was maliciously not compatible with the imported video programs. In the Soviet Union was a system SECAM, and they have, from the bourgeoisie - PAL and NTSC. For the first time all the films I and my guests had to watch in black and white. At some point, the people at the school was going to chip in and buy me a decoder (this fee is sewn into the TV, and decodes the video signal in color). They are usually done with the craftsmen of radio plants zanykal parts of the state. Decoder cost 150-200 rubles. As a result, my parents had suddenly acquired a decoder without the help of the public.
Another upgrade that ought to make the Soviet TV - set "low-frequency" video input. With him was a picture quality than via the input for the antenna.
As soon as someone in the area appeared the videocassette of the program - it was me. So every day I had to look for 3-5 new films. I drove their names typewriter on A4 sheets, and two years on the list is more than 2,000 otsmotrennyh movies. That's not counting pornography and multiple repetitions.
Over time, the recorder appears in every home - literally. On average, a VCR for an apartment building. Everywhere video salon opened. But the boys went to the area to me - first of all, are accustomed to, and secondly, in other school parents took care of the VCR as the mummy of Lenin, and extraneous to it is not allowed.
Keep that was. At least three of import "Vidic" my friends stole from the apartment burglary. A one - on the contrary, the police confiscated, ostensibly to check the legality of the purchase. In reality, the servants of the law put it bluntly in his office, and a few months watched Chuck Norris.
I lived on the first floor of a dangerous criminal, and wondered what to me is still not climbed thieves. In one of the local boys told me: "Duc, to you as lads from around the area to watch the movie goes, a moron would dare steal your VCR?».
The last years at school I did not have a girl, because my room was filled with people day and night. And I'm not doing anything except endless otsmotren films and discuss new album "Metallica". Yes, in those days, "metallic" it was interesting to discuss.
"Electronics VM-12", though was the dreamboat of Soviet man, the reality has been utterly lousy. As soon as you insert the same tape in Japanese vidomagnitofon at once struck by the difference in picture quality.
"Electronics VM-12" - slightly spoiled the Japanese copy of the video player Panasonic NV-2000, which in the mid-80s had already a bit outdated. But the "Electronics" was produced until 1995!
If you come across the right movie, people copied it from a tape in the cassette. When involved in a couple of "electronics VM-12" - the image quality dropped repeatedly. In the USSR, the video used to call "the first copy", "Second copy", the "fifth copy", which corresponds to the number of rewrites of handicraft. The first copy - it is a picture from the original VHS transfer overlay. On the fifth copies usual places lost color on the screen was incomprehensible ripples, and about any discernible precise detail, even out of the question.
And the most important thing. A really good movies all madly in love, even in the fifth copies nasty transfer.
© Oleg Bocharov

Source: