And There Was Much Rejoicing

[bloodyrosemccoy]

AHA! Barnes and Noble finally came through!

That’s right, dudes, I now own a “Diamond Edition” Blu-ray copy of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, one of the best movies ever made. This is significant, because before this day my only copy of this movie was on Betamax. BETAMAX, DO YOU HEAR ME. You don’t even know what that is. And ever since then I’ve been foiled in my attempts to buy a copy that will play on something that is not a VCR bought in 1982, what with the time I tried to get a DVD from Amazon and it sent me a PIRATED COPY that wouldn’t play what the hell Amazon and the cursed Disney Vault bullshit. BUT NOW I OWN IT IN BLU-RAY, and you can bet your indoor plumbing that when they release the DVD version of the Diamond Edition next month I will own that too, because I am not spending another 20 years sitting around waiting for another anniversary.

Speaking of outdated media, this version contains something I remember renting in Laser Disc format:* the fascinating work-in-progress version, which from what I recall has the audio track intact, but which shifts back and forth from various animatics and storyboards. It’s really interesting to check out the process of making an animated movie.

WHICH I FINALLY HAVE. Now off to see if they have a copy on iTunes, because god dammit I will not get caught with outdated media for this movie again.


*We still have the Laser Disc player. We call it the Star Wars player, because we own exactly one movie trilogy in Laser Disc form. And now that George Lucas has “lost” the original copies of Star Wars, the Laser versions are actually the closest thing there is to the Star Wars theatrical releases.

Comments

[beccastareyes]

The Cornell anime club has a lasrdisc player in storage, because we actually own some anime on laserdisc -- notably Here is Greenwood, and I think some other things. The club actually gets a bit gleeful when we have an excuse to break that (or the VHS player) out.

[pandoras-closet.livejournal.com]

I still have the original Star Wars on VHS. Because I'm awesome like that

[anagramofbrat.livejournal.com]

You don’t even know what that is.

Hell yeah I do! It was Gen-X's HD-DVD!

[dinogrrl.livejournal.com]

Betamax was the best thing ever.
My family had two players.

[westrider.livejournal.com]

Lots of people know what Betamax was. Well, some of them probably think it was made up for that episode of Cowboy Bebop, but they've heard of it, at least ;)

[van.livejournal.com]

This is one of the reasons we still keep the Laserdisc. Also because there are some cool movies that we have that are only on LD right now, and may likely never make the transition. Also because some movies just shouldn't have to be bought twice, dammit.

[xaandria.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know what Betamax is. I ALSO know what a LaserDisc player is, and that happens to be the medium that WE had Beauty and the Beast on, as well as The Little Mermaid. We've also got a DivX (to keep the Betamax and laserdisc and minidisc players company).

Basically, I have been able to tell definitively which battling technology will fail, because it is always the one that my dad chooses. So when he went in for HD DVD, you bet your ass I got a BluRay player.

[mooncat75.livejournal.com]

I remember Betamax! My parents even had the video camera...lens as big as your fist, camera body so large and heavy you had to rest it on your shoulder, big ass wire connecting the camera to actual VCR portion you had to CARRY WITH YOU!

[tears-of-nienna.livejournal.com]

My entire childhood is on Betamax tapes from about 1988. We have all the classic Christmas specials--Charlie Brown, Rudolph, the Grinch--with commercials intact! Who remembers what came in a Happy Meal for Christmas, 1988? I do!

...Now if we could just get a freaking Betamax player that worked, so that we could copy everything to DVD. *sigh*

(And I seriously want to watch Beauty and the Beast now. Bookish heroines for the win!)

[gwalla.livejournal.com]

Wait, how do you have B&tB on Betamax? That format was already dead by the time that movie came out in theaters! It died in the '80s!

I remember watching the ollllllllld Incredible Hulk cartoon on Betamax. At somebody else's house, because we only had VHS.