I miss shops like Tandy. You could get most connection cables you were looking for. And the old BASF tapes. Although in my opinion ? TDK were better. Nice video compilation 👍
Tandy was my go-to back then. After that, Maplin, but they weren't quite the same. There's nothing out there now since Maplin went down. Any cables & stuff I need, it's online. 😔
I remember the TDK, MA,r tape. A bit expensive but excellent quality for recording, and heavy too. I found D90 range were fine good enough for recording off FM radio. I can't believe how much people are selling blank cassettes for on ebay now. Very expensive 😮 .
Radio shack/Maplin was an excellent shop to go to for specific electronic components.. .. In regards to cassettes. It does matter what type of cassette you use for recording that makes a difference.. TDK might have been slightly better, but choosing the right cassette made all the difference... Remember AGFA cassettes, although they were probably the lower end of the cassette hierarchy...
Thanks for these Videos. Love the retro tech ones! I remember Amstrad's large range of consumer electronics. I don't remember us owning any though. I remember entering many Dixon's and TV stores in the past. All those sets linked up against the walls, such memories! When I was a student in my late Teens I worked in a Comet and a Miller Brothers store. Oh how things have changed...
You didn't miss much with Amstrad. Alan Sugar himself admitted his products were made to look good from the outside, but used all the cheapest possible components. "A Mug's Eyeful" he called it.
Alas I've struggled to be enthused by the compilations the last couple of weeks, but this is totally my thing 😁 I keep finding myself daydreaming about time travel. Think what you could do - meet important people, see the first performance of a play by Shakespeare, visit Rome or Babylon, see dinosaurs... And I'd like to do all of those, but... But I really want to just go back and wander around an early to mid-nineties Dixons or Comet 😁🤣
Watching the _back to the future_ franchise, Goes to show, time travel is not always a good idea.. .. In the early 2000s, I was intending to stick a VHS camera in my truck and film the entire day. Sadly never got round to it.. + The cost and storage issues. (VHS tapes).. That would have been YT gold.. seeing all the old motors.
Used to have a Harvard CB hand held like in ad , with a rubber ducky ariel, had about 8 or 10 pencil battery's in back and weighed a ton so much so I had it on a shoulder strap , the days
I love the way most adverts then were more "technical" in nature. Especially the Panasonic one for their video recorder. Can you imagine most people understanding anything technical now? Perhaps this shows how society has been dumbed down over the years??
2 in 1 TV and VHS combi's might have seemed like an attractive offering at first glance, but the smart money was on buying separate devices. Problem was, if the TV part broke beyond repair it made the video useless despite probably working absolutely fine. That Videoplus+ barcode scanning device, I had one of those. It was a bit of a novelty, and I was fairly impressed by it at the time. But looking back, I don't think it actually made the task of programming a VCR all that much easier. It was a lot of fiddling about, it replaced one tricky task with just another.
We got a Hitachi VHS recorder in '85 think it cost £499.. It was fiendishly complex to pre programme. .. What my dad did was, insert a 180 minute VHS cassette, and set the VHS to "long play" which g ave us 6 hours of recording time. .. And get it going about an hour before the programme started. .. It worked! just had to wade through hours of cerape to get to what you wanted...
Another excellent collection Steve, it's amazing how some things have changed especially cameras and film processing. Interesting seeing Amstrad's advert, I've just finished Alan Sugars first biography that was written at the end of the 1980's, and he very unkindly referred to his hifi systems as 'the mugs eyeful', meaning they look great but are very cheaply made. Thanks again Steve.👍🏻😊
I remember a repair man coming out to fix our rental TV when I was about 7. I'd "experimented" with the channel push buttons - used a 30cm ruler to push in all the buttons at once. Oops!
I'm crying... all those high street tech giants, consigned to oblivion... I WANT THE 1908's AND 1990's BACK!!!😭😭😭 Edit: 1908's?? I'm old but not that old!!!
Is your housemaid still drying clothes by hanging them over bushes in the garden? You need a mangle! This labour saving device will dry your clothes in under a day! 😆
OMG! I remember, the sekonda watch, the Rodney peoples phone, and the cellnet advert.. .. And _it'll be alright on the night_ .. Denis Norden Doing the voice over for the Tandy advert... .. You know, watching these gives me that pre movie, old & tired, well worn [hot dog or Indian cuisine ] cinema ad feeling, !!
When the advert started I thought the same (though I definitely recognised the "flatter squarer tube" part), but as soon as I saw the logo it was familiar. It was a UK brand started in the mid 80s and bought by Alba just a couple of years later (that's just from Wikipedia), but I've definitely seen it. Not hugely common though, I think, but that's a guess.
Having only just started watching this channel, I'm curious as to how you have all of these brilliant adverts from the past. Are they on old videos you have? Do you somehow track them all down through contacts? I don't think I've seen such a comprehensive collection before.
That's actually explained in the channel about section. It's all stuff that's already out there, but in various states of bad quality sound and picture. I collect random ads and compile them into themed collections, fixing up the picture and sound quality as I go. This channel will never be monetised for that reason - because it's not fully original content, just improved.
A great selection. Those 1st generation Seiko Arctura Kinetics looked amazing. I almost bought one but went for a Tag Heuer F1 quartz instead. The Tag actually worked out slightly cheaper thanks to the special offers on this brand the ADs were always running. Looking back I wish I had got the Kinetic, quite a '90s icon now and a model that instantly stands out from the crowd. Also on the watch theme, I wonder where Pulsar (a Seiko brand like Lorus) went? They were popular in the '80s/'90s but seemed to disappear from UK stores ~2010.
Hinari was such a deceptive brand name, clearly trying to fool people into thinking it was Japanese, and , hence, better, despite it being British. Very like Dixons' own-brand electricals being given the Japanese-sounding "Matsui" name (Saisho, too). Very duplicitous.
Yeah, I think they were sold as cheaper alternatives, weren't they? Still trying to fool people they were Japanese. If you wanted genuine good quality TV's and Stereo's in the 80's, You bought Sony or Toshiba. I had a portable Toshiba in the about 1987 80's. It was still working fine in 2002!
@@Matty112uk Now all I can think about is the Alexei Sayle-inspired "Hello Tosh, got a Toshiba?" adverts 😆 I'm sure Steve must've put one of those in a compilation before.
Currys sells own brand products using heritage Japanese brands under licence such as JVC, Hitachi, and from the UK the LOGIK brand (thelogik) that started in 2005 according to the website. Updated: Bush removed from list.
"We'll beat it by 10% of the difference" sounds wrong somehow, worded that way. The bald guy in the 3Comm ad is kind of well-known in the US as an actor.
I was curious about the Hinari "Televideo" since it specifically mentions a built-in "Japanese video" - I wanted to know if it was actually Japanese or another attempt at misleading consumers. I couldn't find anything in the end, but I did find out that "Hinari Televideo" was the name of a racehorse, originally owned by Hinari Consumer Electronics Ltd. I'd say that was a weird way to advertise, but then if a company can get naming rights to a football stadium or even an F1 team then I suppose a racehorse is fair game. (Oh, and they also had horses called "Hinari Sound", "Hinari Hifi", "Hinari Vision" and the magnificent, and not-at-all open to mispronunciation, "Hinari Disk Deck". 😁😆)
Chinese and Taiwanese electronics were just starting to flood the market back then, and had a reputation for poor quality, whereas Japanese electronics had a reputation for high quality, so emphasising that it’s Japanese was an advertising plus point. They wouldn’t say it’s Japanese if it wasn’t, that would be a downright lie and be a major contravention of advertising laws.
We had one and it was a bit of a faff to use, you had to scan about a dozen barcodes for each thing you wanted to record, then zap it at the video for each one. It was quickly replaced with VideoPlus+ (remember that?)
@AtheistOrphan I do remember VideoPlus, we had one luckily we bought one of those rather than the barcode scanner. Of course that would like anything else relied on Panasonic paying for the listings. That was £449 down the drain then, eh? Sorry to hear that.
The very first advert sums up the excitement we had for the future. Now we are in the future we look back fondly at the past. Bummer isn't it?
Completely
Useful and user friendly technology ended in the mid 1990's IMO.
Everything since then, has been variations on a theme.
0:15 I remember when these television and video combos were all the rage.
"Just how will we advertise our mobile phone?". "Easy! We film it being violated by a tortoise!".
@@FatNorthernBigot 🤣🤣
They made very cool adverts
The sekonda ad made me laugh! Who needs a £3000 watch anyway
I miss shops like Tandy. You could get most connection cables you were looking for. And the old BASF tapes. Although in my opinion ? TDK were better. Nice video compilation 👍
Tandy was my go-to back then. After that, Maplin, but they weren't quite the same. There's nothing out there now since Maplin went down. Any cables & stuff I need, it's online. 😔
TDK SA90's. The green and silver label version from the mid 1980's - never been bettered!
I started on chrome and metal cassettes just as cassettes were fading away. Got some great quality recordings on those with my Technics deck.
I remember the TDK, MA,r tape. A bit expensive but excellent quality for recording, and heavy too. I found D90 range were fine good enough for recording off FM radio. I can't believe how much people are selling blank cassettes for on ebay now. Very expensive 😮 .
Radio shack/Maplin was an excellent shop to go to for specific electronic components..
..
In regards to cassettes.
It does matter what type of cassette you use for recording that makes a difference..
TDK might have been slightly better, but choosing the right cassette made all the difference...
Remember AGFA cassettes, although they were probably the lower end of the cassette hierarchy...
Thanks for these Videos. Love the retro tech ones! I remember Amstrad's large range of consumer electronics. I don't remember us owning any though. I remember entering many Dixon's and TV stores in the past. All those sets linked up against the walls, such memories! When I was a student in my late Teens I worked in a Comet and a Miller Brothers store. Oh how things have changed...
You didn't miss much with Amstrad. Alan Sugar himself admitted his products were made to look good from the outside, but used all the cheapest possible components. "A Mug's Eyeful" he called it.
Yeah, amstrad hi fis were known as cerape.
You'd be lucky if you had a whole whopping 2 watts of power! Per channel...
The day still hasn't come when all watches are made that way.
Another great compilation of technology adverts Steve 👍🏽😎👍🏽📺📼🎹⌚📱📷📹
Superb..!
Alas I've struggled to be enthused by the compilations the last couple of weeks, but this is totally my thing 😁 I keep finding myself daydreaming about time travel. Think what you could do - meet important people, see the first performance of a play by Shakespeare, visit Rome or Babylon, see dinosaurs... And I'd like to do all of those, but... But I really want to just go back and wander around an early to mid-nineties Dixons or Comet 😁🤣
I'd like to go back and record a LOAD of HD footage, then return and turn it into a UA-cam channel.
@@RetroSteveUK Oh yeah, I get that urge. It's all 4K HDR in my memory, but everything that exists is VHS-quality 😁
Watching the
_back to the future_ franchise,
Goes to show, time travel is not always a good idea..
..
In the early 2000s, I was intending to stick a VHS camera in my truck and film the entire day.
Sadly never got round to it..
+ The cost and storage issues.
(VHS tapes)..
That would have been YT gold.. seeing all the old motors.
Dixons, woolworths, we where spoiled for choice . We toook it for granted and now its gone .
Hated and still hate adverts, but always fondly enjoy these videos
Used to have a Harvard CB hand held like in ad , with a rubber ducky ariel, had about 8 or 10 pencil battery's in back and weighed a ton so much so I had it on a shoulder strap , the days
Looks like Rodney borrowed Trigger's suit.
🤣👍
Alright Dave?
I love the way most adverts then were more "technical" in nature. Especially the Panasonic one for their video recorder. Can you imagine most people understanding anything technical now? Perhaps this shows how society has been dumbed down over the years??
Spot on. As most consumer tech has become more user-friendly, the level of technical knowledge has probably dropped.
2 in 1 TV and VHS combi's might have seemed like an attractive offering at first glance, but the smart money was on buying separate devices. Problem was, if the TV part broke beyond repair it made the video useless despite probably working absolutely fine.
That Videoplus+ barcode scanning device, I had one of those. It was a bit of a novelty, and I was fairly impressed by it at the time. But looking back, I don't think it actually made the task of programming a VCR all that much easier. It was a lot of fiddling about, it replaced one tricky task with just another.
My step-son (currently aged 39) still has a combo portable TV & VHS. Still uses it as his one and only way to watch old VHS tapes.
We got a Hitachi VHS recorder in '85 think it cost £499..
It was fiendishly complex to pre programme.
..
What my dad did was, insert a 180 minute VHS cassette, and set the VHS to
"long play" which g
ave us 6 hours of recording time.
..
And get it going about an hour before the programme started.
..
It worked!
just had to wade through hours of cerape to get to what you wanted...
Auto tracking was a must!
Game changer.
Another excellent collection Steve, it's amazing how some things have changed especially cameras and film processing. Interesting seeing Amstrad's advert, I've just finished Alan Sugars first biography that was written at the end of the 1980's, and he very unkindly referred to his hifi systems as 'the mugs eyeful', meaning they look great but are very cheaply made. Thanks again Steve.👍🏻😊
"Amscrap" were crap! 👎 ... Unlike Panasonic, who had their word on it! 👍
Come to Curry's where everything clicks - because it's broken.
Id rather live in these days then now .
great memories , used to be a service engineer remember repairing some of these things😊
I remember a repair man coming out to fix our rental TV when I was about 7. I'd "experimented" with the channel push buttons - used a 30cm ruler to push in all the buttons at once. Oops!
@@RetroSteveUK I worked for d-e-r at the time all you do is push the second button in and all come out😊
Great records.
It's great that you take the time to index each video meaning that the post will come up in Google video searches.
That's the plan. Works quite well. Someone once found an ad they were in as a baby because of the chapter marker descriptions.
I'm crying... all those high street tech giants, consigned to oblivion...
I WANT THE 1908's AND 1990's BACK!!!😭😭😭
Edit: 1908's?? I'm old but not that old!!!
90s...truly was the best
Old enough for a brain-fart, huh? 😉
Is your housemaid still drying clothes by hanging them over bushes in the garden? You need a mangle! This labour saving device will dry your clothes in under a day! 😆
Welcome To Technology.
Cassettes whats that then😂😂😂 cheers stevie
I still say I'm going to 'tape' something off the telly, even though it's a hard drive recorder.
OMG!
I remember, the sekonda watch, the Rodney peoples phone, and the cellnet advert..
..
And
_it'll be alright on the night_
..
Denis Norden
Doing the voice over for the Tandy advert...
..
You know, watching these gives me that pre movie, old & tired, well worn
[hot dog or Indian cuisine ] cinema ad feeling, !!
God you made me feel so old ty
You're welcome? I think .. 😂
Hinari? Never heard of them! And roping in poor old Christopher Lee for the voiceover.
I had an alarm clock lol
When the advert started I thought the same (though I definitely recognised the "flatter squarer tube" part), but as soon as I saw the logo it was familiar. It was a UK brand started in the mid 80s and bought by Alba just a couple of years later (that's just from Wikipedia), but I've definitely seen it. Not hugely common though, I think, but that's a guess.
Hinari, yeah sort of an Argos 'spesh' - budget, but okay.
‘People’s Phone’ sounds like something from the Soviet Union.
£19.99 for phone, but £1 a minute calls!!
@@museonfilm8919certainly sounds like something del boy would be involved in...
@@museonfilm8919certainly sounds like something del boy would be involved in...
oh lordy. Amstrad/Fidelity. Great quality when I was a teenager....not so great as an adult.
9:29 Mr Bean with Professor Heinz Wolff narrating!!!!!
Now all in cupboards, lofts and landfill.
Tech is getting crazy 🤭
Having only just started watching this channel, I'm curious as to how you have all of these brilliant adverts from the past. Are they on old videos you have? Do you somehow track them all down through contacts? I don't think I've seen such a comprehensive collection before.
That's actually explained in the channel about section. It's all stuff that's already out there, but in various states of bad quality sound and picture. I collect random ads and compile them into themed collections, fixing up the picture and sound quality as I go. This channel will never be monetised for that reason - because it's not fully original content, just improved.
@RetroSteveUK Thank you. Very interesting.
A great selection. Those 1st generation Seiko Arctura Kinetics looked amazing. I almost bought one but went for a Tag Heuer F1 quartz instead. The Tag actually worked out slightly cheaper thanks to the special offers on this brand the ADs were always running. Looking back I wish I had got the Kinetic, quite a '90s icon now and a model that instantly stands out from the crowd. Also on the watch theme, I wonder where Pulsar (a Seiko brand like Lorus) went? They were popular in the '80s/'90s but seemed to disappear from UK stores ~2010.
1:14 KENNY!!!!!!!😃
Worked at Dixons back in the day - Wolves 100 - shithole with most of the staff being fedup, poortly trained and detesting most of the customers.....
8:45 Nicholas Lindhurst!!!
Rodney!
Hinari was such a deceptive brand name, clearly trying to fool people into thinking it was Japanese, and , hence, better, despite it being British. Very like Dixons' own-brand electricals being given the Japanese-sounding "Matsui" name (Saisho, too). Very duplicitous.
Dixons own brand was ‘Prinzsonic’ before they changed to the Japanese-sounding names.
Yeah, I think they were sold as cheaper alternatives, weren't they? Still trying to fool people they were Japanese. If you wanted genuine good quality TV's and Stereo's in the 80's, You bought Sony or Toshiba. I had a portable Toshiba in the about 1987 80's. It was still working fine in 2002!
@@Matty112uk Now all I can think about is the Alexei Sayle-inspired "Hello Tosh, got a Toshiba?" adverts 😆 I'm sure Steve must've put one of those in a compilation before.
I bought a Hinari Microwave from Argos in 2005, for £49.99. In 2024, it still works as good as new!
Currys sells own brand products using heritage Japanese brands under licence such as JVC, Hitachi, and from the UK the LOGIK brand (thelogik) that started in 2005 according to the website.
Updated: Bush removed from list.
Dixons never dies at airports. Weird
They still have branches there?
(I've never set foot in an airport before, believe it or not.)
"We'll beat it by 10% of the difference" sounds wrong somehow, worded that way. The bald guy in the 3Comm ad is kind of well-known in the US as an actor.
0:11 Isn’t that Christopher Lee narrating????? 😳
Sounds like him.
6:57 Denis Norden narrating!!!!
wasn't that Hinari voice over by Christopher Lee?
It does sound VERY much like him.
How do I connect my hifi to my TV and he gives him a scart to scart cable??
I was curious about the Hinari "Televideo" since it specifically mentions a built-in "Japanese video" - I wanted to know if it was actually Japanese or another attempt at misleading consumers. I couldn't find anything in the end, but I did find out that "Hinari Televideo" was the name of a racehorse, originally owned by Hinari Consumer Electronics Ltd. I'd say that was a weird way to advertise, but then if a company can get naming rights to a football stadium or even an F1 team then I suppose a racehorse is fair game.
(Oh, and they also had horses called "Hinari Sound", "Hinari Hifi", "Hinari Vision" and the magnificent, and not-at-all open to mispronunciation, "Hinari Disk Deck". 😁😆)
Chinese and Taiwanese electronics were just starting to flood the market back then, and had a reputation for poor quality, whereas Japanese electronics had a reputation for high quality, so emphasising that it’s Japanese was an advertising plus point. They wouldn’t say it’s Japanese if it wasn’t, that would be a downright lie and be a major contravention of advertising laws.
Panasonic digital scanner Video Recorder, how long did they last? About a fortnight?? 🤭😉
We had one and it was a bit of a faff to use, you had to scan about a dozen barcodes for each thing you wanted to record, then zap it at the video for each one. It was quickly replaced with VideoPlus+ (remember that?)
@AtheistOrphan I do remember VideoPlus, we had one luckily we bought one of those rather than the barcode scanner. Of course that would like anything else relied on Panasonic paying for the listings.
That was £449 down the drain then, eh? Sorry to hear that.
I had a Casio keyboard with a scanner pen (complete crap).
Barcodes were novel back then, almost sci-fi.
@ - Ah yes, I vaguely remember those!
i had an amstrad music centre worst than shite!!
I used to work in dixons :-)
Did you guarantee your customers couldn't buy better?
Those red chunky Saisho 'walkmans' - £19.99 and utter garbage - but they did have some good stuff too.😀
"People often ask me how l can sell colour TVs from just £55. I tell them, because they're crap"...hang on wrong businessman!
Gerald, is that you? 💍
11:51 - Ummmmm... 😟
Yup. They went there.
Definitely not today...nope! 😀
What’s a suitable micro-system for my son? So Tandy man shows him a Sharp. 🙃