Lazybones – Noun would refer to a lazy person, who is relaxed
and not keen to do any work !! - do you know its relevance to Technology.
Life has changed the fast lane ! – in modern times, who controls the remote, owns the World. One would be surprised to know that till 1990s most TV sets sold in India had no remote – main reason being, there was not much of option. There was only Doordarshan and mostly Single channel and that too broadcasting limited hours. So, one had to wait for a Friday for hearing song in ‘Oliyum Oliyum’ and Sundays for watching a Tamil movie !! - now the options are mind boggling.
Read that after being in the theatres for almost a month and getting good response, the makers of Maargan are set to release it on OTT and will begin streaming on Amazon Prime Video in India from July 25. For viewers outside India, the film will also be available on Tentkotta, the international OTT platform for Tamil content.
An over-the-top media service (also known as OTT) is a digital distribution service of video and audio delivered directly to viewers via the public Internet, rather than through an over-the-air, cable, satellite, or IPTV provider. The term is synonymous with "streaming platform”. OTT services may be subscription-based or free, and are typically accessed via television sets with integrated Smart TV platforms, websites on personal computers, and apps on smartphones and tablets. OTT services include paid services such as Netflix or Amazon Prime Video which provide access to subscription-based film and television content (SVOD), or free ad-supported streaming television.
Way back in 1994, my brother on his return from Gulf got me a costly gift – Sony VCR @ Rs.10000/- - it could play video cassettes, can be attached to our TV and have TV programmes recorded. In those days of audio cassette, in a time where DD’s 2nd channel had just come – VCR was a technological marvel, not affordable to middle class.
Many of us would remember that late 1980s and 1990s saw mushrooming video trade. There were shops renting VCR/VCP – Cassettes too would be rented. In Triplicane (as also in many other places) – on Friday / Sat nights, the rented VCP would play 3 or more cinemas continuously, watched by families, tenants sitting together and enjoying movies in common – as the rental value for a day, was considered high, people would use it to the hilt, by seeing movies together.
Raj Video Vision, the shop in Mount Road [of Raj Television] had a very good collection of films; Eknath Videos tried out a video magazine; a shop in Parsn complex had a good collection of Cricket matches [ we saw many WI Vs Aussie – even Packer matches in video player] … and .. what the younger generation saw in VCP is too well known !!
The videocassette recorder, VCR, or video recorder is an electromechanical device that recorded analog audio and analog video from broadcast television or other source on a removable, magnetic tape videocassette, and could play back the recording. Slowly they were superseded by the DVD player. Most domestic VCRs were equipped with a television broadcast receiver (tuner) for TV reception, and a programmable clock (timer) for unattended recording of a television channel from a start time to an end time specified by the user. In later models the multiple timer events could be programmed through a menu interface displayed on the playback TV screen ("on-screen display" or OSD). This feature allowed several programs to be recorded at different times without further user intervention, and became a major selling point.
The videocassette recorder remained in home use throughout the 1980s and 1990s, despite the advent of competing technologies such as Laser disc(LD) and Video CD (VCD). The VCD format found a niche with Asian film imports, but did not sell widely. Many Hollywood studios did not release feature films on VCD in North America because the VCD format had no means of preventing perfect copies being made on CD-R discs, which were already popular when the format was introduced. The birth of the century saw DVD becoming universally successful optical medium for playback of pre-recorded video, as it gradually overtook VHS to become the most popular consumer format. DVD recorders and other digital video recorders dropped rapidly in price, making the VCR obsolescent.
In a few years, rapidly the VCP was gone, dead and buried. The ubiquitous videocassette recorder that revolutionized home entertainment by allowing television audiences to capture their favourite shows on tape and watch them at their leisure died peacefully after a decade-long battle with obsolescence. It was roughly 60 years old. In case you are 50 years and above, most likely - you would have watched your marriage video umpteen times, but now you may neither have the player to play it nor would it work, unless of course, you had converted them into CD / DVDs.
The VCR’s demise was not a shocking news and Technology makes great things too obsolete. A company called Funai Electric -- which had been producing VCRs for 33 years – ceased production almost a decade ago. The life of the VCR, like all things, was one of complication and mystery. Animals like Cat and sometimes humans too ended up unspooling 1,000 feet of tape from that black plastic box? – and at times, people accidentally recorded some funny programme over their much loved Wedding Video !!
The common issue with older tapes was a sort of distorted picture that required you to manually adjust your VCR’s “tracking” -- usually done by turning a knob on the front of the device. If the knob was not doing its job, then a cleaning tape was required. Dust and other grime collecting in a VCR could distort playback, requiring users to purchase a special tape that wiped clean the play heads -- the components that read the tape. There was also the complaint of bad placement of stickers on the cover of cassettes. Misaligned cover art could drive some people absolutely crazy.
A Technology / an equipment that changed the way World spent their time passed away peacefully and silently and today no one mourns not even remember that – VCP/VCR.
If you remember the First word of this post ‘Lazy Bones’ - it was the first TV remote Control. Though we started buying TVs with remote in 1990s, Channel surfing was born much earlier. The first TV remote control, called the “Lazy Bones,” was developed in 1950 by Zenith, now a wholly owned subsidiary of LG Electronics USA). The Lazy Bones used a cable that ran from the TV set to the viewer. A motor in the TV set operated the tuner through the remote control. By pushing buttons on the remote control, viewers rotated the tuner clockwise or counterclockwise, depending on whether they wanted to change the channel to a higher or lower number. The remote control included buttons that turned the TV on and off. Although customers liked having remote control of their television, they complained that people tripped over the unsightly cable that meandered across the living room floor.
Commander Eugene F. McDonald Jr., Zenith’s late
founder-president, believed TV viewers would not tolerate commercials and was
convinced that sooner or later commercial television would collapse. While
developing and promoting the concept of commercial-free subscription
television, McDonald yearned for a way to mute the sound of commercials. A few
years later, Zenith engineer Eugene J. Polley invented the “Flash-Matic,” which
represented the industry’s first wireless TV remote. Introduced in 1955,
Flash-Matic operated by means of four photo cells, one in each corner of the TV
screen.
Now tell honestly, do you belong to the breed of gentle humans,
who want a remote for switching on/off lights, fans, TV – and if possible – get
idlies for breakfast on table too with a click !!
25.7 2025
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