Most of us will be young enough to have got much of our youthful enjoyment from watching movies, and old enough to have spent much of that time watching them on video.
This has brought about a special kind of nostalgia which yearns for the old movie nights which involved playing a few VHS cassettes of the latest releases and huddling around a TV screen about the size of, or little bigger than, a microwave oven. One of the most common complaints about newer technology is that it is soulless.
Is this fair?
One thing that cannot be denied is that some of the charm of watching a film on video was its “cosy” aspect.
As the viewers naturally had to be positioned closer together in order to see the screen, everyone got much the same experience.
Pausing the film pretty much caused the picture to jump so much you expected it to fly off the screen, and if you got the freeze frame at just the right point this could be particularly amusing.
Now with crystal clear pictures and perfect pausing, some of that is gone.
On the other hand, there were certain elements of films made for cinema that got lost when they were watched on video, due to the compromised sound and pictures.
Although the old-fashioned charm of watching movies on video may have been reduced by technology, the fact of the matter is that digital technology has allowed for some of the soul which was lost on video to be regained.
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