I'm surprised you don't remember them. Back then about the only way to get a large screen TV was with the rear projection. They didn't make 50" cathode ray tubes lol. The problem back then was the resolution being broadcast wasn't that great, so those large screen TVs tended to look a little fuzzy.
Come to think of it, I do remember video projectors. What I meant to say, is that in the late-80s, I rejected anything almost that wasn't 16mm because I got obsessed with that medium. Videos were like an abomination because they weren't the real thing, while moving pictures from a mechanical 16 mm were. It took until 1992 for that obsession to really get out of my system.
Nowadays, VHS tapes are seeing in a Nostalgic light because they are as ancient as 16 mm was ancient in the late 80s. I don't mind viewing things on DVD/Blu-Ray/or Streaming and as of recently. I do find it interesting that some major film directors, like Quentin Tarintino, were unhappy at the transition of film to digital in cinemas in the mid to late 00s and reminded a bit of how I felt about V.H.S. tapes vs 16 mms in the late 80s
zekko said:
I remember they used to sell 8mm films in the ads of the Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine. They were about 15 minutes long and were like a highlight reel of popular horror and scifi movies. So you didn't get the whole movie, you'd get like a 15 minute version of Dracula or whatever. But you could own them, so I thought they were pretty cool. Never actually got any though.
This is interesting. I did view 8 mm movies as well, but only one library in town had them. I saw Jaws, Airplane, The Jerk (1979) that featured Steve Martin walking over dog poo after asking what it was, and a number of movies in that format. As the projector and reels were smaller and lighter it was a more relaxed experience than the 16 mm. However, being the late 80s, most of the 8 mm selection was old feature movies (i.e. nothing recent say like the past 2-3 years).