Home Theater
"So, a brief history of home theater." Leslie thought for a moment. "You remember reel-to-reel tape and movie projectors where the film started on one reel and spooled onto another?" Steve nodded.
"About the time I was in junior high school, they figured out how to put audio tape in a cassette." Leslie went to the suitcase in her room and pulled out a few visual aids — an audiocassette, a VHS cassette, a CD and a DVD. There were already a few Blu-ray discs sitting by the equipment. She showed Steve the audiocassette, tilting it so he could see the protected length of tape inside. "With this, it was easy to play music or to record songs. My friends and I made up radio programs, complete with commercials, and recorded them. By the time I graduated from college, they'd done the same thing with film." She showed him the VHS tape. "I loved taping shows. For the first time, you could record a TV show and watch it at a different time. Before, you were locked to the network schedule and if you missed a show, you could only hope it was on during the summer rerun season."
A lot of the specifics Leslie mentioned were unfamiliar to Steve, but he followed the gist of her story, relating it to the radio programs of his youth.
"If you wanted to buy a movie on VHS, it was really expensive at first," Leslie continued. "To record a two-hour movie, they had to tape it at live speed. It took two hours, and even if they could record more than one duplicate at a time, it took a long time, so tapes could cost $80, which was a lot of money in the 1970s."
"Sounds like a lot to me," Steve agreed.
"Eventually, they figured out a way to speed up the recording, just in time to be supplanted by digital media," Leslie said. "If you want to know the real technical differences between analog and digital, we'll have to look it up. But in a gross simplification, analog is the recording method you were used to — a needle drawing a path in a record that another needle will follow to reproduce the sound. Digital is like recording pictures and sound using Morse Code. The ones and zeros in computer coding recreate the sound and pictures the way the dots and dashes in Morse code recreate a message."
Steve regarded her doubtfully. Leslie sighed. "OK, I'm not good at explaining. Just know that digital is a common way things are recorded." She showed Steve the CD and the DVD. "This is a record album — a lot of songs — and this is a movie, recorded digitally."
"They're small," Steve said, admiring the iridescence as he carefully turned it around, holding them only by the edges as instructed.
"You don't want to get fingerprints on them. They don't play well when they're dirty."
"Just like records," Steve said.
"They are records, just digitally recorded."
"So, no one has records these days?" he asked a little sadly. He didn't see a record player among the devices.
"Some people still like them. In fact, vinyl is making a comeback," Leslie answered. "Now that there are so many ways of recording, they call the records you're used to 'vinyl,'" she explained. "People like the sound quality. I'm sure we can find a record player and some good LPs for you."
"What's an LP?" Steve asked.
Leslie stared at him. "You didn't have LPs in the '40s? LPs — long playing records? What did you have, 45s? 78s?"
"Forty-fives were pistols," Steve said seriously. "78 rpm, that was the standard for records. They came up with other speeds?" he asked.
Leslie nodded. "Yes, before my time. We had old 78s in the house, my dad collected them, but the new singles were released on 45 rpm disks and we had long-playing albums with multiple songs that spun at thirty-three and a third. We'll have to find a record store to browse in. I'm sure I heard about one close by."
"I don't really understand the difference between analog and digital," Steve confessed.
"I'm sorry I don't understand it well enough to explain it properly," Leslie said. "Let me give you another example. I wanted to make a friend a Christmas mix tape with my audiocassette. That was a tape with songs from several records that I owned. I had to play each song and sit there with a microphone to record them. Nowadays …"
Leslie opened iTunes and showed Steve a list of songs. "To make a CD with a mix of songs all I have to do is select the files and make a new playlist. Then burn them to a CD."
"Burn?"
"That's just the name for it. It doesn't get hot," Leslie reassured him. She demonstrated by dragging files over and burning a CD of songs from the 1940s, '50s and '60s that she thought Steve would like. "We'll play this on the CD player when we get it hooked up."
Steve smirked at her. "I guess I can take a hint," he said and reached for the cords.
"You're better at this than I am," Leslie said in admiration, as Steve deftly sorted the cables and matched up the connectors.
"I built a crystal set using an oatmeal box when I was a kid," Steve said. "Then during the war in Italy, we couldn't use powered radios because the enemy could detect them, so we built foxhole radios using rusty razor blades and pencils."
"You're amazing," Leslie said, as Steve got all the parts sorted out. Together they read the instructions to see what order to connect the components.
Looking at the instructions, Steve saw one piece had an AM/FM tuner, among other abbreviations he didn't recognize.
"So people still listen to radio?" he asked in relief.
"Absolutely, but it's a little different than you remember. You won't find many ..." She tried to think of a descriptive term and settled on "... radio plays on the air. The soap operas and dramas and comedies and westerns pretty much moved to television where you could see what was going on. TV kept a lot of the old format, too, with series that feature different stories (or continuing stories) about the same characters every week. Early TV borrowed a lot of radio series, like 'Amos and Andy' and 'The Lone Ranger.' Do you remember Gene Autry, the singing cowboy?" Steve nodded that he recognized the actor. "He got rich because he owned the TV rights to his movies, which no one thought were worth anything at the time. But when TV stations started full operations, they needed something to fill the time."
"So what's on radio these days?" Steve asked.
"Music and talk, mostly. Different stations focus on different kinds of music — like my favorite classical station," she said, nodding at her computer, which was playing Rachmaninoff at the moment. "There are news stations and stations where people call in and talk to the hosts, usually about politics or sports." She made a face. "Not my favorite type of show. If I want to listen to people complain, I'll go to work."
Steve chuckled.
"And there are lots of sports stations," Leslie said. "You can still listen to baseball games on the radio, just like the 1940s."
"Broadcast through the air and everything?" Steve asked.
"Yes, radio still works that was, though there are also other ways to connect."
"Like through a computer," Steve said, because that's what she was doing right then.
"It's called 'streaming.' KUSC is being broadcast over the airwaves, but they also stream their broadcast over the computer, so I can listen anywhere, all over the U.S. and even in other countries."
"KUSC, that's a western station," Steve realized, because it started with a K.
"Yes, the USC stands for University of Southern California," Leslie said. "When I'm at home I listen on the FM radio, but I can still listen to them through the Internet when I'm in New York."
"Does TV work like radio?" Steve asked.
"It used to," Leslie said. "You could plug in a TV, raise the antenna and watch whatever channels were available. I was lucky growing up in L.A. because we had …" She counted on her fingers. "… seven stations. A lot of places only had the major networks, names you might know — ABC, CBS and NBC."
"ABC was new during the war," Steve commented. "Nice to know something's survived from the old days."
"Everything today was built on the foundations of your time," Leslie said. "Maybe you can't recognize it, but you can't imagine a tomato plant when all you've seen is a seed."
Steve nodded.
"Anyway, TV started as radio with pictures. I had a little TV I carried back and forth to college. It just fit under the seat in the airline. One day a flight was delayed and I plugged in the TV and watched shows until the flight was ready. I even had a radio with TV sound, I could listen to my favorite game show while driving. But none of those work any more. In 2009, the country switched to an all-digital signal. You need a new TV or a converter for your old TV. Fortunately, my mom's older TV is connected to cable, which converts the signal for her."
"So you can't just get TV free over the airwaves?" Steve asked.
"You can, but the selection is limited — though there are more channels available with the digital signal than there was with analog. Instead of channels 2 and 4, you'll find channels 2, 2.1 and 2.2 and 4, 4.1 and 4.2 these days. Even when broadcast was king, there were some places, like in the mountains, where the TV signal couldn't reach, so cable TV companies started. They would collect the signal and retransmit it to their customers through cables."
Oh God, Leslie thought, if I mention satellite TV, I'll have to talk about the whole space program! Not going there. One history lesson at a time.
"With cable," and satellite, Leslie thought but didn't say, "you could add even more channels. There are about 2,000 channels on my cable service, but I'd have to pay extra to get some of them."
"Two thousand?" Steve asked incredulously.
"Two thousand, but some of them are really just radio stations. Plus, there are a lot of other ways to watch shows these days with streaming and pay services. You can pay for services, like Netflix, and watch their shows on your own schedule. People 'binge' series, watching half a dozen episodes in a row."
"Why?"
"Because they can," Leslie grinned. "Maybe they don't have time to watch a show every Wednesday, but they set aside one Saturday to watch a month's worth."
Leslie heard herself babbling about electronics history that she barely understood. She frowned and interrupted herself. "Is this too much?" she asked. "Am I over-explaining? Because I could just show you what buttons to push to make it work."
She demonstrated with the Blu-ray, which was plugged in but not connected to the TV yet. "You can put in a Blu-ray disk, a DVD or a CD and it will recognize the format automatically." She pushed the eject button, so the carriage slid out, and she showed Steve how the disc fit in. Then she showed the little slot on her computer. "With this kind of player, you just slide the disc in, being very careful to hold it by the edge and NOT put a finger through the center hole, because it will pinch!"
She showed him the arrow symbol for play, the square for stop, the double arrows for fast forward and reverse and the double lines for pause.
"That looks like an 11," Steve commented.
Leslie giggled. "You remind me of one of my favorite bits on America's Funniest Videos. It's a show where people send in home movies of funny happenings, usually people falling down, real Three Stooges slapstick. But this one had a cute little girl learning how to count. When her parents pointed out the numbers, she said 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, pause. Pause instead of 11, because she knew how to work DVD player." Leslie shook her head. "Little kids learn the electronics so quickly. It's part of their lives. People worry about their 'screen time' — time watching TV, playing with computers and all. We try to encourage kids to get more playtime."
"Go play outside," Steve said. "That's what Bucky's ma always told her kids when they were driving her nuts. My ma didn't have to encourage me. I had to spend so much time indoors because I was sick, or the weather was bad, that I was wild to go out whenever I could, and sometimes when I shouldn't." He regarded the tangle of electronics, remembering how Leslie could send messages to people and look up information on her smartphone. "I would have felt less isolated with some of these gadgets to keep me company."
Leslie nodded. "My sister feels the same. We had a hard time making friends in school. I was horribly shy and never seemed interested in all the girly things the other girls liked. I liked books and science fiction. If we'd had the Internet when we were kids, we could have connected with other science fiction nerds and made friends."
"It would have been nice to be able to talk to someone about the books I was reading," Steve said wistfully. "Or to watch a movie at home. This stuff must be a boon to shut-ins."
"It is, but it comes with problems like everything else people create. You can make friends over the Internet, but you can also make enemies. There are people who take pleasure in sending mean messages about other kids, posting ugly pictures and insults. It's called cyber-bullying, and when it's online, everyone can see it. It never goes away. Anything you put online is there forever."
Steve looked deflated. "I had hoped the future would be smarter and kinder," he sighed.
"People are still people, so there are still bullies, but there are also people who try to help."
"People like you," Steve said, making Leslie blush.
"I was thinking, people like you," she returned. "Mutual admiration society."
They grinned at each other. Then Leslie shook her head at herself. "But I ran off on a sidetrack," she said. "Am I over-explaining the history of technology?"
Steve considered it seriously, then shook his head. "No, I like seeing the connection. It helps me to understand how everything grew from my time to yours. Can you 'stream' television like you do radio?" Steve asked.
Leslie was pleased with his intelligent question. He might be behind the times, but he wasn't dumb.
"Yes, you can get live TV over the computer. For instance, I pay for MLB TV, so I can watch baseball games from teams that aren't local. They show all 'out of market' games."
Steve frowned, "But you said you were a Dodgers fan. Isn't that a local team?"
Leslie sighed. "Yeah, about that ..."
A/N: Poor Steve, he's in for a shock.
Not such a brief history, after all. Sorry if this got too "educational." And it's really only a 60-year-old's perception of history, at that, so don't count on the info for your history final.
On the plus side, I got inspired to make a start on a Reconstruction story. If I can just find some time to get ahead on my writing. Never seems to work out.