So did I! First we had Pong, released by Radio Shack, and then an Atari 2600! The original Nintendo hit when I was in middle school, I burned countless hours on the 8 x 4 levels that were the original Super Mario Bros.
Funny side story, I recently pulled out and refurbished my old Atari 2600, and now my 15 year old son is absolutely hooked on Space Invaders and Pitfall! He honestly said, "these old games are way better than the newer games." I was so proud.
I just bought him Donkey Kong, so he could see from where Mario originally came, we'll probably get to play that next weekend.
I have an NAS with some old VHS and DVD content copied to it, but I'm honestly not in the mode of re-watching anything I've seen in the last 20 years, other than the obligatory Christmas repeats each year. I'm always seeking "new to me" content, currently working my way into El Camino, the Jesse Pinkman spinoff from Breaking Bad. Thankfully Netflix carries that whole franchise.
My son recently discovered Friends, and since I never really paid attention to that series when it was on, now I'm watching those for the first time, with him. Before that, it was Last Man Standing, and before that was I Love Lucy and then Bewitched... the classics always deliver.
True, but there's cost in maintaining local storage, especially if you keep it backed up to any secondary source. Segregating part of your NAS or home server off, just because you happen to have DVD backups of some of your content, also requires energy and attention to detail, beyond what most (rightfully) want to invest.
True. But more energy went into scheduling your life around accessing the good content, and avoiding the garbage. Today, if I find myself awake at 3am, I can still access my favorite show or movie right then, versus being stuck with garbage infomercials at that time, and having to miss other activities to be in front of the TV to avoid missing a program.
I remember being in an organization called Indian Guides, sort of like Cub Scouts for young kids, but more focused on father/son cooperation, and remember well the monthly meeting being canceled so that the fathers could be home to watch the airing of the final episode of M*A*S*H. Today, they'd just stream it after the meeting!
The other thing I find when talking about "old TV", is that people have very selective memory, remembering the one good program while forgetting the 20 contemporaries of absolute crap. For every All In the Family or MASH, there were 20 - 50 other programs on that week, which were so absolutely terrible, you'd be embarrassed to even remember them. As bad as content is today, the lower margin of it is vastly more sophisticated than 50 years ago.
