(VHS cassettes and VHS player was the lifeline for evening entertainments at my Grandma’s house – image source: Youtube)
Long before we had Astro and the luxury of watching movies in the cinema, we have VHS video cassette rental. And it was more obvious in works at my grandma’s house where we had “Rao Video Centre” couple blocks away from the house.
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The rental was RM2 per cassette for a day (sometimes extended without extra charge). The owner of Rao Video Centre, Mr Rao (still remember his crooked teeth and his funny voice) was friendly and dedicated when it comes to customer service – one phone call, rain or shine, Mr Rao is there at the house with the “latest” movies.
Most of Mr Rao’s movies are Tamil movies but he does have a couple of Malay and English movies.
We never had problems with Mr Rao’s video cassettes except for a few where the tape is “corrupted” – where there are multiple lines on the screen. This usually happens to new blockbusters which get rented way too many times.
But we have no worries, as Mr Rao will come with a replacement (most of the time) with one phone call. At times when he could not get a good replacement, he usually waives his rental for that VHS tape.
Oh shoot!!!! I still have a VCR player till this very day and believe it or not but it still works! Used to record Pi Mai Pi Mai Tang Tu on those VHS tapes, amazing. Remember the HUGE laser discs that was also available for rental all those years back?
Cheers!!! 😀