I’ll admit I can’t remember where I was or exactly the day but it was around January 2020. Having been around video what seemed like my entire life (or at least since the late 70’s) I’d seen a lot of technologies, formats and actors come and go. Then one day in that January, I asked myself a question
What movie has been available on the most retail formats?
DrKen, circa January 2020
It seemed a pretty simple question but the answer was far from simple, in fact the answer to the question might never be known. Of course, I’m lazy, so I started by asking Google…
Thanks Google! really helpful 🙂
The next approach was to come up with some kind of evaluation criteria:
- It had to be a popular movie, otherwise who’s going to invest in manufacturing it across so many formats, over so many years
- It needed to be a movie that was released prior to the battle of VHS vs. Betamax, to at least be on two formats!
Okay, so I only came up with two criteria, it must have been a long day. However, on reflection, those two were the key criteria. Popular meant being popular around the world, opening the door to retail formats that only existed in specific countries and the VHS/Betamax war had to be right, after all, there hadn’t been any retail pre-recorded video formats before those, had there?
Armed with these two criteria I started off on two paths
- Trying to think of popular movies prior to 1988 (when Betamax lost the format war), and
- Spending too many hours researching online databases of movies and formats, pouring through ebay
Of course, the answer was obvious wasn’t it? Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope? Surely? But no, not based on my analysis, well then it must be E.T. The Extra Terrestrial? Again, No. Gone With The Wind? No!, and so my combinations of guesses and follow-up research continued for around a month.
Ultimately, I came up with an answer, I still don’t know if it is the right answer, but equally I don’t know it’s the wrong answer and there’s not really anyone to ask, so, I’m going with it. The movie? Top Gun
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