Today, if you want to watch one of the new or recent movies streaming, all you have to do is go to one of the best platforms (or use an Amazon subscription for those VOD titles) and press play. It’s simple, easy, and the best way to watch a movie at home. However, as many of us who grew up in the ‘80s or ‘90s know, watching movies from home on pay-per-view could be a long, drawn-out process that could result in you missing a chunk of a movie (or having an ending spoiled) if you weren’t careful.
I’m not trying to sound like an old man yelling about “walking 15 miles uphill in the snow to get to and from school,” but Gen Z will never understand the struggle of trying to order PPV movies back in the day. With nostalgia being in high demand these days, I think now is the perfect time to look back on that arduous process that many of us followed when we didn’t feel like driving to Blockbuster on a Friday night.
Back In The Day, You Had To Call The Cable Company To Order Pay-Per-View Movies
For the past 20 or so years, ordering movies on pay-per-view has been a fairly simple process: you open up the guide on your cable or satellite box, click on the movie you want to watch, and then escape for a couple of hours as you’re taken away. But back in the day, it wasn’t so simple.
Since I wasn’t the one ordering the movies or those monthly WCW and WWF pay-per-views (so many wild wrestling moments happened then) when I was a kid, I called my dad to get the rundown for the two times I distinctly remember renting a movie from our cable company. He told me that he would have to call the cable company, punch in the code for the movie (I distinctly remember him ordering great U.S. President movies like The American President and Air Force One), and then hope that everything was in order before it started.
You Had To Tune Into A Certain Channel At A Certain Time, Which Made Planning Paramount
I don’t know how it was on cable or satellite services in other parts of the country, but in my hometown, your movie would be on a certain channel at a certain time, meaning you had to plan things out before placing the order. If you ordered a movie for 7 p.m., you'd better be on that channel at or a little before, otherwise you’d miss out on something. Considering how much you were paying for those movies (other events were so much more expensive), you didn’t want to miss out on a second.
There Was No Pausing Or Rewinding, Which Would Cause Some Complications
What about pressing pause? What about rewinding the movie? Well, we had no such luxury back in the day, and you were running on the cable company’s time. If someone called, the pizza delivery guy was late getting there, or if there was a household emergency making you miss the big twist ending, you either let the world burn around you or miss a part of whichever of the best ‘90s movies you rented.
People would often record stuff with the VCR, even though the FBI warning before each movie explicitly told you not to, but I don’t remember ever syncing up a VHS tape to save a film for future use.
Again, I don’t want to sound like I’m taking a shot at Gen Z because they have some things easier today, but it’s just wild how much watching movies at home has changed over the past 30-plus years. I mean, you don’t see “feature presentation” intros like this anymore.
