Regulars here will know that I love looking through old catalogues. When I saw this on eBay I decided to bid and got it for the rather high start price. No regrets when I received it and just 70p a page. For youngsters and those outside the U.K. Dixons was the main high street store for cameras and gadgets. After buying out Curry's who sold white goods, gadgets, and lots of boomboxes to @nickeccles in 1984 they gradually moved to larger out of town stores with that name and are still going today. https://www.currys.co.uk/ I am going to post this in a number of sections in the order of the catalogue, which starts with cameras for anyone with an interest in those. Out of the cameras here I would have chosen the Olympus XA2 but according to an inflation calculator that was the equivalent of £280 (multiply 1985 prices by just over three) so my camera back then was like a cheap copy of a Konica Pop.
Back to the Future ! In the early 1980s people were getting into video. Even Pop Acts It was only on the second look that I realised the Canon dominating this page is actually only a Camera. You still had to carry the recorder top right with you as well. Since it took full size VHS tapes either the picture is a montage or the camera was even bigger than I expected. I have a Sony Trinicon camera (which I must try one day) from this era so have an idea of the size of them. In 1985 camcorders were just starting to appear. The JVC here was even featured in Back to The Future which was released just a month after this catalogue. Even 1985's Emmett "Doc" Brown would have been impressed by the TV studio you could carry around with you, despite it costing about 1/20th of the price of a DeLorean back then. The cheaper Ferguson is the same model in a different colour. Ferguson's owner EMI (of Beatles fame) had strong links to JVC back then. From Camcorders to VCRs. I have read that at one point 70% of Japan's electronic exports were VCRs. With only four TV channels in the U.K. they were very popular here. Saisho was Dixon's own brand, probably made by a lesser known company like Orion. My sister bought the £399 Sharp at the top of this page. Note that, like many "cheap" VCRs the remote was on the end of a cable. I'm surprised that the Panasonic NV830, the first VHS HiFi VCR, was under £600. It makes it slightly less surprising that the people I bought my first house from had one in their £24000 house. On to TVs. @Mister X might get excited by the Black and White Superdeals. I have said before how watching coverage of the 1981 Royal Wedding I was surprised how many people along the route had them. There again £129 wasn't too bad for a TV Radio Cassette, although only an occasion like a Royal Wedding would merit running the TV off batteries.
I had no idea that JVC was so much when new, I was close to winning one last year for under a hundred but bailed. Even though the older style VCR looked professional with a huge strapped transport and separate camera, you were a rock star if you had one because we new how expensive and fun they were. Then these little guys showed up and the big money older versions turned to dinasaurs overnight. I thought about collecting them when I started on stereos 25 years ago but they are huge, even for a few dollars it wasn't worth space. I'm really excited by the TV/Stereo with TT, we never had those here.
Time for some 1980s computers. First "Business Computers". Not many people would be spending £800+ on a computer for home use back then. In 1985 MS-DOS compatibles were still around. 8086 based computers that would run MS-DOS but weren't fully IBM compatible, especially when it came to expansion replacement keyboards etc. Just a year later Amstrad would release the PC1512 with far greater compatibility at a bargain price and dominate the European PC market for the next few years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amstrad_PC1512 In contrast someone who worked for an Apricot dealer said that Apricot kept making the mistake of trying to improve on the IBM products like fitting 3.5" disc drives when most IBM software came on 5.25" discs. Then computers aimed at home users / gamers etc. By this time the desirability of a computer was starting to be determined by what games you could buy for it. Less than a year later I would buy a new Toshiba HX10 for £60. Although it was superior to the Spectrum the few inexpensive games available for it were ported from the Spectrum so no better than what that offered. Dixons claiming the £499 Amstrad package with one 3" (yes you read that right) floppy disc drive was suitable for business was probably a bit of an exaggeration. I suppose you could have typed a letter on it which would look more business like than a hand written one. Prices imply the printer was £200. What is almost certain is that a new ribbon would cost less than £10 and last for several years with normal use.
On to Audio. The main question about the Fidelity was whether you you would have been better off saving £130 by buying the £269 20" Grundig TV and the £99 Sentra Tower System. Since both the Fidelity and the Sentra use BSR decks (coincidentally 1985 was the last year they were made) I would expect them to be of similar quality. My big concern with the Fidelity would have been the difficulty of servicing it. This thread https://www.vintage-radio.net/forum/showthread.php?t=175927 by people in the TV trade backs that up, the first problem being how to get it onto the workshop bench. Some quite familiar units here. The Panasonic boombox, turntable, and stand package has been on Stereo2go before as has the Sony WM22,
Very nice brochures! Thanks for uploading I do recognize so much stuff! Whats funny is that the RX-C39 and SL-N5 turntable stand must be so incredible rare. I have one and are searching for another one for many years now, no results, for another silver set I own. If you zoom into the Dixons brochure it looks like even they just used a self made black painted plywood version for the brochure! Additionally, the part number of the stand is Panasonic RD-L39. There is a nameplate on the bottom.
Wow does that red pop! The black version looks so boring in the ad but that's a neat system set up, I would have been all over that, a boombox and TT.
Time to post the remaining pages from this 1985 catalogue Car stereos. Dixons weren't a big player in the field as they didn't do fitting. Keyboards. One of the reasons I bought this as I have the MT400V "Synthesizer Style" Casio One of only two Casios made with an analogue filter which is a feature Bob Moog invented. Microwave ovens. These don't really fit in with other other products but were Hi-Tech back then. They were also quite small. Most Dixons were about the same size as a Tandy (Radio Shack) so you would never find a floor standing cooker in one. Phones, including the latest cordless ones. I have actually worked for Plessey although I expect this was an AKA. Just four years earlier there were no phones openly for sale in the U.K. as only phones rented from BT were permitted to be connected to their network. Watches. My first digital watch, a Casio F100, came from Dixons. That Sharp pocket computer is cheap for the time, although the problem with those was that accessories like the cassette interface were never cheap. Calculators, and some store details. The local one was between the HMV music store and Beatties who sold Tamiya and model railways. Own brand video gear on the back cover.
Sticking with the theme of Dixon's catalogues two different people have made videos looking through early 1980s Christmas ones. What would you pick ? The second has quite a lot of emphasis on CB as that is what the presenter is into but you do get to see the other pages
