" VCRs did existed as far back as 1975 - and many people did ‘record’ the showings of Star Wars on TV onto a blank tape when the film was eventually aired on tv back in 1982 in the US (via PPV; something which only half a million people could access at the time)."

I was one of the lucky ones who got to see it on ppv ( pay per view ) . My folks had a subscription to the on-tv ppv service out of Chicago. The box was in their bedroom , so I could only watch it in there , though my older brothers and I could see the scrambled signal on the downstairs tv , which we got great amusement from watching late at night 😃 Sadly , we did not have a vcr at that time , as they were indeed very expensive .Here is an ad for the ON-TV Star Wars premiere that someone recorded back in the day and uploaded to Youtube , also featuring The Wrath Of Khan premiere , which is how I first saw that movie …https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Jtuh8Sz9JY the video says 1983 , but it was in fact 1982 when Star Wars premiered on ON-TV