The call that would change the life of Julio Maldonado (Madrid, 1967) he was caught in the tub. He was about to let it pass if it had not been for “the sixth sense” from his mother, who kept insisting on the bathroom door: “take it, that is important.” So he went out, obedient to pick up the device. Expected on the other side Alfredo Relaño, then head of Sports of THE COUNTRY, that he wanted to contact the owner of a file of video tapes of matches that I imagined as the owner fifty year old in an electronics store. But it turned out to be a student savvy that in the mid-eighties he managed to combine his passion for football with the emerging technology that was driving the tv from the prehistory.
The journalist Julio Maldonado of small.
today is an icon of Movistar+ was born from the nonconformity of a kid raised in Leganés, whose team had gone from Third Division. In an era in which less than half of the households in the country had a television set and relayed to a single encounter per day, he sought out the way to see over 90 minutes of football a week: “I came a classmate and he said to me: ‘do you Know who have taken out a few devices that record from the telly?'”, now the journalist. In the eighties didn’t do much that the video had come out to the market and the boy of 15 years got his parents to buy a “luxury item then”, he recalls.
The seven advances
in the television Maldini
never imagined
pause a live match or turn on the tv without touching the remote. So has changed the experience of watching a game at home
1
Of the shelf stacked with
the recording on the Network
Decades ago to record games with VHS tapes had two setbacks: it was a complicated process and occupied a lot of space in the home. Today the same can be done with a single click and without cluttering the shelves.
2
Of no power
to go to the bathroom to stop the direct
The direct has always been to postpone everyday actions such as going to the bathroom. Today, however, in the retransmissions of Movistar+ you can stop the game and retormarlo after. Pause ” your life is no longer a thing of science fiction.
3
Of miss match if not
you’re at home, to have 7 days
Before it was almost essential to get the time to watch a program, but now you do not even need to resort to the recording. With the option to Last 7 days, you can see any content from the last week in a simple way.
4
remote control
the voice assistant
The technology has left behind a gesture very common: push a button to turn on the tv. Thanks to Aura, the wizard voice of Movistar+, you can change channels by talking directly to the digital assistant.
5
voice only
the announcer to the letter
The parties Movistar+ give option to listen to your narrator’s favorite radio and cualqiuiera of the official languages. In addition, there is also the option to leave only the ambient sound, pretending to be in the same stadium.
6
Of the teletext
the grill is virtual
What you go to a newspaper or teletext to see what they give on television has lagged behind. All the programming of all channels of Movistar+ can be viewed instantly on the same platform and have access to the same with a single click.
7
The transistor
multi-screen
mobile phones, tablets and computers have left behind the transistor. Today you can enjoy the double games on a second screen.
the pair started to publish ads in the magazines France football and the Uk I used to buy on trips to the centre of Madrid. It was presented as a Spanish girl that wanted to see all the leagues and asked him to send games recorded. He received tapes from all over the world: from which he sent a waiter Serbian living in London to which he referred the president of the National Bank of Uruguay. Of the night to the morning it became the centre of a network of VHS tapes, which he copied and distributed between all your contacts, and the possessor of a collection so extensive that it had invaded the bedroom of the parents. Such was his thirst to acquire more and more of those objects that were the size of a book that she decided to write to the historical narrator, Joseph, Angel of the House to access the archive of Spanish Television. This was the one that drove him to Relaño, a great fan of the story (and the stories) of football and to the postre discoverer of the greatest expert in international football from the Spanish television.
By the time it was still not Maldini, but The Mensaca. That was the first nickname that Relaño baptized him when he signed for Canal + in the early nineties, a few years after meeting him. “It came on a bike with a anorak suffered and a bag black full of tapes. It seemed like a messenger,” he recalled in 2013 that was later director of Ace. Despite his youth, it didn’t take too much off in the first pay channel that was born in Spain. “I had seen matches and players before anyone else,” says Maldonado. Hence, in view of his brilliance, he will change the nickname for one of the best defenses of the last few decades: “Even my daughters call them as well at the university and in the school,” joked the presenter, who has recently released his own YouTube channel.
The journalist Julio Maldonado with his partner, on Canal+ in the nineties, Marcos López. File ELPAIS
The Maldini of the tele became entrenched as the only specialist that has not escaped detail of any computer, by remote that outside, in a time before the Internet. “I traveled to Luxembourg to buy a contact the yearbooks of the 20 most important leagues. Apart from templates, there was not much information, but it was something. When I was doing commentary of the matches of the Italian league were called to the stadium to learn of the alignments. Had that espabilarse,” he recalls.
But what always allowed him to move forward to the rest of the profession has been a collection that amounts to about 140,000 matches. That started thanks to a network of collectors in adolescence, which is expanded with co-workers that they charged to record matches and took a leap forward with the arrival of the retransmissions by satellite.
The digitization of the signal is made for the first time in the season 1997/1998 is televisara an entire day of LaLiga Santander in Canal Satellite Digital, germ of the current Movistar+, and Maldini was a small revolution. Instead of waiting for the mail to discuss the latest international developments, the satellites will be allowed to see live what was happening on the fields of Russia, or Mexico. Your house, view a editor of THE COUNTRY in 2006, it seemed like the laboratory of a football final: “Half the firm is the TWENTY-first century and the other half of the TWENTIETH century; on the wall three television sets and seven vcrs. A computer and stacks of DVD, it acts as a border to another century: a wall lined with collections of magazines,” says the journalist.
The journalist Julio Maldonado portrayed in his home in 2006, surrounded by video tapes, VHS and other technological devices. File ELPAIS
At that stage, the DVD discs had already section to the old VHS. The way you see the television continued to evolve and Maldini was forced to modernize your file. “The advantage was that the DVD was cheaper and took up less space,” he says. However, the real transformation came a little later, at the time that the innovations they liquidated the DVD and he was forced to move all your file to the digital format mp4. “I had to put the technology to my advantage,” explained Maldonado, who is allied with your computer (and neighbor) Ivan to undertake the task.
they Were put to work six people, each with a computer that functioned 24 hours a day, and it took three years to complete the task. Today, the nearly 300 games that you record each week are stored on servers that can be accessed from any location. In the tablet from which he never separates has all the football that as a child he dreamed of in just a few clicks. “It is amazing, isn’t it?”, he says, while invited to scuba dive for a system that equates to the National Library.
The journalist Julio Maldonado portrayed in the roof of his home in 2006. File ELPAIS
Although not all are advantages, of course. Be the one who had first-hand information about the hundreds of players, offered her the chance to interact with professionals of the first level. Marcelo Bielsa asked parties recorded when he coached the argentina national team and Faruk Hadžibegić, central Real Betis in the eighties, it turned to your tapes to know the rivals of Yugoslavia to the 1990 World cup. According to account, in his day worked for nearly all the teams of LaLiga Santander: “I was in the office, Ramón Mendoza [then president of Real Madrid] – the day that is fixed in Prosinecki and Makelele what sign on for the videos that I had sent to Felix Ram of RC Celta,” he says.
Maldonado still barrunta what will be the fate of his treasure on the day you remove it: “I Could take you to a site means the public where people can see the game that you want, when you want. A sort of museum or as… cineteca soccer,” he says. What is clear is that nothing and no one will take away from keep watching football:
– do Something has made him give up a game?
– [thinks for a few seconds]. No, I don’t think. On my honeymoon, in Tahiti, I saw nine in the morning a match of Real Madrid against Bayern Munich.
The journalist Julio Maldonado in the studios of Movistar+ this Monday. Victor Sainz
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