Tapeheads and the Quiet Return of VHS 446
Hugh Pickens writes "Joshua Phillips writes that something was lost when videos went from magnetic tape and plastic, to plastic discs, and now to digital streams as browsing aisles is no more and the once-great video shops slowly board up their windows across the country. Future generations may know little of the days when buying a movie meant you owned it even if the Internet went down and when getting a movie meant you had to scour aisles of boxes in search of one whose cover art called back a story that echoed your interests. Josh Johnson, one of the filmmakers behind the upcoming documentary 'Rewind This!' hopes to tell the story of how and why home video came about, and how it changed our culture giving B movies and films that didn't make the silver screen their own chance to shine. 'Essentially, the rental market expanded, because of voracious consumer demand, into non-blockbuster, off-Hollywood video content which would never have had a theatrical life otherwise,' says Palmer. While researching the documentary Palmer found something interesting: there is a resurgence taking place of people going back to VHS because a massive number of films are 'trapped on VHS' with 30 and 40 percent of films released on VHS never to be seen again on any other format. 'Most of the true VHS fanatics are children of the 1980s,' says Palmer. 'Whether they are motivated by a sense of nostalgia or prefer the format for the grainy aesthetic qualities of magnetic tape or some other reason entirely unknown, each tapehead is unique like a snowflake.'"
Onion did a report on VHS (Score:5, Funny)
Courtesy of the Onion:
Blockbuster Offers Glimpse Of Movie Renting Past [youtube.com]
LOL! (Score:4, Insightful)
Grainy? Has this moron ever SEEN a video off VHS? How about blurry with messed up tint? How about seeing annoying streaks across the screen from where the tape has worn?
I can see the motive behind records and audio tapes (not my thing), but this is RETARDED.
Re: (Score:3)
Well, I suppose the leet retro-format people are into LD [wikipedia.org] instead, which is still analog but doesn't wear so much. Of course, while there are some things that were only released on LD, more was released on VHS, so if getting at un-transcribed publications is the goal, one just has to hope there's well preserved stock.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:LOL! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:LOL! (Score:4, Funny)
What kinda high tech idiot watches LDs for analog video? You aren't going to get the real analog feel unless you are watching on CED [wikipedia.org]. Laser discs just lack the tonal color, man. Besides, Laser Discs used PCM "digital" audio! That's not real analog, now is it!
Re:LOL! (Score:4, Interesting)
You'll never beat the warmth of phonovision discs. [tvdawn.com]
Re:LOL! (Score:5, Informative)
Laserdiscs suffered from bitrot and separation of layers.
you had to store them flat or they would get a bend in them.
And yes, those of us that had Laserdiscs were better than you proles with VHS :-)
Re:LOL! (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd group the vinyl and tape people in with the vhs heads.. it's all nostalgia and or generational insecurity, with the new converts just trying to differentiate themselves socially with their peers. obviously it's legitimate to go to those older formats when the recording doesn't exist on the newer ones (or it's a bad transfer), but otherwise it's pure snobbery. properly done digital is superior to all those formats.
Re: (Score:2)
the transfer would have to be pretty bad for the VHS to be superior.
like if it came off a VHS or something...
i've used VHS recently in production as a special effect. there is something cool about deliberately creasing the tape, then resetting the timer on the resulting glitch, so you can record something on the tape which will then glitch out on that exact spot.
but there's nothing intrinsically good about the format whatsoever. the only worse format was U-matic, and that's mainly due to the size of the t
Re:LOL! (Score:5, Insightful)
properly done digital is superior to all those formats
That is very rare. In many ways I view the quality of DVDs and Blurays as equivalent to that of VHS tapes. It's Apples and Oranges really. With VHS you had degradation and quality issues inherent to the format. With digital, which is usually done poorly, even on high end Blurays, you have the "waterfall effect" where the blocks become noticeable in high speed movement in the scene, most noticeably on water falls.
If we had a nearly loss less compression algorithm, or better methods of dealing with such artifacts that would be nice, but for now it is not like digital is perfect fidelity.
If I had to choose I would go with my 300 pound Pioneer LaserDisc player. It was expensive as hell, and I did not have to flip the discs. The quality though was just shy of DVD and still analog video. That meant no artifacts and no degradation (well a heck of lot less without laser rot). It was a nicer looking picture to me.
Not to mention the audio was in many cases digital and the Elite players had optical connectors to your stereo system.
I know it may sound crazy, but it really pisses me off when I see a $20+ Bluray title, with super high resolution compared to the LD, and yet still have bullshit encoding artifacts in high speed motion scenes. LD did not have that.
One of the many reasons why I won't spend a dime on Bluray.
LD is too much of a pain in the ass though, not to mention new titles are not exactly being sold either. Never did see a burner or blank ones around either.....
Re:LOL! (Score:5, Informative)
As a video software engineer, I know your pain from a slightly different angle.
Your "waterfall effect" is over quantization of DCT blocks (in rare cases it could also be misuse of the deblocking filters). It's pretty easy to avoid and most encoders can actually give feedback about quantization rates and whether artifacting will be visible in output frames.
The problem is that people don't know how to use their encoders correctly, use them with completely the wrong settings and then don't inspect the output to see the result.
The MPEG4 High Profile 4.1 used in BluRay discs is capable of practically flawless encoding at any motion rate if operated with a little care. MPEG4 allows custom and dynamic quantization and a two pass encoder can use the second pass to fix any mistakes by adapting the local bitrate and quantization method.
I actually suspect though that you're seeing MPEG2 video getting pumped at an MPEG4 bitrate which is causing massive over quantization. This generally happens when studios have MPEG2 encoding hardware but no MPEG4 encoding hardware but they are told "keep your video at X bitrate" – even though this leaves half the disc empty and the video looking like a stream of 8x8 shiny cubes.
Of course, some decoders don't implement deblocking algorithms correctly and actually *increase* blockiness in some cases. This would be the fault of your BluRay player – you'd need to play on a good software player and compare.
And don't get me started on interlacing in digital video. It's a "feature" that has only ever made digital video worse and is somehow part of most broadcast standards. Aaarrgh!
Re:LOL! (Score:5, Informative)
"If I had to choose I would go with my 300 pound Pioneer LaserDisc player. It was expensive as hell, and I did not have to flip the discs. The quality though was just shy of DVD and still analog video. That meant no artifacts and no degradation (well a heck of lot less without laser rot). It was a nicer looking picture to me."
Laserdisc was composite video. It had ENORMOUS degradation in the form of bandwidth limiting. Digital compression, with all its flaws, is far, far better at preserving information than Laserdisc's crude, sledgehammer approach. The only people who think that Laserdisc was good by today's standards are ignorant.
"Not to mention the audio was in many cases digital and the Elite players had optical connectors to your stereo system."
The audio of Laserdisc wasn't stereo, high bandwidth, or even digital!!! HiFi audio was bandaid'ed on after the fact. Pathetic. Then there was the crappy CAV/CLV choice where you got either good usability features at 30 minutes per side (rare) or got 60 minutes of video with poor usability. Embarrassing. Laserdisc sucked.
"I know it may sound crazy, but it really pisses me off when I see a $20+ Bluray title, with super high resolution compared to the LD, and yet still have bullshit encoding artifacts in high speed motion scenes. LD did not have that."
It's easy to produce a high quality image when there is no resolution. If a DVD were encoded using the Laserdisc's source signal you wouldn't see artifacting either, nor would you see a good picture. DVD's luma resolution is superior to LD but it's chroma resolution destroys LD due to the composite encoding. Then there's HD...
"LD is too much of a pain in the ass though, not to mention new titles are not exactly being sold either. Never did see a burner or blank ones around either....."
Wow, ridiculous. No one is making wax cylinders for Edison's phonograph either.
Re: (Score:3)
This is a completely unprovable assertion and a favorite of the audiophile types, of course. I'm not denying that. But its my observation that modern people are simply used to digital artifacts, the way the vinyl generation were used to analog artifacts.
I, personally, have never seen seen a DVD without annoying visual artifacts characteristic of the medium--aliasing, ringing, moire, mosquito noise, basically your standard digi
Re:LOL! (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
No, it doesn't.
CD audio is perfectly able to capture audio just as well as vinyl. There is nothing inherently superior about vinyl. Vinyl also wears out over time.
There is no need for physical media. If you are getting a nice 'warm' sound from your vinyl, that is an artifact of the sound distortion being introduced by your amp, or other parts of your equipment, maybe even the mastering of the album. All of these things can be captured and played back
Re:LOL! (Score:4, Insightful)
What, the sounds above 22kHz, the ones humans aren't capable of hearing?
Sure.
LOL.
Re:LOL! (Score:4, Interesting)
Just because you can't consciously hear it does not mean it doesn't have effects on your perception of the audible portion of the sound. [physiology.org]
Re:LOL! (Score:5, Informative)
CDs can clip audio pretty aggressively resulting in distortion if the music is improperly mastered. There's no clipping in vinyl since it's an analog format, a lot of records do end up sounding better than CDs.
Because vinyl has an infinite dynamic range? Truth is, if vinyl was still mainstream these days, then records would be produced by the very same people who make bad CDs today, and they would only have disadvantages over their digital counterparts. Terparts. Terparts. Terparts. *thud* :-)
Re: (Score:3)
Truth is, if vinyl was still mainstream these days
It's more mainstream than cassette tapes or mini discs. Have you been clubbing recently?
Re:LOL! (Score:4, Informative)
Mastering vinyl is a pain in the ass, you can't just send music to a vinyl factory and get it pressed. You have to get test pressings (white pressing) done first. The reason for this is that average vinyl can't reproduce everything flawlessly. Vinyl comes in different grades, highest grade (audiophile) costs $$$'s and can produce low frequencies quite well, but the stuff you get at the vinyl store will buckle badly in the white pressing stage if you're not careful. Low frequencies reduce the groove gap and if you push it too far the grooves will collide and cause the needle to skip. Not good.
Mastering to CD is much easier. Producing things like downloadable FLAC is the easiest and best method.
Re:LOL! (Score:4, Insightful)
"eg. How does a CD store the difference between 22kHz square/sine/sawtooth waves?
It can't. It will even have trouble distinguishing them at 11kHz - well within the hearing limit."
It doesn't need to. Any 22K signal is entirely outside the passband of CD.
CD encoding has no trouble with 11K signals.
"Other problems: How do you even sample a 22kHz sine wave? Where do you put the sample points? How wide should they be? You can't use the beautiful 'dot' samples shown in the theory books - if the phase is wrong you might sample the zero-crossing points and not see any signal (in fact there's only one phase which would see the full signal - 90 degrees out of phase with the sampler would give a quieter output)."
CD doesn't attempt to reproduce 22K signals. The reason for the 44K sample rate is to leave some room for the anti-aliasing filters.
What Nyquist says is that you need a sample rate more than twice the highest frequency you wish to reproduce. You've deliberately violated that in your example. Even so, the actual sample rate is 44.1K so it's still theoretically possible, just impractical.
"CD sound is FAR from "Right, that's that sorted out then...". On the contrary, It's on the very limit of audio fidelity, only just good enough. To get a good result you need to sample at much higher frequency/resolution then process it down but even then the exact waveform of the high frequency waves is lost (you can argue over whether those differences are audible, I think they are)."
Your argument would be more persuasive if you had gotten anything you said right.
"These days we ought to be listening to 96kHz/24bit, the technology to reproduce it is ubiquitous. The problem is the MAFIAA doesn't want us to have it."
No, we shouldn't. That's the problem with people thinking beyond their pay grade.
Re:LOL! (Score:4, Insightful)
On the contrary, CDs are perfect.
Really? So why do professionals/studios use higher sampling rates?
One major reason is that by doing so, the signal can take more editing without losing fidelity in the process.
Re: (Score:3)
All the harmonics of an 8kHz square wave are 'outside the human hearing range' but I know for a fact it's easy to hear the difference between an 8kHz square wave and 8kHz sine wave.
Assuming that first part is correct, how confident are you that you were *actually* listening to a perfect sine wave and a perfect square wave?
The latter is technically impossible anyway, since a square wave implies instantaneous switching between the low and high levels (and vice versa), which is of course impossible with real-world equipment.
Even ignoring that borderline pedantry, however, there is still the possibility that the square wave was being distorted at one or more processing stages before y
Re: (Score:3)
"Two-and-a-bit samples isn't an awful lot better than two, especially if it's mixed together with other waves of similar frequencies (as real sounds usually are)."
It is absolutely, critically better, and mixing in other "waves" has no bearing on that.
"I'm not saying the high frequencies can't be reproduced, it's the shape of the waves I worry about."
Stop worrying.
"Does a 20kHz sine wave and a 20kHz sawtooth sound different when they're reproduced on a CD? They should..."
Not through and 20K band-limited syst
Re: (Score:2)
Vinyl has a maximum dynamic range of some twenty-odd dB less than CDs do. Frequency response isn't everything.
Re: (Score:2)
Which would be useful... if they weren't mastered to a point where the total dynamic range used comes down to 3-6db... loudness wars huzzah.
To many frequency response matters more than dynamic range when you already have 80+db of dynamic range that is never typically fully utilized.
Personally I prefer 96khz 32bit float digital music samples, complete overkill of course but always better to have the least error to start with when mixing etc lest errors multiply. Then you can downsample it when finished later
Re: (Score:3)
What's your point? That vinyl is a better medium than CD, or that mastering practices were better 30 years ago? You're arguing the latter, we're arguing the former.
Re: (Score:3)
Yes, they were. Vinyl was heavily compressed AND band limited. Vinyl has crappy low AND high frequency response as well as inferior dynamic range compared to CD. Recording "these days" may be compressed horribly as well, but they are for different reasons.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
The master copy is at a much higher bitrate/resolution than can be transferred to a CD.
Re:LOL! (Score:5, Insightful)
Vinyl for home listening as it has superior sound quality
I suspect you've been blasted on this already, but this is absolutely false. Vinyl has a higher noise floor and the sampling rate of digital audio is above the limit of human perception. If you're perceiving a difference, it's because of the mastering of the recordings. That or the placebo effect.
Re: (Score:2)
VHS is really a very poor quality video format. Just look at it! You can't really say that about vinyl and tape for audio, both of which are capable of high fidelity.
I'm not a golden-eared vinyl afficionado, and in general I much prefer CDs, but there's a big difference between a good CD and a bad CD, much bigger than the difference between a good and bad vinyl recording. That's because of the stupidity of the labels over the last 15 years in in
Re:LOL! (Score:5, Informative)
In fact, the author even gave the real reason for "going back to VHS":
If you want to see one of those movies, you really have no other choice but VHS. If they were released on DVD, I'm sure there would be no such thing as a "return of VHS".
Pffff, whatever. (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Wannabes. The religious hipster cool kids have been getting their media via STONE TABLET for several millenniums now.
Stone tablet... the really cool kids have been using the walls of caves.
Re: (Score:2)
The real hipsters are into bluray. They were into it when everybody else wasn't even over it yet.
Content, not the Technology (Score:5, Insightful)
I have no desire to "go back to VHS" or even to own any VHS tapes. But as the article points out, there are several good movies that have not been released on DVD.
In those cases, I'd much rather have someone's mp4 conversion off piratebay than a fresh VHS tape because VHS tapes do not last the way digital files do.
Same is true for a number of good movies and TV series that were never released on VHS. You want to watch the original Batman '66? Be prepared for some TV Land logos in your mp4s.
The only reason every video ever made is not available on demand is idiotic IP laws and greed. That is what we all want, not this piecemeal idiocy.
Re: (Score:2)
Same is true for a number of good movies and TV series that were never released on VHS. You want to watch the original Batman '66? Be prepared for some TV Land logos in your mp4s.
I listen to and love live DJ mixes. One of the broadcasts that I have been enjoying for a number of years now is A State of Trance. Now, while the current episodes are filled with people sharing, finding older sets is down right impossible. However, once I do manage to get them, I let them seed. No point in sharing what everyone else has out there, but for the folks that really do want to hear what was being played years ago (or perhaps the poor sods with OCD and the "Got to get them all" mentality) I think
Re: (Score:2)
not exactly.
the main gotcha is supply and demand.
how much cash is a licensor/distributor going to make from a DVD release of batman '66?
how much cash would it cost to hunt down the film reels (if they exist), tapes, whatevers?
how much would it cost to transfer the films to something good (even digibeta, which is 20 years old this year, is the best standard def has to offer)?
how much would it cost to assemble everything into watchable form (ie, the film reels will have transfer notes, timing info, etc that n
Re: (Score:2)
great. more robots and panty shots.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
While home video was certainly a net gain in availability of obscure films nationwide/worldwide, at a local level it destroyed many local cinemas who ran classic art films. It used to be that you could go to a screening of, say, an Ingmar Bergman film from several years prior, meet other cinephiles in your neighbourhood, and walk out of the cinema having passionate discussions with your peers about what you just saw.
I'm really not sure VHS is the sole cause of this. There was another concurrently-developing technology - cable television - that may have had a hand in it as well.
Back the 1980s I fell in love with a channel called "American Movie Classics" - at the time it really was showing classic American films (okay, obviously that doesn't mean Bergman) all the time, and with no commercial interruptions! The host, Bob Dorian, would lead into the movie with a little 2-minute piece that would sometimes be about the movi
Re: (Score:3)
Turner Classic Movies [tcm.com] channel still exists and presents classic movies (as in ~1930's to ~1960's with the occasional contemporary film) commercial free.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Those places were always a rarity in most of the United States and destined to become more rare as real estate prices and rents continued to rise. Far, far, far more people are exposed to those films via P2P and home video than a handful of art houses ever achieved.
Re: (Score:2)
In short, fuck the public experience. It stopped working when the "it's all about me" crowd arrived.
That crowd doesn't go to see an Ingmar Bergman film from several years prior. You should expand your cinematic horizons and stop watching the newest teen vampire movie as it comes out.
Going to a cinema like this is like going to a jazz club. You won't get the usual crowd of idiots, but likely have a great opportunity to meet some interesting people and have an intelligent conversation.
Re:On the other hand, it killed community cinephil (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not what he's talking about. Those people who don't know how to behave are not going to Ingmar Bergman films or even English-language arthouse/indie films, so the experience is only ever positive if you find a place showing such films - because for people who really like movies, the theater experience (including the film experience, which can't practically be replicated at home) is a big part of the enjoyment.
There are still such places - theaters that show classic films, new foreign films, and indie and art films. The Dryden Theater at the George Eastman House in Rochester NY (where I went to university) is my favorite, though I don't live there anymore. Yeah you can get it all on DVD, but it's still worth going if you're into movies - and if you're not into movies, you're not watching those kinds of films anyway.
Re: (Score:2)
In short, fuck the public experience. It stopped working when the "it's all about me" crowd arrived.
Don't know what type of rose-colored nostalgia glasses you have on, but that wasn't a recent development. Cell phones, that's a new thing, but before that there was still crying kids, noisy cracker-jacks and people talking. Every generation thinks they invented sin, and every generation thinks the next one invented bad manners.
Re: (Score:2)
you'll find that people who grew up with cinema have the respect you crave.
it's precisely the home video, VoD, netflix generations that have fucked the cinema experience.
You never owned it (Score:3, Insightful)
Future generations may know little of the days when buying a movie meant you owned it even if the Internet went down and when getting a movie meant you had to scour aisles of boxes in search
Ownership means you can do what you want. Like make copies and sell the copies of the contents of the tape as an example.
You were a share cropper in the tape days, just like now.
Re: (Score:2)
At one time, however crappy the deal, you at least owned the license fair and square. Now even that may be revoked on a whim.
Re: (Score:2)
That's why I still buy DVDs (on sale from Amazon, natch), even though the first/only thing I do with them is rip to h264 so they are accessible from the DVR.
Re: (Score:2)
Personally, I can't imagine why anyone does otherwise. I can more or less see it if the download is completely DRM free, but even then if it's going to cost as much or more than the same thing on physical media, why do it?
Re: (Score:2)
Because you need a certain amount of geekiness to think about doing it, and technical acumen to actually set it up.
Re: (Score:2)
Ownership of media conveys more rights than licensing it, in that the First-Sale Doctrine [wikipedia.org] is entrenched case law for hard product, wheras applying it to digitally streamed media is still subject to some legal churn, so only applies to those than can afford the tort. Also given current trends, first-sale rights are only likely to erode. [eff.org]
Trapped films (Score:2)
Some great films are indeed effectively trapped on VHS. In some cases they are never transferred to DVD/Blu-Ray, in other cases the quality of the transfer is pitiful compared to the VHS. In others, they are only available for a limited number of regions.
One example: They Might Be Giants [amazon.com]
(I was going to mention The Lighthorsemen [amazon.com], but there is allegedly a Blu-Ray that exists now - but is it truly available?)
Re:Trapped films (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Trapped films (Score:5, Informative)
aisles, not isles (Score:4, Informative)
TFA (http://techzwn.com/2012/02/interview-filmmakers-tell-of-the-home-video-revolution/ ) says "Something was lost when videos went from magnetic tape and plastic, to plastic discs, and now to digital streams. Browsing aisles is no more, as the once-great video shops slowly board up their windows across the country."
So the submitter actually changed it.
Sigh.
Re: (Score:2)
Or, the original site spotted and fixed the mistake after the submitter copied and pasted it.
Re: (Score:2)
Or the slashdot editor 'corrected' it.
(Unknown lamer? Who the fuck is that?)
Re: (Score:2)
I checked the submission, it had "isle"; the Slashdot "editor" was equally illiterate and didn't notice.
Re: (Score:2)
"Or the slashdot editor 'corrected' it."
I checked the submission, it had "isle"; the Slashdot "editor" was equally illiterate and didn't notice.
You're just trying to do extra work to make up for those of us who don't bother reading the summaries half the time, let alone the articles. Investigating the submission? Inconceivable!
Re: (Score:2)
Stupid (Score:3, Insightful)
Stupid article, stupid person, stupid premise, stupid argument. Stupid stupid stupid. Video has followed the same trajectory as audio, from analog to to digital physical to downloads. Except that analog video sucks just as much as, if not more so than, analog audio tapes. I know there's something of a vinyl resurgence, and I even think there's something to it (not audio quality, experience), but there's a reason nobody ever wants to screw around with audio tapes again. They're a pain in the ass, there's static, you need to rewind them, etc. Except video is even more finicky. Remember screwing with the tracking? Pulling the tape out of the box and finding it not rewound? Finding a particular scene?
And is he seriously arguing that obscure films are *more* obscure now that you can watch them online, as opposed to finding them tucked away somewhere in the local video store? I'm also pretty sure that those obscure films have been digitized and are easy to "acquire" if you wanted to watch them.
DVDs are superior to VHS in literally every respect. You don't have to rewind them, random access is as easy as sequential access, quality is better, audio is better (5.1 channels), smaller media, smaller players, quieter players, no static, no head cleaning, no moving parts in the media, cheaper media, extra features... the list goes on and on.
Stupid.
Re:Stupid (Score:4, Insightful)
I should add that I understand and accept that VHS was revolutionary for giving people the ability, for the first time, to consume media on their own schedule. Being able to record something to watch it later is a big deal, and we've actually taken a step backwards in that respect - less people have DVRs than had VHS recorders (though I'm not sure most people taped much - I know I only did it occasionally because it was a pain).
But we moved away from VHS as soon as possible, much like we did with the hand-starter in a car. And that's a good thing.
Re: (Score:2)
A lot of people who taped taped religiously though. It meant people could watch a daytime only show while going to work. People from that age group are generally baffled by DVR's though, and any of the rest of the technology I take for granted.
Trying to explain to someone in their late 70's how to record with the 'push of a button' (ya right...) on one box, that they may or may not be able to access in another room on a different TV is not trivial. So I still see a lot of people with VCR's and stacks of
Re: (Score:2)
I'm sympathetic to that argument, but not with VHS/DVR. VHS is an astonishing pain to set up to record in advance. Substantially harder than setting the clock (which as we all know is nearly impossible, apparently). And even more difficult now that they're no longer publishing the "VCR+" codes (remember those?) that made it only mildly unpleasant instead of quite unpleasant. Recording a show that's currently on is equally easy for each - just hit the "record" button - except that the DVR will start from whe
Re: (Score:2)
Fair enough, but that's a pretty subtle difference compared to other image quality metrics. Even on an old 480i CRT, where VHS arguably looks its best, there's noticeably less definition than a DVD.
Re: (Score:2)
I'll tell you what is not subtle between digital and analog. Compression artifacts. Those actually bother me more since DVD, being digital and all, is supposed to have more "fidelity". In most cases DVDs are pretty okay. Where it gets downright ridiculous is Bluray that I have seen. Can those retards not encode properly? Even on the best set ups I have seen embarrassing artifacts on high speed motion scenes.
It should be nice, clean, and smooth. Anything else is a compromise, and to me similar to VHS
Re: (Score:2)
DVDs use 4:2:0 subsampling, so there is only row of samples for every two scanlines (and for interlaced content, the result can be a mess), whereas VHS retains the full vertical resolution.
Of course DVDs have several times the horizontal chroma resolution, which is why VHS colors bleed like crazy.
Re: (Score:2)
vhs was worse than 4:1:1 (DV). the original standard was 3Mhz luma and 300khz for both color channels (ntsc has 500 for each iirc). it was probably the lowest quality video standard mass produced. it might have had a greater percentage of its bw allocated to color than say a 4:2:0 DVD, but that's not saying much when the total bw differed so greatly that 4:2:0 sources still had better color resolution.
I would never go back to VHS (Score:2)
Although VHS was very useful back in the 80's and 90's for recording various TV shows there was always playback issues between various brands of VHS machines simply because of how one machine recorded the show, the next one might have issues with grainy playback, fast forwarding or rewinding, or even audio issues. And remember the fun of buying the VHS cleaning tapes to try and keep the head(s) clean for optimal playback? Fun times!
Re: (Score:2)
Wow, you must have bought some really crappy VCRs!
Re: (Score:2)
I said that because my experience with perfectly run of the mill VCRs has been that they inter-operated fine and needed a minute spent once a year or so running a cleaning tape through. I still have 2 working VCRs from the '90s that I actually use. One was built in to an inexpensive TV and the other was a $40 standalone.
Re: (Score:2)
Although, I seem to remember VCRs lasted a long time. The one we had lasted around 15 years, so maybe the OP had more than one VCR at a time, and that's why he had trouble transferring from one VCR to another?
Re: (Score:3)
Although VHS was very useful back in the 80's and 90's for recording various TV shows there was always playback issues between various brands of VHS machines simply because of how one machine recorded the show, the next one might have issues with grainy playback, fast forwarding or rewinding, or even audio issues. And remember the fun of buying the VHS cleaning tapes to try and keep the head(s) clean for optimal playback? Fun times!
What I remember about VHS tapes is how they wear out. Our daughter had a handful of favorite tapes that she'd always want to watch - some I suspect were played 100 times, easy. Whether or not they were technically wearing down, or the magnetic bits were getting realigned, or whatever - after a certain point they'd always start to degrade.
Oh, and remember the alignment issues? And the little dials you'd use to fine-tune the channels?
I guess that means me. (Score:3)
I guess this means me. I fit the demographic. I was born in the early 1980s.
There is something 'missing' in the digital remasters of films, though arguably it's of a non-quantifiable aesthetic. Arguably, it's something of nostalgia, and I'd grant someone who argues it that way.
I remember, as a child, watching The Lone Ranger. Not the black and white, but the movie made in the 1980s (or early 90s). It'd come off television and had the start and finish of the ad segmens; my grandfather had recorded it for us, carefully stopping/recording at the appropriate parts - but we still had parts of he "We now return you to USA's Friday Night Movie".
My brother and I also had an VHS 'copy' of the original Batman serials from television in the late 1940s ( I think). The cars were big, there was no color, and the "Batmobile" was no different than any of the other cars. (Much better than the 1950s Batman, IMO.) The same goes for the b&w Superman, which we recorded off of reruns off TV, at some point. The Batman serials, we'd somehowmanaged to record about 20 seconds over the middle - some Micromachines commercial, right in the middle of a fight scene.
Flashing forward, I saw most of my favorite movies first on VHS: Die Hard, The Saint, Braveheart, Terminator, Commando. A favorite VHS had character, of sorts. You could tell it was well watched when the colors had started to fade and there was static or muddled audio. There was no jumping around randomly for favorite scenes. Many of them had been recorded off the TV by one person or another and passed around amongst friends. It wasn't until over a decade later that saw the full, non-edited-for-TV version of Commando (awesome!).
And then there was rainy days, snow days, or really-bad-storm days. You'd sit at home with the generator on (if you had one) and maybe watch movies while someone made food. You'd sort through a dozen different movies to find one that didn't suck, and you'd look for something to like or something to make fun of: it'd end up becoming a favorite for one reason or another.
That said: most of these people need to get a life. :) While I will grant you that the 1980s was the last great decade of America (for some time to come, at least), if you get too wrapped up in 1980s VHS films, you've got something wrong with you. I believe the term is "reality avoidance".
Re: (Score:3)
Especially since everybody who grew up in the 1980s knows that Betamax was better than VHS in every way.
Technology is sometimes democritizing (Score:2)
The advance in technology has helped this more than harmed it. These days, put it up on Youtube to get known. Hell, put up a concept on a website [ironsky.net] just in hopes of funding. The passing of VHS and the arrival of streaming has been democratizing. If you're afraid of losing it, burn it onto a DVD. That DVD you burned will outlast any VHS tape and will do so through many, many plays. How m
Edited for clarity (Score:5, Insightful)
$HIPSTERS and the $MEANINGLESS_ADJECTIVE return of $OBSOLETE_KITSCH
I am not a VHS fanatic. Even in the 80's, I hated the format. VHS tapes are/were made to the cheapest possible materials, so they wore out very easily and were highly susceptible to heat warping. Much like audio tapes, the sound tends to warble and even distort on overly bright video frames... such a kludgey format!
I do think we need to preserve the content of these tapes, but not the medium itself. I've been an all-streaming guy for 8-9 years and have no desire to go backward.
Re: (Score:2)
I do think we need to preserve the content of these tapes, but not the medium itself.
Copyright: 95 years from publication or 120 years from creation, whichever is shorter.
Legally, we can't preserve these tapes and we'll all be dead by the time someone legally can.
I've been an all-streaming guy for 8-9 years and have no desire to go backward.
As an all streaming guy, you'll never have the opportunity to go backwards and neither will your children.
Imagine a world where Disney can stop streaming a version of their film before the copyright expires and it disappears forever.
Then, you can only stream the new remastered edition. And by "remastered" I mean "another 95 years o
And as with all analogue (Score:2)
Particularly magnetic tape, it is suffer to wear as it is played. Each time you watch something, it gets worse due to wear. The more you watch, the worse it looks.
That and no generation loss are the big reasons digital formats are so totally superior. Even if VHS was a high end pro format, it still would suck compared to a similar digital format. The benefit of perfect reproduction of digital is just too massive.
That aside, DVD is superior to VHS quality. DVD gets you quality around Betacam SP. It gets you
Re: (Score:2)
No kidding, and "each tapehead is unique like a snowflake" in the sense that it melts and becomes useless... When I was in college we swapped VHS tapes of shows that we liked and often someone would drop a compilation tape in the VCR during a party. Those tapes--and the VHS players--degraded to the point that they became mostly unwatchable in a matter of weeks. I hung on to a box of VHS tapes of the first few seasons of The Simpsons because the local TV commercials are hilarious and nostalgic, but what poss
Reminds me to archive my stuff from 1980s (Score:4, Interesting)
Hope you stored them well (Score:3)
http://kingtapes.net/index.php/faq/2-do-vhs-tapes-degrade-over-time [kingtapes.net]
VHS degrades very quickly at room temperature and regular viewing... I know I could not stand watching some of my old ones after watching DVD for a few years, the color was so faded, it was awful!.
Not really missing it myself .. (Score:5, Interesting)
.. VHS was such poor quality that the fact that it won out over Beta always amazed me. Chroma channel of such poor bandwidth that the best you could say of VHS color is that you'd maybe get a blob of more or less the right color around that black and white object in the luma channel. Longitudinal audio tracks that did a record wipe effect any time a kink in the tape went over the audio head (granted, the RF audio on later stereo VHS was somewhat better). I thought about trying to edit on it once, but decided I didn't want to bother without any way to implement a timecode track. Even the 2 hour mode was crummy enough to not be anywhere close to broadcast quality, and that was in the analog vestigial-sideband 480i SD NTSC-M days of composite video.
And cleaning tape heads, and aligning transports, and dreading the day the pinch roller got a bit too sticky and unwound your only copy of your favorite movie into a rat's nest inside the VCR. (And yes, I've extracted a few such tape nests from family members' VCR's. Entirely too many of them learned that I knew how to fix the things.)
Beta was better. 3/4" U-Matic showed me what good was when it came to videotape formats. I was happy to leave VHS behind when I was able to record on Digital-8 format in broadcast quality, and once I got a camera that would record on an SD card in 720p I never looked back. I have heard that VHS tape makes reasonably good magnetic card stripes, though ..
Rose colored glasses? (Score:2)
The biggest advantage videotape created was the ability to
Video Cassettes are the future. (Score:5, Funny)
"Red Dwarf: Back to Earth (Part Two) (#9.2)" (2009)
Dave Lister: What are these things?
Kryten: They're Digital Versatile Discs, sir. DVDs for short. They were very popular in the early part of the 21st century before they died out and were replaced with what we use now.
Dave Lister: Oh, you mean videos?
Kryten: Precisely. Back then no one knew that the human race were utterly incapable of putting the DVDs back in their cases. Case in point: over 2 trillion went missing in just over 20 years. Videos are just too big to lose.
Tapeworms! (Score:2)
When there are 20, 30, 40 million of these VCRs in the land, we will be invaded by millions of â(TM)tapeworms,â(TM) eating away at the very heart and essence of the most precious asset the copyright owner has, his copyrightâ
Copyright Infringements (Audio and Video Recorders): Hearing on S. 1758
Before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 97th Cong., 1st and 2nd sess., 459
(1982) (testimony of Jack Valenti, president, Motion Picture Association of
America, Inc.).
Immune to Kid Destruction (Score:5, Interesting)
audio quality (Score:2)
So there are reasons for using VHS, beyond pure nostalgia, or access to videos that aren't digitised.
Though you can also use DVDs to get very high quality audio. You can use PCM audio or AC3 at 640 kbps and play it in a standard DVD player through your hif
VHS had mediocre audio quality (Score:3)
Better than cassette? Ya sure, but then that's not hard. "Just below DAT?" no, not so much. With Hi-Fi enhancements yes it could get about 70dB SNR (CD and DAT are 96dB) on a new, unused tape. As with all analogue, it degraded over time and suffered generation loss.
In terms of digital it isn't hard to do better than DAT/CD if you like either. You can use DVDs, but not like you think. The DVD-A standard allows for 6-channels of 24-bit, 96kHz audio to be stored. 144dB SNR, DC-48kHz response. In other words, w
Something that's always bugged me (Score:2)
I'm an 80s movie fanatic, and so many movies that were R-rated that I remember watching have been hacked up so bad for TV play that some of the best scenes are incomprehensible; e.g. the "f*gs in the shower!" scene from Once Bitten. This happens even with some commercial-less cable movie channels as well with modern releases. And, if it's a flick very unlikely to be purchased or rented, it's almost like the original content has been lost to time.
Tapes weren't *that* bad. (Score:3)
WTF? WHY? (Score:5, Insightful)
VHS is inferior in EVERY WAY to DVD. From the format it's self, you need at LEAST SVHS to get even 1/2 way to DVD. to the durability to the workflow for editing and creating a movie on tape.
Only complete morons would be "gong back" to VHS. I'm glad it's gone, dead, buried. Hell I'm happy that DV, HDV, Umatic, and Beta are dead.
Tape sucks, After working with Tape for 20+ years... I am glad it is dead.
Head alignment causing the camera to not record correctly, crap tape clogging heads, head maintenance, belt replacement, pinch roller replacement, oh god no.
Plus let's look at resolution. Regular VHS records and plays back 320X240 resolution MAX. SVHS doubled that. It's why all recordings looked smeared compared to the live broadcast. By the end of it's life Mass produced VHS was a lot better but still nothing like even a crappy made DVD. A SuperBit DVD will fake someone into believing they are watching a BluRay.
Shelf life of Tape is horrid, I have had to spend days trying to figure out how to get a tape to play one last time after sitting in a controlled vault for 12 years. Many tapes would adhere to themselves.
I can see an advantage with records, I can see an advantage with some other older stuff, but VHS was crap from day 1. It wasn't even the better format from day 1.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Lucas did put the original theatrical releases on DVD as a bonus disc when you buy the DVD releases of the original trilogy. They are completely unaltered but also more or less VHS quality with non-anamorphic widescreen.
Re: (Score:2)
You have obviously never tried to throw the disc like a ninja star or a Frisbee at someone. That can do some serious damage, especially aimed at bare skin.