Star Trek on Original VHS

[mswood]

as to the original poster, I don't know about any real financial value, but i was going to throw away all my old media from Trek, when I finally upgraded what could be upgraded to blu-Ray, obviously keeping the DVD of what issn't available to upgrade (dS9 and Voyager, sad).

that meant the colombia house set of TOS and TNG, and then the Vhs copies that were sold in stores of those up to like the 4th year of dS9, and the dvD sets of TNG, TOS and Enterprise.

Boyfriend sad, I was crazy that I should give them to goodwill (I thought no one would want them), but in fact everything I gave was gone within a month to several very happy fans who never had the funds to ever purchase home market versions of the shows.

i am poor, so that surprised me. But even if I didn't make a penny off it. It's nice that others can still get some enjoyment out of it. I had Laser disc's of TOS and a good chunk of TNG), but those were stolen years ago, but I know people sho still cherish those, and they did have great quality for there time.

 

[Forbin]

Columbia House (I think) hadn't even finished putting out Babylon 5 on VHS when the DVDs were announced. Consequently I ended up throwing out 2 whole seasons on B5 VHS sets, still in the shrink wrap.



I ended up doing the same with 2 seasons of Xena.
It was a dark time in the format wars.

 

[Kor]

I actually preferred laserdisc to VHS... except for the annoying pause when it came time to read the other side of the disc. And the exorbitant prices.

Kor

 

[MaximRecoil]

I actually preferred laserdisc to VHS... except for the annoying pause when it came time to read the other side of the disc. And the exorbitant prices.

LaserDisc is much higher quality video than VHS, especially if you have a high-end laserdisc player. The quality of the player makes a big difference because LD is analog video, not digital like DVD and Blu-ray.

 

[Forbin]

I had a great LD player, and the picture was amazingly sharp on my 24" Sony Trinitron. sadly that player died, and I now have a 30-year-old refurb "average" deck I got on the internet. We've replaced most of the the films with DVD anyway. But once in a while it's nice to pull out that old special edition of Star Wars on hi-quality LD that I paid $100 for, and that you have to flip sides every 30 minutes.

 

[Shaka Zulu]

But VHS looked like crud in the 80s, and it still looks like crud.

Around 1985, I bought the pre-recorded VHS tape of ROCKY III, and there was a ghost image on it. For instance, in the beach scene when Adrian gives Rocky his career-biggest (though implausibly motivated) pep talk, you could plainly see an outline of their heads against the sky.

I took it back to the little video store where I'd special-ordered it, and the guy claimed it was their hair. I returned the purchase and agreed to pay a rental fee to be done with it.

I just saw the HD version of ROCKY III on basic cable, and behold, no ghost image. VHS at best was almost as good as Standard Definition. It wasn't great at the time, and today it looks downright blurry.

VHS looks/looked cruddy, yes: Super VHS doesn't/didn't, nor did D-VHS (Digital VHS) Sadly, none of those formats caught on, in particular D-VHS, which was stillborn on arrival.

 

[Forbin]

How about VHS HiFi?

 

[ZapBrannigan]

How about VHS HiFi?

I thought the hi-fi aspect was just about sound quality.

 

[publiusr]

Now--what I would like to see is the use of blu-ray technology to make a huge analog laser disk platter--the best of both worlds--do-able?

I seem to remember folks saying the best sound from a CD came from playing it in a games machine

 

[MaximRecoil]

How about VHS HiFi?

"HiFi" was an improvement to the audio. It had nothing to do with video quality. The original JVC implementation of "HQ" was a video improvement, but JVC watered down the standard when other companies balked at the high cost of implementation, resulting in the "HQ" label on a VCR becoming next to meaningless.

Now--what I would like to see is the use of blu-ray technology to make a huge analog laser disk platter--the best of both worlds--do-able?

I've had the same idea for many years. For example, here is a thread I made about it on another forum in 2008.

 

[BillJ]

I seem to remember folks saying the best sound from a CD came from playing it in a games machine

I believe it was a certain version of the original PlayStation (Model No. SCPH-1001).

 

[Amaris]

I have several VHS Star Trek movies, and I hold on to them for nostalgia reasons. Star Trek V because it was the first Star Trek movie I owned (given to me by my parents on my 14th birthday in the before times of 1994).

I also own Star Trek VI, which was the first VHS tape I bought for myself, and Star Trek: TMP, the Director's Cut I purchased in 2001 because it completed my Star Trek movie VHS collection (for 1 to 6).

 

[Shaka Zulu]

How about VHS HiFi?

The sound is great, but little else.

 

[JesterFace]

There is a certain atmosphere on VHS tapes that is lost in the modern, perhaps, better formats.

 

[BillJ]

There is a certain atmosphere on VHS tapes that is lost in the modern, perhaps, better formats.

Nothing that I've noticed. It would be painful to have to go back at this point.

 

[ozzfloyd]

There is a certain atmosphere on VHS tapes that is lost in the modern, perhaps, better formats.

Like video noise, tracking issues, and audio hiss?

 

[Kor]

Yeah, I don't miss the "atmosphere" of VHS at all.

Kor

 

[BillJ]

Yeah, I don't miss the "atmosphere" of VHS at all.

Kor

The only thing I miss from VHS is the special longer version of Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Would love to have it on Blu-ray.

 

[Shaka Zulu]

There is a certain atmosphere on VHS tapes that is lost in the modern, perhaps, better formats.

Nothing that I've noticed. It would be painful to have to go back at this point.

Yeah, I don't miss the "atmosphere" of VHS at all.

Kor

As I said before, only Beta, Super VHS and the stillborn D-VHS were any good.

 

[The Laughing Vulcan]

I got the best of both worlds. Paramount, indeed many distributors never bothered copy-protecting their retail VHSs. So for the Extended Edition of Star Trek the Motion Picture, I backed up my VHS tape to DVD-R. I get VHS video quality plus the added compression of putting two and a half hours plus of video on a medium best suited for 120 minutes of SD video.

 

[Kor]

I remember we had the TMP SLV on LaserDisc when I was a lad. The picture quality was great!

It's probably still on a shelf somewhere at my parents' place. If I had more time and money, I would figure out a way to convert it to DVD.

Kor