I still remember the good old LaserDisc days!!!
VHS nostalgia... =(
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Amaris
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We had a LaserDisc player in my Sophomore Biology class (way back in 1997). It was... interesting.
I have no intention of going to BluRay and paying DVD prices of 5-10 years ago for a few hundred lines of resolution myself. Mostly I watch films via my computer's DVD player which is hooked up via HDMI to my plasma and upscales nicely on its own; otherwise I'd probably move to downloads. Repurchasing stuff I have on DVD just isn't in the cards.
Most trailers are skippable when they're there, even on a rental disc I find - at least in the UK. I have noted that some companies (Paramount and Universal I've noted) will lock out the remote (only stop and power buttons work) for the opening studio logo and copyright warning which is slightly annoying, but I can live with it. I suppose there are higher-end DVD players that can override this software, but neither my Philips nor my Mac are able to do so.
I don't have to worry about that. I've got several older model TVs in different rooms of the house as backups. By the time the last one goes, I'll be in the ground and won't be looking at anything anyway.
Ten years from now, the video signal your VCR's produce may not be compatible with new televisions.
Modern electronics uses a lot of digital circuitry, and the signal processing circuits they use are using smaller and smaller margins of error.
An older television may be happy to accept a video signal that is 5 nanoseconds out of phase with the clock signal, but a future television might reject that signal completely, and the VCR will appear to not work.
So when your buy a new television (however many years in the future), remember to make sure your VCR's work with it.
I don't have to worry about that. I've got several older model TVs in different rooms of the house as backups. By the time the last one goes, I'll be in the ground and won't be looking at anything anyway.
In the UK at least you have a choice of a variety of boxes that will convert SCART or other analogue signal to HDMI - including the integration of audio - because televisions are already appearing on the market that lack analogue connectors.
Not just good for people with video players, but also enthusiasts of old video game consoles!
I don't have to worry about that. I've got several older model TVs in different rooms of the house as backups. By the time the last one goes, I'll be in the ground and won't be looking at anything anyway.
In the UK at least you have a choice of a variety of boxes that will convert SCART or other analogue signal to HDMI - including the integration of audio - because televisions are already appearing on the market that lack analogue connectors.
Not just good for people with video players, but also enthusiasts of old video game consoles!
Many of those analogue->digital conversion devices create digital artifacts in the picture, similar to a lossy jpeg compression. The image quality can be worse than you would like.
Also, these converters may or may not have shrinking margins of error too. If they don't, their output signals may not be accepted by future televisions. If they do, they may not understand their input signal from the video player/game console. It's not infallible.
If you're happy watching VHS on old TVs I'd wager you really don't care much about image quality; the amount of people who use YouTube would also seem to indicate a high tolerance for subpar video quality.
With regard to the converters obviously the quality changes, but my RGB SCART-HDMI converter works pretty well with my Atari Jaguar. I will admit it does seem to get overwhelmed by the signal and flickers a bit, but not so much that it's unbearable. It's certainly better than nothing and I expect the technology will only improve over time. As long as there's a market for such devices I expect they will keep up with whatever technology is on offer.
I have a friend who still records TV shows on Beta. He prefers the picture quality over VHS and he has never gone for things like DVR or the like. He has DVD, of course, but for day-to-day recording and time-shifting, he uses tape still.
So a couple weeks ago I went to his place to watch Doctor Who, which he'd recorded earlier in the day. I was expecting a bit of a visual train wreck - an HD-produced show, recorded off a digital cable station (not HD, though) and viewed on something like a 40-inch plasma. (Oh yeah, he has a plasma TV as well).
The big surprise? It looked just as good as a DVD recording. Beta might have lost the first great format wars but it seems to have become the format that works best in the long term. Couple this with one other factor - when was the last time you saw Beta blank tapes for sale anywhere? So he's recording on media that's more than a decade old, most likely. And it still looks great.
I was quite pleased. It also served to support my view that plasma is definitely the way to go for anyone who enjoys watching not just analog media like VHS or Beta, but any non-HD recordings or broadcasts.
Oh and as for the nostalgia question earlier - I have 30 boxes of VHS tapes I need to someday sort out, mostly consisting of off-air TV recordings, some dating back to 1982 (and yeah I know odds are many of them are now deteriorated) but also handicam recordings of my grandparents, my mum and dad - things I hope to be able to transfer to digital someday.
I am not nostalgic for the amount of space VHS tapes took up. If we didn't have DVD and I bought the complete Six Million Dollar Man series set Time Life put out last fall, I'd have needed to rent a second apartment just to hold all the tapes!
Alex
So a couple weeks ago I went to his place to watch Doctor Who, which he'd recorded earlier in the day. I was expecting a bit of a visual train wreck - an HD-produced show, recorded off a digital cable station (not HD, though) and viewed on something like a 40-inch plasma. (Oh yeah, he has a plasma TV as well).
The big surprise? It looked just as good as a DVD recording. Beta might have lost the first great format wars but it seems to have become the format that works best in the long term. Couple this with one other factor - when was the last time you saw Beta blank tapes for sale anywhere? So he's recording on media that's more than a decade old, most likely. And it still looks great.
I was quite pleased. It also served to support my view that plasma is definitely the way to go for anyone who enjoys watching not just analog media like VHS or Beta, but any non-HD recordings or broadcasts.
Oh and as for the nostalgia question earlier - I have 30 boxes of VHS tapes I need to someday sort out, mostly consisting of off-air TV recordings, some dating back to 1982 (and yeah I know odds are many of them are now deteriorated) but also handicam recordings of my grandparents, my mum and dad - things I hope to be able to transfer to digital someday.
I am not nostalgic for the amount of space VHS tapes took up. If we didn't have DVD and I bought the complete Six Million Dollar Man series set Time Life put out last fall, I'd have needed to rent a second apartment just to hold all the tapes!
Alex
What I'm saying is that VHS users should be just as careful about buying A->D converter boxes as they are about buying new televisions.
Saying "old has worse image quality than new. You use old therefore you don't care about image quality" is a bit wrong. Where people use older technology they measure it in it's own context. ie, If a person wants to use VHS, then they'll compare their setup with other VHS setups, and judge quality against that standard.
I don't think anyone would like image quality to drop unnecessarily, yet adding an A->D converter to a VHS setup risks doing that. Some converters are better than others however.
This is probably the main reason I don't miss VHS; never was into recording broadcast TV and I presently have no aerial connection to my TV (no, I don't miss paying for a TV License) because I don't watch broadcast television - or any television that isn't on DVD for that matter...
@Jadzia: I'd say that's a given. ADCs in CD players can be dodgy as well: some sound better than others. That's why you should keep your receipt and only buy from legit dealers!
Its the extras that tempt me again.
Though strangly each time I've rebought the Alien set its got cheaper - £70 (for 4 films when £20 a film was the norm) seemed good. £40 for the 9 disc set, I think the BluRay cost me £25!
Likewise my Star Wars preorder currently works out at £65, under £11 a film. They could have got more out of me
The difference between Blu-Ray and DVD is pretty much the same as the difference between DVD and VHS before it. So you upgraded the last go-around for those same "few hundred lines" of resolution. BD also has the benefit of being backwards-compatible with the previous technology so you don't need to re-buy a collection just continue your current one on the new technology. Aside from a couple "must have" movies that's pretty much what I have done.
My family just cleaned out the last of our VHS tapes the other day. We'd had them for years, even after we trashed the VCR. I finally convinced my mother to get rid of them as there was no use for them anymore. I can't really say that I'm heartbroken over the decision, There wasn't much I liked about them at all.
I still have and use my VCR. Until I'm rich enough to by the box sets or download stuff, most of the Trek episodes I have are recorded from TV Also, I have many Columbia House tapes with two episodes on each, mainly for TOS, so if I get bored they work well, and the quality is fine, especially for a show that is older.
I actually wore out the tracking knob on a VCR once.
Stupid tracking.
Stupid tracking.
There's really very little I've replaced when I moved from DVD to Blu-ray.
Movies:
Commando
Predator
Star Trek I-VI
TV Series:
Star Trek
Firefly
All my other DVD's look fine played through my Blu-ray player.
Beta was unquestionably better in quality than VHS. Sadly my Beta decks all died years ago, and we're time-shifting on VHS these days.
Actually, I never did own all that many movies on VHS. I didn't start buying them in any quantity until DVD came along. And I didn't own any TV series on VHS, except the ones I taped myself--most of which I didn't replace.
Perhaps the biggest advantage that DVD offered over VHS was simply the smaller amount of space it took up.
I sort of miss VHS. I don't miss fuzzy picture and horrid sound quality, but I do miss the ability to easily record, copy, and edit anything on tv. I used to make some truly bizarre little experimental movies back in the 80 s using two VCRs and a sincere desire to see what the format could do.
I also slightly miss the aesthetic of the players and cassettes. The tapes just have a look to me that say 80s as much as a Nagel painting or a giant pair of aviator sunglasses. My first recorder was grey with silver accents. It was a top loader with huge clunky buttons. It looked so futuristic in 1982 or whenever it was.
I also slightly miss the aesthetic of the players and cassettes. The tapes just have a look to me that say 80s as much as a Nagel painting or a giant pair of aviator sunglasses. My first recorder was grey with silver accents. It was a top loader with huge clunky buttons. It looked so futuristic in 1982 or whenever it was.
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