We Bought HD Movies... on Cassette Tape?

[Plouffe]

DVHS was a flash in the pan in the early 2000s, bringing 1080i content to tape. Why did it fail, who bought these things, and most importantly was it even any good?

 

Buy Denzel Washington’s The Hurricane on Blu-Ray: https://geni.us/3mjh0Fs Purchases made through some store links may provide some compensation to Linus Media Group.

 

 

 

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

I gotta say, I have a big VHS collection and a decent player, your VHS tape was probably degraded... I've got tapes that while producing a noisy signal, definitely have a lot more colour to them. old animated Disney movies etc.

 

also, a CRT might have been better for demonstrating the VHS tape, I've noticed that CRT's look better, probably because they don't need to upscale. since old VHS tapes tend to have a noisy signal, and you're upscaling noise, that's what makes it look so bad on "modern" aka hd tv's...

 

[dogwitch]

love the talk about mastering!!!!

had that with a image i took. a friend of mine( dead now)  said to me looking at in photo shop. the color on the leaves are wrong...

i said no.  it the correct color. when he got a brand new display.. it was a night and day . he said you were right. 

(him)i cant believe  the difference in coloring on the display(i forget what he got)

people forget display over time degrade to!.

[HenrySalayne]

What's next?

 

We bought vinyl... on tape? - The Tefifone

 

 

[Streetguru]

So...ya know, any of you tech heads gonna preserve some D theater tapes? Surely you guys can cobble together some way to do it? It's too bad there's no release of the actual* OG star wars trilogy for it.

Mostly for
60. Mummy, The

61. Mummy Returns, The

82. Terminator 2

[poutinator53]

this is all so fascinating

[bluehawk]

As someone that also was a teen around the time it was pretty obvious people, at least Americans, didn't care about picture quality. We didn't move away from analog tv signals until 2009. I remember the arguments between people between fullscreen and widescreen and how there were still full screen DVDs because people didn't have the widescreen tvs, didn't want them, or couldn't afford them. There were so many crappy DVDs at the time that offered both so you had readable disc data on both sides. What's funny is now with HDTV being the standard streaming services are still trying to do this one size fits all mentality and stretching or cropping shows that were in 4:3 to fit widescreen televisions even though said shows weren't often filmed with widescreen in mind so watching them you see stunt doubles or other things that weren't supposed to be seen in broadcast. And streaming quality also isn't the best especially because of how terrible internet is in much of the US but it's still being pushed as the better option. And there are those that like motion smoothing on the tvs. Overall, I just don't think we'll reach a point where people can understand and appreciate picture quality and want the best physical standard that can deliver it to them

[IRMacGuyver]

I always think that in any discussion that mentions the entertainment industry fighting piracy it's important to point out that the story of a random guy in a basement with a dub machine cutting into profits is a myth.  Serious piracy is committed by people inside the industry.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2005-sep-28-fi-piracy28-story.html

[IRMacGuyver]

2 hours ago, Streetguru said:

So...ya know, any of you tech heads gonna preserve some D theater tapes? Surely you guys can cobble together some way to do it? It's too bad there's no release of the actual* OG star wars trilogy for it.

Mostly for
60. Mummy, The

61. Mummy Returns, The

82. Terminator 2

Pretty sure the Laser Disc will still be the better quality Terminator 2. 

[KeitaRR]

It surprises me a bit that VCD isn't a thing in north america

[Needfuldoer]

If you want to fall down a retro home theater rabbit hole, Techmoan has covered just about any weird old format you can think of.

 

 

6 hours ago, HenrySalayne said:

What's next?

 

We bought vinyl... on tape? - The Tefifone

 

 

And Technology Connections has a 5-part series on the tumultuous development of the Capacitance Electronic Disc, which stored video on vinyl records. It's a story of corporate infighting, letting the cat out of the bag way too early, more corporate infighting, the real reason VHS dominated in North America, and the sunk cost fallacy.

 

 

5 minutes ago, KeitaRR said:

It surprises me a bit that VCD isn't a thing in north america

We already had VHS, which was recordable and had longer run time, and the vast majority of North America doesn't have the constant tape-murdering levels of humidity that southeast Asia does. 

[Ginger Penguin]

I also enjoyed the mastering discussion though I was a little bit unsure about Linus' take on there being more film grain in the Blu Ray copy being a sign of a bad master. A lot of Blu Ray reviews specifically look for film grain being kept intact and not either being smoothed out intentionally or just getting lost to compression.

 

It's one of the easiest things I find to look for when trying to find good quality digital copies of shows or films. If you can see grain or even noise, the bitrate should generally be high enough to retain other fine details. But if it's kinda smoothed or has turned into larger squares (ie. blockiness) then it's probably worth trying to find a higher bitrate version.

[Bramimond]

I wonder what even the point of copy-protection on BDs was, given how it was defeated in 2007 - years before the general public even adopted BD.

 

Even in 2008 consumers were still confused whether to go BD or HD-DVD, so they mostly just didn't bother with either. I think it wasn't until 2013 that people I know upgraded to BD. Though, they mostly just watch streams anyway.

 

It would be kinda hilarious if the industry was trying to push out a new format and nobody bothering with it.

[Needfuldoer]

3 hours ago, Bramimond said:

I wonder what even the point of copy-protection on BDs was, given how it was defeated in 2007 - years before the general public even adopted BD.

Mostly placating the studios. If ripping a movie was as easy as ripping a music CD, nobody would buy digital-only copies to watch.

 

How much that really matters now that everyone's used to streaming platforms with cheap monthly subscriptions, I don't know.

[whm1974]

7 hours ago, Needfuldoer said:

Mostly placating the studios. If ripping a movie was as easy as ripping a music CD, nobody would buy digital-only copies to watch.

 

How much that really matters now that everyone's used to streaming platforms with cheap monthly subscriptions, I don't know.

I don't miss VHS or VCR's at all. Still have plenty of DVDs left from when I went hog wild. Rather use my Rig to watch shows and movies.

 

Small HUD Funded Apartment and all that.

[IRMacGuyver]

22 hours ago, KeitaRR said:

It surprises me a bit that VCD isn't a thing in north america

Part of the problem is that due to the piracy boogeyman North America was slow to adopt CD technology.  We didn't get mass market penetration of CDs until 1989 and I didn't know anyone that had a player until like 93~94. DVDs were already out around the time I saw my first VCD. What point is a 2 disc VCD when DVDs exist?  Hell UMDs were a better technology than VCDs... in 2004 when I was still seeing VCDs being sold in the Philippines.  At this point any cost difference between VCD and DVD is completely artificial.  And the same should be said for Bluray but hey why stop making money on an old format and pass the savings on to the consumer just because you paid off the tooling.

I read somewhere that only 7 VCD movie titles were ever officially sold in the US. 

[Dj Bacon]

This video was such a nice surprise. 

I still record and watch VHS. It's for nostalgic reasons  and yes, it's much better on CRT TVs. 

D-VHS recorder without D-Theatre logo can still record at higher bandwidth than DVD. Also you can record D-VHS on ordinary VHS tape. I tried it on a few and every one was great. A few dropouts at the begining, but otherwise same quality as on D-VHS or S-VHS. I read that over time digital dignal on ordinary VHS tapes degrades faster. Unfortunately I do not have those tapes I recorded with digital signal as wel as the D-VHS recorder so I cannot check if that's true.

 

Anyway, awesome video, guys.

[JeffwMilos]

To bad there was not HD DVD as well...

 

[costafilh0]

What is the music at 12:48 ?

[WSHuff]

I bought into D-VHS around 2005. FireWire was important because cable boxes at the time were required to have firewire outputs because some early HD televisions used Firewire for HD input. What that meant is that you could record hi-def from your HD cable box channels like HBO, HDNet, etc. I made myself a nice library that way in the days before HD-DVD and Blu-Ray hit the market. I think I still have the entire first season of Battlestar Galactica, as well as Deadwood, in HD on D-VHS.

 

The other thing I remember is buying S-VHS blanks and using a soldering iron to make the home needed to allow recording of HD content. Fun times.