vhs vs dvd

[Ashleyyyy]

so recently i bought a second hand vhs player and some movies, just to see if vhs was as bad as everybody says..

my setup:

 

jvc hr-s5950 (vhs player)

jvc th-a75r (surround sound system)

jvc av-28wt2en (late 90's widescreen crt tv)

 

the vhs player is connected via composite.

 

i didn't notice any diffrence compared to dvd... everyone always says how terrible vhs is, but i don't know why all those people say that. it looks fine to me, and the audio is good as well.

 

so the only conclusion i can think of is that vhs isn't terrible at all.......

 

what are your experiences/opinions?

[Guest]

They are bad compared to DVD's in my opinion, atleast the first versions was, but when The 8-Bit guy threw a 1080P Bluray on it, it looked way better. it will never get close to Beta Max. You know, there was a time when there was 1080i VHS's, but those died out in 2006 in favor of the DVD and Bluray. They also had the worst effect when pausing. This is coming from a 14 yer old, LOL.

[RGProductions]

8 minutes ago, firelighter487 said:

 

DVD is also really bad. VHS also degrades with the number of plays too. You might not have noticed a difference because of the display you used. Try watching this video 

 

[RGProductions]

1 minute ago, Factory OC said:

 

We linked the same video LOL.

[Guest]

1 minute ago, RGProductions said:

We linked the same video LOL.

Yeah, I guess I'm not the only one watching LGR and The 8-Bit guy.

[Ashleyyyy]

i already saw that video, i follow them as well. 

 

@RGProductions the display i used? it's just an old tv. i watch dvd's on it too, that's the point. vhs and dvd look the same on it.

[Creiger]

The gradual wear on the tapes themselves were always the main drawback. Visually it didn't become majorly apparent until HDTVs started getting more common. And you can REALLY tell the difference on the audio between a decades-old VHS and a DVD (assuming the tape was routinely used; it's most apparent on tapes that were used to record TV repeatedly). Granted, I'm not one of the people that would care either way, but the difference is definitely there.

 

Other than that, I've only had 1 DVD player go sort-of defunct compared to the numerous VHS players with all the moving parts. And the only issue with that DVD player was the power switch on it stopped working and you had to use the remote. Whereas with the VHS players there's of course the ones that have eaten a tape and totally removed those from existence, the ones that can't rewind or fast forward under their own power anymore, and the ones that eventually just seize up or have a gear break and become locked in time. DVD player all you have to worry about is the lens scratching the disk when it's spinning.

 

1 minute ago, firelighter487 said:

the display i used? it's just an old tv. i watch dvd's on it too, that's the point. vhs and dvd look the same on it.

He's saying that's why they look the same; they're both using component cables (or the coaxial passthrough, which is even worse). It's like saying apples and oranges look the same after painting them both blue.

[flibberdipper]

The TV is probably the reason they look the same. Even with our old tube TV (which was a pretty high end set back in like 04 or 05 when we got it) you could see a really noticable difference between VHS and DVD.

[Contreramanjaro]

It's worth noting that with VCRs (what the heck is a "VHS player" you youngsters) you could output only with RF or composite. With DVDs you could output composite/s-video/component/HDMI. That can make all the difference in the world for picture quality. Also, you had digital audio with both DTS and Dolby Digital. DVDs were a massive leap.

[Ashleyyyy]

in my country we don't say "vcr"... not my fault

[Contreramanjaro]

5 minutes ago, firelighter487 said:

in my country we don't say "vcr"... not my fault

My main point was that this discussion is mostly about the limitations of composite and not the limitations of DVDs or VHSs.

[LogicalDrm]

In terms of degradation and pure storage space, DVD is miles ahead. Plus its harder to get DVD stuck on drive or break the surface so that quality has major issues with DVD. If someone thinks technology and image quality of two are even close, they haven't been kids when VHS was the thing.

 

There are few good things with VHS, in consumer perspective. Like ease of recording from TV. Movies, series etc. My parents had recorded ton of children's cartoons, children's movies and other movies on tape. Which I spend hours on hours watching when there wasn't anything interesting coming from TV. Recording set-top boxes can only aid so much. Only now with streamed content there's some more hope for kids to get that sort of entertainment.

[AshleyAshes]

2 hours ago, firelighter487 said:

@RGProductions the display i used? it's just an old tv. i watch dvd's on it too, that's the point. vhs and dvd look the same on it.

Welp, found there problem with your methodology right here.

[GoodBytes]

VHS can be amazing... 1080i seriously amazing!

(TL;DW) They basically just recorded in digital format, instead of analogue. DVD could not hold the amount of data needed, but tape did. Tape are still use today for server backup in many IT infrastructure due to the small compact size they are (much smaller than VHS), and massive amount of data, and a better mechanism where the tape wont' get tangled (but of course, everything costs more). But the video above is more of an interesting fact, as it was HD VHS were rare, let alone 1080i TVs. I mean as you can see on the video, a 1080i TV back then, in 1998, was $8,000 US, that is 12k today! But nonetheless very interesting.

[yathis]

Over time tape in vhs degrades where as dvd/cd it lasts vastly longer.

Even if you dont use vhs it degrades.

If you use vhs tapes a lot, they degrade faster.

 

[GoodBytes]

21 minutes ago, yathis said:

Over time tape in vhs degrades where as dvd/cd it lasts vastly longer.

Even if you dont use vhs it degrades.

If you use vhs tapes a lot, they degrade faster.

 

DVD's also degrade over time by itself. Like all disk based media, you have thing called: "disk rot" where the plastic degrade over time.

[RGProductions]

1 minute ago, GoodBytes said:

DVD's also degrade over time by itself. Like all disk based media, you have thing called: "disk rot" where the plastic degrade over time.

But your average DVD looks better than your average VHS tape.

[GoodBytes]

1 minute ago, RGProductions said:

But your average DVD looks better than your average VHS tape.

Yes. Unless you had a good VHS player (not the HD one above video.. that was just for "fun fact". Just a good SD VHS player), and a new tape, never played, that was properly mastered (like cassette tapes for musics, depending on the publishers, you had a lot of crap copies, where the tape that you have is a copy of a copy of a copy). VHS was 480i, and DVD could be 480p.

 

[NumLock21]

I still have a VHS/DVD combo player somewhere in my closet along with The Land Before Time.

[Zodiark1593]

Always loathed how my old vhs/vcr player would randomly decide to eat one of my tapes. One of my favorite movies, Lion King, met this fate when I was 5.

 

 

[themctipers]

I find that VHS/LD looks better on a CRT than a modern LCD

[yathis]

6 hours ago, GoodBytes said:

DVD's also degrade over time by itself. Like all disk based media, you have thing called: "disk rot" where the plastic degrade over time.

Not nearly as advanced as tape media

If stored properly plastic dimples would outlast tape 100000000 fold

 

Beta was a better media at the time, but it never took off.

[MoonSpot]

Rather than get into the potential visual quality that vhs had, think its to best to recall the realities and general experience during its heyday.  Blank tapes used to be quite expensive, relative to what people were willing to justify paying.  So most ended up recording with the EP or LP (extended or long play) setting.  Rather than record... Crap what was it... 3 or 4 hours?  People would opt to stretch the ever loving piss out of it and record 8-10hrs at garbage quality.  

For my own part I'd tollerate LP,  but was fairly vocal with family about their degenerative and lowbrow EP tendencies.

 

Fortunately the desire and need for John Q Public to extend play/use to those extreems on disc died in the first few years of consumer recordable DVDs.

 

More than anything, I bet people recall the fidelity of the recordings they made and not the much better quality from the films they bought.  And you can take that as an explanation for the more emotionally adamant condemnations of vhs qty.   Still, dvd is noticeably better than Vhs was even on SP.  Plus the experience isn't nearly the pain in the butt vhs could be(tracking, bad heads, eatting tapes, rewind/fast forwarding, no chapter select or menu settings options,  etc..)

[Ertman]

My bit of anecdotal evidence disagrees with the original inclusions. I remember watching DVDs for the first time and was blown away how much crisper the image appeared on my tube TV. Maybe this is because I wasn't using a component connection, I don't know. While modern blu-rays are much better, I found the jump from jump from VHS to DVD to be much more noticeable.

[Creiger]

On 3/11/2017 at 11:40 PM, yathis said:

Beta was a better media at the time, but it never took off.

 

Betamax's biggest issue early on was that the biggest tapes lasted right about 60 minutes. Now factor in that just about every movie ever required 2 of them (at least). By the time larger sizes were made, VHS has one helluva foothold due to that initial 2 hour/single tape time.

 

And this is only speculation on my part, but judging from trends at the time, I'm guessing certain production companies drug their asses transitioning to the larger tapes anyway (due to having literal warehouses stocked with blank, 1-hour tapes), which wouldn't have helped things either.

 

On 3/12/2017 at 4:24 AM, MoonSpot said:

Rather than get into the potential visual quality that vhs had, think its to best to recall the realities and general experience during its heyday.  Blank tapes used to be quite expensive, relative to what people were willing to justify paying.  So most ended up recording with the EP or LP (extended or long play) setting.  Rather than record... Crap what was it... 3 or 4 hours?  People would opt to stretch the ever loving piss out of it and record 8-10hrs at garbage quality. 

 

I don't remember the names for the exact settings, but I remember our VCR towards the end had 3 settings for recording: 2, 4, & 6 hours. Think it was SP, LP, and EP; standard/long/extended. And if I remember really hard, I believe some were capable of doing ELP (extended-long) for 8, but I think you needed special types of tapes for that one too.