I absolutely love that you made all the right decisions for processing 480i video. Anybody who wants to capture analog video material should use this video as the standard to aspire to. Deinterlaced to 480p 60fps - the best choice when dealing with true 60i video or mixed 60i video & telecined film. Upscaled to 720p so that youtube would actually retain the 60fps rather than decimating it to 30fps. Kept a proper 4:3 resolution rather than 16:9 with black bars on the side, so that it displays properly on 4:3 screens such as iPads and some Samsung tablets. This video does a really good job of representing the quality we would perceive when viewing a VHS tape on a CRT. VHS is far lower quality compared to the formats we have today, but it isn't the absolute garbage quality you see on most captures uploaded to youtube.
Ironleg The only thing that is crap is your pathetic english. I've seen VHS with very good quality depending on the quality of the player and the tape, you are fucking delusional if you think no VHS tape looks good so it is nonsense to say all vhs looks bad. The guy has every right to disagree with you, get your high horses off.
It was only crap if you bought a dirt cheap 2head mono machine, and never cleaned the tape transport. But the high end HiFi machines with 6 heads could give great results, especially with tapes that hadn't been abused. Yeah, there is something to be said for the robust qualities of today's "solid state" formats, but VHS, Vinyl, and even standard music cassettes were far more engaging. You just had to take a little more care of your machines, and the media you played on them. Something that many people misunderstood at the time, hence why the likes of VHS got such bad press. But for some of us who took care of our machines and media, the VHS technology served us well for a good 15-20 years. I still use VHS today, but only as a high quality music recording format, and watching the occasional VHS movie. We can no longer record TV to VHS anymore in the UK, unless you have a standalone set top box connected to your VCR, because all TV is transmitted digitally in the UK, and VCR's, as far as I know, were only ever equipped with analogue tuners. But good results could be had if you had a digital set top box connected via a Euro AV, or Scart 21 pin connection. This was a popular way to connect devices in Europe, for better quality picture and sound, as opposed to an RF connection, which was indeed, CRAP. The scart connection divided the picture up into its RGB components, and separated the sound into its respective channels before it reached the TV, so there was much less flickering, picture noise, and colour bleaching. And sound could be transferred in stereo to a compatible TV. It was sort of a direct connection in a way, bypassing a lot of the TV's picture and sound processing circuitry. I am not sure how these improvements were achieved in the US, if at all. But I'd be interested to know. Some may look on VHS as inferior technology compared to Bluray, and even DVD. But at the time, it opened up the Home Video phenomenon to the masses, and allowed people to record their favourite TV shows for the first time ever, giving people more flexibility with their time. So in a way, VHS and to a lesser extent, Betamax were a revelation and a LIBERATION.
If you know how to use your tracking right the quality on VHS is a pretty decent picture quality and that's coming from someone who still uses VHS today
+Carl Couture Keep in mind that RUclips's re-encoding reduced the quality and caused a lot of blockiness, especially during the New Kids on the Block Coca-Cola commercial.
+vwestlife well lets accept it VHS (even for its time ) wasnt a quality format (Beta was better in terms of video quality) and there is no reason to keep VHS other than personal reasons... its not like vinyl were the quality surely shines and if not better at least competes (depending on the quality of the parts involved) to modern hq audio formats
Bill Killernic There are movies on VHS which were never released on DVD or Blu-ray, and VHS tapes can be found very cheap (25 cents each at a thrift store near me) or even free, so it's a very cheap way to amass a movie collection.
vwestlife well its way more efficient (moneywise and quality wise) to download movie torrents @ 1080 quality (~1,5GB ) Since I can only understand paying for a movie if you want to support the studio or for being legal (by paying loyalties like you do when you subscribe in netflix or similar sites) but buying used vhs movies for a few cents from thrift stores doesn't make sense its not legal (it might be not illegal per se but it certainly is a gray area) so you don't win legitimacy compared to downloading torrents and quality, ease of use and convenience of acquisition is far more superior. (I am typing this post while watching "Streets of fire 1984" @ 720p quality which I torrented.. :P its just vastly superior even in 720p)
Bill Killernic Buying and selling used VHS tapes (or DVDs, etc.) is legal. Downloading torrents of copyrighted movies is not. I do not support illegal activity and neither should you, especially when the cost of doing it legally is so minimal. You're risking getting fined thousands of dollars and having a criminal record, just to save a few bucks -- is that really worth it?
I think Component is the best that anything older can hope for with older CRT's, it isn't bad at all once everything is new and cleaned, but its no HD.
Yes, there are some that do, actually my best friend's family have an LG DVD recorder/VCR that has HDMI sockets on it. I don't know if this means you can play VHS tapes via the HDMI output or not.
Component is capable of HD, albeit analog, but it still doesn't help with the VHS quality problem. :P Honestly any other output from VCRs is pointless. The analog signal recorded on the VHS tape is composite video anyway.
I am 14 and I *love* VHSs. Although their quality isn't the best, they still are a novelty to be sure. They look great on a CRT TV (my setup) and I love to look at the VHS itself. The thing with most analog quality like VHSs, cassettes, vinyl, etc. are their tactile and nostalgic quality which I adore. For my setup, it is humble (stereo VCR in composite on a CRT television), but I feel they are an experience to be sure. I think that the "reason" why VHSs look "bad" is due to people recording TV shows through mono input and on the LP setting (long play) which is known to reduce the quality of the recording.
Another thing that causes poor quality is VHS's vertical resolution 240 lines 🤪 But hey, back in the day I still preferred a good VHS to a typical DVD with its compression artifacts
That was awesome! I’ve actually been getting into VHS quite a bit recently, mainly because I’ve been recording gameplay onto blank ones. I recorded Mario Kart: Double Dash and Super Smash Bros Melee gameplay onto a couple of tapes, and upon playing them back, they looked really good. By no means were they 4K quality, but the only big difference between the playback and the actual games was that the playback had slightly less vibrant colours. One thing that I find remarkable about VHS is that they have great sound quality, when played back on a stereo VCR. I actually kinda want to see the format make a comeback like vinyl, because VHS has its own distinct picture quality, but the chances of that happening are slim. Great video, by the way.
VHS is still my preferred format - mainly because it is an analog format. You can pick up VHS tapes for less than a dollar usually and some stores still sell VHS blanks (atleast in my area, they do). 6 head Super VHS VCRs were the best IMHO since they were built for both LP and EP modes. 6 - 8 hours out of a VHS tape is not too bad IMHO. Ofcourse the video quality will degrade more quickly at those slower speeds, but still 8 hours of video is quite a bit to store on 1 VHS tape. Yes, I know we have digital video recorders that can record more than 8 hours of video at higher resolution, but my preference is still VHS.
A high quality CRT should really provide the best experience for VHS due to the dynamic resolution, no de-interlacing or scaling required... provided you have a good deck and a good comb filter to filter out the dot-crawl. VHS itself was a composite format though so you're never going to be able to achieve the full quality of the display because the color bandwidth was sub-sampled a lot lower than even composite's specification. That's the reason behind the amount of color-bleed on VHS - you actually only get about 20 vertical lines of color information for the entire image (the rest is monochrome signal)
HD VHS (named D-VHS) was just a footnote in home video tape history, and was only a -minor- success in Japan. Because of its rarity, you'd spend quite a lot more money trying to get a working D-VHS VCR and recorded tapes to watch in it than it is to just buy a Blu-Ray and some discs. It's worth only from a collector's viewpoint.
+Brandon MacEachern Its ATSC 1080i MPEG-2 video, it should look as good! I landed up with a giant box of prerecorded DVHS tapes with mostly movies, many of which didn't even see a BluRay release until recently.
Do you think D-VHS machines are backwards compatible with the Old VHS format? I bet it plays the Older VHS tapes in BETTER QUALITY than the analog machines. Just like DCC Machines can play the Older Compact Cassettes in Better Quality.
Keeping in mind RUclips's compression and so on, this looks and sounds very nice to me. I still have an old 90's Toshiba CRT set, with Nicam sound. Still have my old Panasonic SVHS video too, and they work really nicely together.A pair of ancient 2 - way speakers from a long - gone Fidelity record player provide the sound. Oh and an equally old Toshiba DVD player, in all the years I've had it, the only thing to go wrong was when the lense needed cleaning. At first I had a stereo analogue "Ferguson" VCR that was a JVC clone, and a matching CRT TV, when you pressed freeze frame it did exactly that, no noise bars or blurring. The picture head drum had four heads. If a prerecorded tape was stereo, out came the two - channel sound. Built like a tank with a professional transport so I am told by an old serviceman. Cheapo mono units could be pretty dire mind LOL...
Jurassic Park on VHS. That brings back memories. I watched it on a 27" TV in mono. A buddy of mine had it on laser disc and got to watch it on a swank projection TV with surround sound. Those T-rex stomps made everything in his room shake. "Holy hell! It's like watching it at the theater man!" :P
By the late 1990’s some companies like Disney, Touchstone and Hollywood Pictures at the time when they were home video distributors released a series of movies in widescreen as part of the “Widescreen Edition” series. All of these films are presented entirely in widescreen, and it might be compatible for HD TV’s since it wasn’t introduced later on. That didn’t last long until DVD’s were introduced. All of the VHS tapes from 1977 through 2006 or 2007 are in standard definition 4:3 aspect ratio, a perfect fit for its time.
But if you were to put almost every movie from 4:3 to 16:9 you would loose the top and bottom of the screen. Examples of this are Most Universal movies, Looney Tunes Back in Action, Early DreamWorks films, and some Disney/Pixar films.
I know this videos old. But something that doesn't get mentioned quite so often is a number of VHS movies also supported an early form of Dolby Surround which later became Pro Logic.
I still own a lot of VHS tapes I've collected between I was young up to now, largely Thomas and Friends VHS tapes as well as various movies. To be honest there's always been a sort of charm to the softer video and more "analog" feel of VHS tapes that just isn't really present in DVDs, Blu-Rays or streaming services
I don't think Caldor ever made it this far out. While VHS is no longer in the spotlight technology wise, I wouldn't quite call it dead. New blank VHS tapes are still quite readily available around here, even at Wal-Mart. (Other tape formats, including newer ones like MiniDV and Video/Hi/Digital8 have disappeared.) All the thrift stores around here still carry dozens of movies, VHS Hi-FI is still a great way to record many hours of audio at CD quality (on a good machine in proper working order) and even though it's an analog standard definition recording, I still find time shifting or "record this, right now" to be much more convenient on a VHS machine. The last two movies I watched (Rain Man and one of the Star Trek series) were on VHS, played from a Toshiba combination DVD/VHS machine (with Hi-Fi audio capability) into a Panasonic 42" Plasma TV. I've got to give that TV credit -- its upscaler did an outstanding job with only a composite input. Even the closed captions came through, though whether that's a testament to the TV's ability to decode a slightly scrambled signal or the VCR doing an above average job is hard to say. While neither here nor there, I picked that VCR/DVD combo up off the curb. It worked when found. Ten years and dozens of films later, it still works nicely.
I've watched VHS tapes laterally my entire life, and I will keep on doing such! There are some gems that have not had a DVD release, so it's best to hold on to them while you can!
I remember ads for DVDs on VHS tapes. I was never blown away by the quality of DVDs. The main reasons we got one was for extra features, much improved sound, no need to rewind tapes, and TV seasons were a lot less bulky. Example, I remember recording Simpsons episodes on VHS and to fit as many as possible I would record at SLP and use a 6-8hr tape. After a while my stack of tapes was quite high but when the Simpsons DVD box sets started to roll out you would get so much more content on much less shelf space.
I love those DVD promos on VHS tapes. They were so OTT! DVD was the first time I ever had entire seasons of shows I loved, versus commercial tapes with 2-4 episodes, or home recordings with a smattering of episodes in no particular order (eg my Simpsons homemade tape had 8-10 episodes from the first two or three seasons recorded from BBC2).
Makes sense for hard to find stuff, or if you find tapes in the trash that might contain old commercials /tv programs. Obviously not for "everyday use".
I recently dusted off my old GE VHS camcorder and got it working again after replacing some worn drive belts. I bought it new in 1994 and thanks to all the time I've spent watching your videos I was inspired to see if I could capture some of the old magic that made this video camera - the first I ever owned - so much fun to use. I found at the time that the quality of VHS could be very good depending on how good the recording and playback equipment were, and upon revisiting some old videos I discovered that they do seem to be better than I gave them credit for over the years. Your work is always very much appreciated!
I'm 17 in 2 weeks, when I was like 8 or so VHS was still a massive thing over here even though DVD was taking over. I remember being at my grandmother's house, she had over 200 tapes which I still have no clue where she got them from. Everytime we'd go there we got to choose a movie to watch. They had the typical late 90's black VHS player and a mid 90's CRT (that CRT still works to this day!) It feels so strange to think back about that. We don't do that no more, we start up our smart TV and select a movie to watch on demand. Not even a DVD or a Blu-Ray, we don't even have a DVD player. At that time there was Videoland, which is yet another video rental place, which was massive. In our small town we had 2 of them. If one of them didn't have the movie you were looking for they'd call the other one to ask if they had it. I remember DVD massively overtaking VHS, and a few years after the Videoland stores vanished. One got replaced by a bakery and the other one simply vanished. The building is different and I don't even know what's inside there now. I'm only 16 at the moment, yet I feel like so much has changed and I missed out a lot. I'd love to live the world of 10 to 15 years ago again, just to experience it one more time. I was so young at that time I don't remember shit. I just know what is now, and now is smartphones and other high-performance handheld devices, online streaming over networks of speeds up to gigabytes a second, and 1080p60fps gaming with photorealistic graphics on rather small high-powered PC's with sophisticated microprocessors, everything digital and picture being displayed super slim displays with insane resolutions. I've never really witnessed the old things and right now it's too late for that. Makes me feel sad quite a bit actually.
+deWaardt I don't do streaming because of all the compression and lossy audio. I'm still not sure how the idea of lower quality is getting to be so popular with everyone, but since they were all stupid enough to dump Betamax, I can safely say that I'm not the least bit surprised. Still if you have a crt, vhs will continue to look good on that.
It's interesting how advances in film scanning and mastering in general can improve the viewing experience even on VHS. I'm certain that remastered versions of old movies recorded onto VHS will look even better than the original VHS release.
The audio is the only thing that still impresses me to this day... What I really hope for is a comeback of CRT displays, as well as the 4:3 aspect ratio (the ideal way for viewing 4:3 content). Out of all things, I miss CRT displays most. They are great for entertainment purposes, and an alternative to the analytical and pixel perfect modern LED displays. PS2 games also look better on a CRT than on a 4K LED TV, is something I've found out the hard way. Audio cassettes suck in respect to audio quality. But its sound character will be missed. In my experiences, how good a music will sound on an audio cassette depends mostly on the style of music.
I just like watching how much of an interesting guy my dad was 25 years ago, and how people acted in front of camera then, since it was recorded by a friend during 3 vacations during the 91-92 years. Very interesting, and shows that video recording was still a big deal, considering that a VHS camera was around $1,000 back then.
Video tapes are still cool, and many of the old movies are not available on DVD or Blu-ray disc! Thats why i still have a lott of video tapes, and also collect video tapes. Thanks for the information, great quality that you manage to get out of these old VHS tapes!
same. even tho im buying my favorite movies on a blu-ray format. whatever movies i will come across no matter if its a DVD,Blu-Ray, or especially VHS i just buy it. but VHS is the cheapest alternative which is the best thing about the format :)
I was skeptical going into this one, but as someone who has watched the dvd version of My Cousin Vinny at least once a year between 1998 and 2008 or so, and the laserdisc version once a year from 1995-1998 probably, your capture of the VHS version looks every bit as good as the DVD after its processing. Sound quality is a mixed story. The stereo sound you achieve is pretty good, but it doesn't quite manage the dynamic range of a well-made all-digital soundtrack on LD or DVD. Still, much better than I had remembered it.
Yes exactly! It's all a matter of having a good VCR. VHS isn't exactly an HD format, but it's still not nearly as bad as people think it is, and it's because most people in the past 10 or 15 years had cheap junky VCRs. Plus, people would use the EP/SLP recording mode which is very low quality even on a better VCR... plus they'd use the coaxial cable to hook it up, and even on a standard definition TV, the difference in quality between composite and coaxial is just like night and day.
A couple years ago all the goodwill stores in my area got sealed copies of Gone with the Wind. It was a two tape pack, not surprising considering the length of the film, and I just had to get it considering it was only a dollar. It's honestly the best version of the film I have ever seen. The film is already in 4:3 aspect ratio and it doesn't do any of the remastering that seems common on rebroadcasts on channels lile turner classic movies as well. Got 3 and gave 2 away to film buff friends and they love them too.
+fuckJuly "VHS Hi-Fi", or FM modulated audio is still really really good. The problem with VHS, even super VHS, is the very poor quantity of color information.
I still use my 2 vhs recorders to playback and record of the sources and then edit onto the HDD. I even still use audio cassettes to play and have still unopened blanks to record onto from all my sources. Though yes these are analogue, these are giving me great quality in the audio and video resolution. I'm happy that I never let these formats go. I find digital formats OK as a storage medium but it doesn't have the same heir of quality. The same general thing applies to all formats that good equipment and maintenance goes a long way.
No please! If lots of retards are willing to spend significant amounts of money on what is such a mediocre quality format, we (I mean, we, sensible, not retarded folks) will lose the only reason why it's worth getting VHS tapes: they being dirt cheap or even free (trash found).
ToyStoryNBarneyFan I don't think it will, but it's going to appeal to a niche market. I personally love watching classic 70s, 80s, and 90s blockbusters on VHS, Unedited and still working! It's doesn't really have any hidden superiority in quality, but for me it's just a awesome nostalgia trip, and it's really fun to have friends over and just watch the classics!
The sound quality is much better than I remember! However, the video quality is about the same. Don't count CRT's out! They're the only way to make interlacing look good.
I'll tell you one thing I love about VHS. I popped in a tape of Seinfeld episodes I recorded back in the 90s and within 5 seconds, I was watching the tape exactly where I left off 15 years ago. Can't do that with modern videos.
Picture looks very good maybe even the quality of a cheaply encoded DVD - especially for that cheaper VCR. Though you unfortunately can't encode 7.1 audio into a VHS!
D-THEATER VHS TAPES was a digital version of standard VHS instead of having the film stored as pictures on the tape it was stored as 1s and 0s the length of tape was used as data storage. The machines output 1080i & some models came with HDMI, these could basically output 5.1 DOLBY DIGITAL / 7.1 but not lossless audio
Jesus, I remember renting these so much.... I'll tell you one thing that's worth noting is at the time 4:3 was standardized at home and a number of movies had been re-framed in terms of how they fit the format. If you're a film enthusiast, it's worth taking heed over the different conversions and looking at the comparisons to formats like DVD and Blu-ray. In fact some films being filmed in "Open-Matte" are known to take advantage of this, including some such as Secret of Nimh and Spies Like Us. In fact look at some of the movies Stanly Kubrick did after he threw a fit over 2001 was broadcast in pan-and-scan.
Movie producers originally introduced widescreen in the 1950s as a way to differentiate movie theaters from TV because they feared that if people could watch movies on TV, they would never go to theaters again. So they came up with widescreen, stereo sound, 3D, "smellovision" and other gimmicks to keep people coming to the theaters.
vwestlife It's funny now that In the HD era, some were trying to do a reverse by getting movie goers to see Interstellar and Hateful Eight in Imax, which uses that 15-perf 70mm format. Everything's in widescreen digital now, which is why I profoundly reference the need to go and search for the best aspect ratios possible because of the way current releases on DVD/Blu-ray are getting cropped, while often programs on cable will still get the full 16:9 treatment. VHS/Betamax and some other format I can't remember tend to stand in their own ground in regards to this and sometimes you'll be getting lots more then what the intended cinematic experience is providing you.
fairly recent playback machine, dnr via capture device, youtube compression on top of everything, how is it supposed to look? but a decent pal off-air recording will beat all 480p (and below) yt videos....heh...because it has 576 scanlines...and destination format will not be yt h264 (which will destroy a lot of detail along) but mpeg2 at 5mbit, or mjpeg at 10mbit/s. dnr? yeah, some, but motion compensated, not crude algorithm from camcorder... dedicated pc capture card means you don't need tbc, because purposes/ways of working of those two overlap.
Yup, that was as bad as I remember. Very nostalgic format, though. Brings back memories of going to Movie Gallery and renting Jurassic Park for the 50th time.
Well, time to convert all of my movies and home movies into digital files and add them to my collection of movies for a media center PC. I'm planning to get an old laptop, clone the current SSD to a bigger one, copy the converted digitized movies onto the larger SSD, and turn the laptop into a useful portable DVD/Media Center with the help of Ubuntu Server with KODI. Of course, the portable DVD player will have Internet access just only at home to watch Netflix.
Get a BD-R XL drive and a BT878 video capture card. It can record macrovision encoded tapes losslessly in HuffYuv format and it takes up 35 gigabytes per hour, but once digitized in the format it can provide any future lossy format without having to go back to the original tape. Learn how to use a file splitter. SuperBowl 12 took up 4 25GB BD-R discs.
One thing to remember is that not all Fullscreen releases (What an odd name for 4:3 content, shouldn't 16:9 be that as well when the image has no black bars?!) are Pan & Scan, some are open matte - so you see more than intended instead of less than intended. Dunno aboot US but it seems like the last few years of VHS releases we in Europe got mostly letterboxed releases. Though there's been some letterboxed tapes way back in the 1980's as well.
I grew up with VHS and never stopped using them to this date. Since my old CRT TV was absurdly power hungry I switched to an old LCD TV recently which I bought for 10euros at a thrift store. Its a Sharp Aquos 4:3 SDTV LCD, still Made in Japan, with superb picture quality. Its perfect for VHS and old school gaming (no upscaling, no input lag). VHS looks amazing on it.
Overall VHS is better than Video CDs but Laserdisc is even better than both of them! I use laserdiscs mostly for karaoke coz the instrumental audio is CD digital stereo and vocal is stereo too which sounds best if it was encoded with CX sound. VHS and VCD on the other hand is mono karaoke as it only have both channel audio.
@@Mariofans-gn1lu I’m not blind but you don’t have to be rude. In my honest opinion I have no interests in vhs but I do agree with you that dvd is better. Wait till you see a VCD then you know VHS is better than the VCD.
@UCIGObsh9YLovekxiSssYHbA yeah for you. But for old films don’t be disappointed when you get the edited versions of films but honestly I’m staying with laserdiscs.
Great video! Most "fullscreen" movies on VHS (and then on DVD) had the openings in their original widescreen format to allow for the opening credits, which often used the full 16x9 aspect ratio and would be difficult if not impossible to include without cutting off names and titles.
I like the graininess of VHS, it's nostalgic at this point. I have a select few of my favorite movies on Blu-Ray, everything else is VHS. Of course I only own one HD tv and about 5 CRT's that I use so VHS is always more convient for me than hooking up a bluray player to a CRT.
VHS can get pretty murky because the quality of playback can vary greatly between machines. I've never had a Sony VCR but from what I remember they jacked up the 'sharpness' like crazy (I say that in quotes because increasing the sharpness adds a bunch of video noise) for a perceived sharper picture via RF on channel 3 or 4. My 4-Head Hi-Fi Sharp VCR plays back tapes with a better contrast range and with a sharper-while-noise-free image than my JVC S-VHS with all the bells and whistles like a TBC with built-in DNR. I guess the JVC machines were popular with the restoration crowd because they played well with other hardware like proc amps, etc.
One thing I do remember is that I had no 'coasters' with VHS and very few of them got screwed up in the tape mechanism, whereas a large number of my DVD discs that I made myself, went faulty or ended up as coasters right after burning. I use a good quality Pioneer DVD writer and always sought the best blank media, with the best dyes that I could, and yet they still ended up unreadable. However re-writeable blank media has been very reliable. I no longer trust DVD for backups or video, and now just have NAS devices with storage drives, my current one being a Synology DS415+ with 12TB in caddies inside the NAS. I then save to that and stream it around the house.
You made this video on the back of Techmoan's cassette-praising video, but he also made one about VHS, more specifically how a specific VHS format was the (by and large) only storage medium on which HD movies were available before HD-DVD and Blu-Ray were invented. It was called D-Theater, which was a variant of Digital VHS.
gamerdude0 The picture recorded on the tape is composite video. That's how vhs record video on the tape. So you'll never have better than composite even if you put it through rgb ou s-video.
I disagree. The picture recorded on the tape is an analog color video signal which contains luminance, brightness (Y) and chrominance (C) of an analog television image. When combined into one channel, it is called composite video. Analog video may be carried in separate channels, as in two channel S-Video (YC) and multi-channel component video formats.
gamerdude0 Yes, but you need a s-vhs (hence the name) to have it. Standard vhs don't have high enough bandwith to have any difference compare to composite or s-video.
VHS is actually a remarkable leap in technology don't deride it. As far as prerecorded films, VHS came a long way from the reel to reel and CEDs an was technologically superior.
With 8 hour tapes, you can create AWESOME mixtapes! I use the AG-1960 for most of my recordings, and I have to say, the audio quality sounds fantastic!
It will hold two 1800 foot reel-to-reels with room and sound quality to spare. Now instead of capturing the feeling of a whole era, you can capture TWO eras on a single tape. The Dungeons and Dragons reel tape was 3 hours and 12 inches at 3-3/4 inches per second both directions.
Judging VHS tapes on their picture/audio quality, as they exist now in 2017, is silly. The tapes are all old, rotting relics at this point. Growing up in the 80s/early 90s, watching VHS tapes on a CRT TV, they looked and sounded fine. That's because the image was being displayed in something much closer to it's native resolution. Try an experiment - watch a DVD using composite cables on a CRT TV - looks fine, doesn't it? Then watch it on an HD or 4K (if it even has composite jacks) TV. Guess what - that exact same DVD will look like shit! That is because the image is being stretched like crazy, and while up-scaling can help somewhat (if using HDMI), it can't work miracles. An understanding of how magnetic tapes function, and of the resolution that different forms of physical media output at is required here.
Quite right, but you completely misunderstood my point. I am not talking about stretching a fullscreen movie into a widescreen image. I am talking about the natural resolutions of different types of TVs and movie formats. In North America, VHS tapes were capable of (AT BEST) 240i, which translates to 320x240. DVDs were 480i, meaning 640x480 for fullscreen and 720x480 for widescreen. Most CRT TVs were 480i, and therefore display a DVD perfectly at its natural resolution. Refer to the example I gave in my original post. I stated that a DVD being played with composite cables on a CRT TV would look better than the same DVD being played on an HDTV with the same setup. That is because 1080p HDTVs have a resolution of 1920x1080. Therefore, the picture the DVD player is outputting is being stretched to fit that resolution, resulting in a blurry image. The entire point of my last post is this - people who were watching VHS tapes and DVDs on CRT TVs were not getting nearly as poor of picture quality as people now seem to think. A DVD played on a CRT TV will look extremely crisp and sharp. VHS tapes looked perfectly acceptable too, especially when they were new. Any tape surviving now has likely been played a million times (remember, magnetic tapes degrade with every use) and has probably begun to literally disintegrate. I will reiterate my original statement - judging VHS tapes in 2017 is silly.
You are confusing analog lines of resolution (a.k.a. TV Lines) with digital lines of resolution. Analog lines refer to vertical lines going across the screen, while digital lines of resolution refers to the number of horizontal scan lines going up and down the screen. Thus the two numbers are not directly comparable. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_lines Standard VHS is good for about 250 TV Lines but it's a 525-line NTSC video signal just the same as from a LaserDisc or DVD player. Of those 525 lines, 480 are for the video content while the rest are for blanking and synchronization, thus when converted to digital, it becomes 480i. VHS, Betamax, LaserDisc, and any other composite video source all end up as the same exact pixel resolution when converted to digital (480i). And as I explained in the video, if you upscale it to HD on a computer the quality can be much better than on a TV, because a TV has to do the upscaling in real-time while a computer can take as long as it wants to process the video, so it doesn't have to sacrifice quality in order to speed up the upscaling.
I understand the difference. I am aware that an analogue 240i signal doesn't directly translate to a digital resolution of 320x240, but it is a rough approximation and for the sake of this conversation, is more than adequate. Once you get into digital video (DVD/Bluray and HDTVs), it does directly translate. I am not interested in turning this conversation into a treatise on video resolutions. Once again, I feel you have missed my point and are getting hung up on irrelevant technical details.
Again you are mixing up terminologies. There is no such thing as 240i. Some video games used 240p, but 240i does not exist. VHS is 480i just like Betamax and LaserDisc. VHS is good for about 240 to 250 TV Lines, but again, that is analog resolution which is not directly comparable to digital resolution. You can read all about it here: www.digitalfaq.com/forum/myths/5098-myth-comparisons-analog.html
i do not mind vhs image and audio quality as i grew up with video cds. its just too much hassle and lots can go wrong with vhs and vcr... i honestly prefer video cds, as with roughly similar quality, you got much less hassle, more stable output (no need of those tracking nonsense) and it wont degrade 😢 thats just my opinion
caldor, value city, and many other big names like sterns as well as the wiz were gone many years ago. walmart and giants like amazon not only put these other large retailers out of business, but totally crushed small business which is sad because by doing so it brought wages down for everyone. no longer do you have the mom and pop family run pharmacy or hardware store. sure some still exist, but they cant compete with the large scale that large companies like costco can buy items in bulk for less. also of course the influx of cheap chinese products destroyed many us manufacturers as well. I try to buy from small businesses, but my purchases are just a drop in the bucket and its really sad to see our nation run by large corporations. sure you can buy cheap products for less, but no one ever thinks of the long term domino effect. lower wages, less jobs, and a dependence on cheap crappy goods from overseas.
Those of you saying this is as bad as you remember....keep in mind that the average person had a barely mid range crt and vcr with the cheapest RCA cable you could find. We did get anywhere close to this
I don't miss high speed rewind. My Technics cassette deck from 1997 has it and, no surprise, it operates exactly the way your Panasonic VCR's high speed rewind does.
Dad used to rent a lot of movies on VHS when my sister and I stayed with him, then my mother bought a VCR in 1998 when I was 15, and again, we'd rent quite a few movies on VHS tapes. Now, I've heard other people talk about DTMF tones on VHS tape, but I don't remember hearing any DTMF tones on any VHS prerecorded tapes that I've personally watched. I do remember on a couple of tapes there'd be a slight high pitched buzz at the start of the tapes, but not the DTMF tones I heard during this video. Do you hear those tones on every single one of your prerecorded VHS tapes, or just some of them? Are you saying that there were some DVD/VCR machines that didn't play video tapes in Hi-Fi Stereo? Are you saying some of those models only had mono VCRs in them?
Of all the tapes I showed clips from, the first one is the only one with the DTMF tones at the beginning. And yes, there were some DVD/VHS combo units in which the VCR was only mono.
OK. I'd say it's possible that VHS tapes released in the PAL format may have also had such DTMF tones, but I've just not experienced them. If I have, I don't remember them.
I had a JVC S-VHS-C camcorder and same brand S-VHS VCR purchased at the same time. Using standard "premium high grade" tapes gave extremely clear, stable results. In fact, the color space was actually a bit truer than DV. I also remember watching a new release from Blockbuster on a top-of-the-line Sony VCR around 2002. Even without artificial sharpening it looked near DVD quality. We're talking about VCR's costing around $200. The nice thing about digital is even the cheesiest blu-ray player will look fantastic over HDMI.
bought a S VHS back in '94.. the most expensive philips, hooked up to one of the first 100 Hz Philps Matchlines, audio to my marantz 2238. I KNOW how good it can be and sound.. :)
Even a top-of-the-line VHS player is no match for a cheap dvd player in terms of picture quality. I plugged in my 6 head Panasonic VCR from 1999 to my 46 inch LED display and played an original movie. Barely passable. The bigger the screen the more obvious are the drawbacks and flaws. Today one wonders how people endured watching VHS movies in the 80's and 90's.
Fair enough. I have kept my old CRT tv and it looks good enough - yes, better than I recall - even with films I recorded off the tv in my childhood. I always purchased the high quality tapes and it was a wise investment. Not too many 10 year olds read hi-fi and video magazines but I did.
Cool memories with VHS. DVD and Blu-Ray are better formats. This was a fun video and I am glad you did. I hope you had fun taking the time to make it. I'm sure the editing and what-not was a pain in the ass to do; this one must have taken a few days to be ready for an upload. The THX one was great, I think there was an old Simpson's episode were a guy did that in a theater and his head exploded. That was great. Thanks again for the memories, man.
VHS has always been a bit blurry and the colours slightly "flat", but - and there is a big but - : So was TV back in the 1980s and 90s. I remember watching a lot of VHS movies in the 1990s and when the movie was over I expected the anouncer to say something about the next programme but it just went to black, and then I remembered that I was watching a VHS so I had to start rewinding now. That to me is sort of a proof that VHS was not inferior to ordinary TV - a least not very much. But then came HD TV and DVDs and suddenly VHS seemed flawed and obsolete.
I absolutely love that you made all the right decisions for processing 480i video. Anybody who wants to capture analog video material should use this video as the standard to aspire to.
Deinterlaced to 480p 60fps - the best choice when dealing with true 60i video or mixed 60i video & telecined film.
Upscaled to 720p so that youtube would actually retain the 60fps rather than decimating it to 30fps.
Kept a proper 4:3 resolution rather than 16:9 with black bars on the side, so that it displays properly on 4:3 screens such as iPads and some Samsung tablets.
This video does a really good job of representing the quality we would perceive when viewing a VHS tape on a CRT. VHS is far lower quality compared to the formats we have today, but it isn't the absolute garbage quality you see on most captures uploaded to youtube.
it's deeply saddening how many conversions don't follow these obvious rules
Yes!!
Nice video! I'm in my late 30s and I grew up with VHS, and I'm so sick of people saying that the quality was "crap". It's nonsense.
+David Halligan but it was crap
Ironleg The only thing that is crap is your pathetic english.
I've seen VHS with very good quality depending on the quality of the player and the tape, you are fucking delusional if you think no VHS tape looks good so it is nonsense to say all vhs looks bad.
The guy has every right to disagree with you, get your high horses off.
@@kungbombo20 one thing that vhs has that still holds up is hifi audio
hifi audio is SO good!
It was only crap if you bought a dirt cheap 2head mono machine, and never cleaned the tape transport.
But the high end HiFi machines with 6 heads could give great results, especially with tapes that hadn't been abused.
Yeah, there is something to be said for the robust qualities of today's "solid state" formats, but VHS, Vinyl, and even standard music cassettes were far more engaging. You just had to take a little more care of your machines, and the media you played on them. Something that many people misunderstood at the time, hence why the likes of VHS got such bad press. But for some of us who took care of our machines and media, the VHS technology served us well for a good 15-20 years. I still use VHS today, but only as a high quality music recording format, and watching the occasional VHS movie.
We can no longer record TV to VHS anymore in the UK, unless you have a standalone set top box connected to your VCR, because all TV is transmitted digitally in the UK, and VCR's, as far as I know, were only ever equipped with analogue tuners. But good results could be had if you had a digital set top box connected via a Euro AV, or Scart 21 pin connection. This was a popular way to connect devices in Europe, for better quality picture and sound, as opposed to an RF connection, which was indeed, CRAP. The scart connection divided the picture up into its RGB components, and separated the sound into its respective channels before it reached the TV, so there was much less flickering, picture noise, and colour bleaching. And sound could be transferred in stereo to a compatible TV. It was sort of a direct connection in a way, bypassing a lot of the TV's picture and sound processing circuitry.
I am not sure how these improvements were achieved in the US, if at all. But I'd be interested to know.
Some may look on VHS as inferior technology compared to Bluray, and even DVD. But at the time, it opened up the Home Video phenomenon to the masses, and allowed people to record their favourite TV shows for the first time ever, giving people more flexibility with their time.
So in a way, VHS and to a lesser extent, Betamax were a revelation and a LIBERATION.
If you know how to use your tracking right the quality on VHS is a pretty decent picture quality and that's coming from someone who still uses VHS today
Idk why.
I love the soft image of VHS.
It doesn't hurt my eyes : )!
+Carl Couture Keep in mind that RUclips's re-encoding reduced the quality and caused a lot of blockiness, especially during the New Kids on the Block Coca-Cola commercial.
+vwestlife well lets accept it VHS (even for its time ) wasnt a quality format (Beta was better in terms of video quality) and there is no reason to keep VHS other than personal reasons... its not like vinyl were the quality surely shines and if not better at least competes (depending on the quality of the parts involved) to modern hq audio formats
Bill Killernic There are movies on VHS which were never released on DVD or Blu-ray, and VHS tapes can be found very cheap (25 cents each at a thrift store near me) or even free, so it's a very cheap way to amass a movie collection.
vwestlife well its way more efficient (moneywise and quality wise) to download movie torrents @ 1080 quality (~1,5GB )
Since I can only understand paying for a movie if you want to support the studio or for being legal (by paying loyalties like you do when you subscribe in netflix or similar sites)
but buying used vhs movies for a few cents from thrift stores doesn't make sense its not legal (it might be not illegal per se but it certainly is a gray area) so you don't win legitimacy compared to downloading torrents
and quality, ease of use and convenience of acquisition is far more superior.
(I am typing this post while watching "Streets of fire 1984" @ 720p quality which I torrented.. :P its just vastly superior even in 720p)
Bill Killernic Buying and selling used VHS tapes (or DVDs, etc.) is legal. Downloading torrents of copyrighted movies is not. I do not support illegal activity and neither should you, especially when the cost of doing it legally is so minimal. You're risking getting fined thousands of dollars and having a criminal record, just to save a few bucks -- is that really worth it?
+vwestlife well said it can cause small production to go out of business too. It's the same with pirated games and software!
I used VHS hi fi. I like to record music on the tapes. The sound quality is superb. It's a shame they stoped puting adjustable audio meters on them.
I collect VHS tapes and I watch them pretty much every day.
They watch you too! 🤪
I think Component is the best that anything older can hope for with older CRT's, it isn't bad at all once everything is new and cleaned, but its no HD.
my vhs/dvd deck has hdmi
Yes, there are some that do, actually my best friend's family have an LG DVD recorder/VCR that has HDMI sockets on it. I don't know if this means you can play VHS tapes via the HDMI output or not.
Component is capable of HD, albeit analog, but it still doesn't help with the VHS quality problem. :P
Honestly any other output from VCRs is pointless. The analog signal recorded on the VHS tape is composite video anyway.
fancy seeing you here
ProtoMario what about RGB?
I am 14 and I *love* VHSs. Although their quality isn't the best, they still are a novelty to be sure. They look great on a CRT TV (my setup) and I love to look at the VHS itself. The thing with most analog quality like VHSs, cassettes, vinyl, etc. are their tactile and nostalgic quality which I adore. For my setup, it is humble (stereo VCR in composite on a CRT television), but I feel they are an experience to be sure.
I think that the "reason" why VHSs look "bad" is due to people recording TV shows through mono input and on the LP setting (long play) which is known to reduce the quality of the recording.
@SanctusPaulus-ic5glmost early DVDs where completely and utterly visually indistinguishable from VHS
There was no improvement whatsoever
Another thing that causes poor quality is VHS's vertical resolution 240 lines 🤪
But hey, back in the day I still preferred a good VHS to a typical DVD with its compression artifacts
That was awesome! I’ve actually been getting into VHS quite a bit recently, mainly because I’ve been recording gameplay onto blank ones. I recorded Mario Kart: Double Dash and Super Smash Bros Melee gameplay onto a couple of tapes, and upon playing them back, they looked really good. By no means were they 4K quality, but the only big difference between the playback and the actual games was that the playback had slightly less vibrant colours. One thing that I find remarkable about VHS is that they have great sound quality, when played back on a stereo VCR. I actually kinda want to see the format make a comeback like vinyl, because VHS has its own distinct picture quality, but the chances of that happening are slim. Great video, by the way.
Oh god that THX intro used to scare the crap out of me.
Thanks for making this. It’s just like I remember!
VHS is still my preferred format - mainly because it is an analog format. You can pick up VHS tapes for less than a dollar usually and some stores still sell VHS blanks (atleast in my area, they do).
6 head Super VHS VCRs were the best IMHO since they were built for both LP and EP modes. 6 - 8 hours out of a VHS tape is not too bad IMHO. Ofcourse the video quality will degrade more quickly at those slower speeds, but still 8 hours of video is quite a bit to store on 1 VHS tape.
Yes, I know we have digital video recorders that can record more than 8 hours of video at higher resolution, but my preference is still VHS.
Ahh, when “Star Wars” was called “Star Wars” and not “A New Hope”. I miss those days.
I try to bring back those days and no one knows what I am talking about.
The special edition is always a bunch of digital low-budget enhancements that nobody asked for.
I hope vhs make a comeback
japan made them up until 2016.
A high quality CRT should really provide the best experience for VHS due to the dynamic resolution, no de-interlacing or scaling required... provided you have a good deck and a good comb filter to filter out the dot-crawl.
VHS itself was a composite format though so you're never going to be able to achieve the full quality of the display because the color bandwidth was sub-sampled a lot lower than even composite's specification. That's the reason behind the amount of color-bleed on VHS - you actually only get about 20 vertical lines of color information for the entire image (the rest is monochrome signal)
+HaggisNoodles Very well said
A good SD CRT is definitly the way to go with VHS.
They had HD VHS and it was better than HD DVD it was the best quality.
HaggisNoodles i be watching VHS tapes every day Right After work
HD VHS (named D-VHS) was just a footnote in home video tape history, and was only a -minor- success in Japan. Because of its rarity, you'd spend quite a lot more money trying to get a working D-VHS VCR and recorded tapes to watch in it than it is to just buy a Blu-Ray and some discs. It's worth only from a collector's viewpoint.
I want to see D-VHS come back. I still have my D-VHS recorder, and quite a few pre-recorded tapes. I swear it looked as good as Blu-ray.
+Brandon MacEachern Its ATSC 1080i MPEG-2 video, it should look as good! I landed up with a giant box of prerecorded DVHS tapes with mostly movies, many of which didn't even see a BluRay release until recently.
It didn't trust
Do you think D-VHS machines are backwards compatible with the Old VHS format? I bet it plays the Older VHS tapes in BETTER QUALITY than the analog machines. Just like DCC Machines can play the Older Compact Cassettes in Better Quality.
Keeping in mind RUclips's compression and so on, this looks and sounds very nice to me. I still have an old 90's Toshiba CRT set, with Nicam sound. Still have my old Panasonic SVHS video too, and they work really nicely together.A pair of ancient 2 - way speakers from a long - gone Fidelity record player provide the sound. Oh and an equally old Toshiba DVD player, in all the years I've had it, the only thing to go wrong was when the lense needed cleaning.
At first I had a stereo analogue "Ferguson" VCR that was a JVC clone, and a matching CRT TV, when you pressed freeze frame it did exactly that, no noise bars or blurring. The picture head drum had four heads. If a prerecorded tape was stereo, out came the two - channel sound. Built like a tank with a professional transport so I am told by an old serviceman. Cheapo mono units could be pretty dire mind LOL...
Jurassic Park on VHS. That brings back memories. I watched it on a 27" TV in mono. A buddy of mine had it on laser disc and got to watch it on a swank projection TV with surround sound. Those T-rex stomps made everything in his room shake. "Holy hell! It's like watching it at the theater man!" :P
I used to hate widescreen, until I realized just how much you lose with the 4:3 aspect ratio.
By the late 1990’s some companies like Disney, Touchstone and Hollywood Pictures at the time when they were home video distributors released a series of movies in widescreen as part of the “Widescreen Edition” series. All of these films are presented entirely in widescreen, and it might be compatible for HD TV’s since it wasn’t introduced later on. That didn’t last long until DVD’s were introduced. All of the VHS tapes from 1977 through 2006 or 2007 are in standard definition 4:3 aspect ratio, a perfect fit for its time.
But if you were to put almost every movie from 4:3 to 16:9 you would loose the top and bottom of the screen. Examples of this are Most Universal movies, Looney Tunes Back in Action, Early DreamWorks films, and some Disney/Pixar films.
Movies are better in widescreen, while tv is better in 4:3
I know this videos old. But something that doesn't get mentioned quite so often is a number of VHS movies also supported an early form of Dolby Surround which later became Pro Logic.
Man, I remember popping in a tape and just sitting back watching bttf as a little kid. A trip down memory lane.
I still own a lot of VHS tapes I've collected between I was young up to now, largely Thomas and Friends VHS tapes as well as various movies. To be honest there's always been a sort of charm to the softer video and more "analog" feel of VHS tapes that just isn't really present in DVDs, Blu-Rays or streaming services
Thomas and Friends...........bland canadian crap with an aging Beatle droning on in the background.
VHS Tapes are amazing. I collect them.
there cheap as frick that's the only reason I like them XD
Made me so nostalgic still watch vhs tapes to this day and will do for many years. If you grew up with it you will always appreciate it
I don't think Caldor ever made it this far out.
While VHS is no longer in the spotlight technology wise, I wouldn't quite call it dead. New blank VHS tapes are still quite readily available around here, even at Wal-Mart. (Other tape formats, including newer ones like MiniDV and Video/Hi/Digital8 have disappeared.) All the thrift stores around here still carry dozens of movies, VHS Hi-FI is still a great way to record many hours of audio at CD quality (on a good machine in proper working order) and even though it's an analog standard definition recording, I still find time shifting or "record this, right now" to be much more convenient on a VHS machine.
The last two movies I watched (Rain Man and one of the Star Trek series) were on VHS, played from a Toshiba combination DVD/VHS machine (with Hi-Fi audio capability) into a Panasonic 42" Plasma TV. I've got to give that TV credit -- its upscaler did an outstanding job with only a composite input. Even the closed captions came through, though whether that's a testament to the TV's ability to decode a slightly scrambled signal or the VCR doing an above average job is hard to say.
While neither here nor there, I picked that VCR/DVD combo up off the curb. It worked when found. Ten years and dozens of films later, it still works nicely.
+uxwbill Wal-mart and Walgreens here still sell VHS and cassettes as well. Walgreens here has some Hi8 and Digital8 tapes.
I recently bought a 6 pack of miniDV tapes from Sears for $5.97
Oh god... The THX...
I've watched VHS tapes laterally my entire life, and I will keep on doing such! There are some gems that have not had a DVD release, so it's best to hold on to them while you can!
In my phone looks very nice. As soon it was switched to the big TV via Chromecast I started to cry.
I remember ads for DVDs on VHS tapes. I was never blown away by the quality of DVDs. The main reasons we got one was for extra features, much improved sound, no need to rewind tapes, and TV seasons were a lot less bulky. Example, I remember recording Simpsons episodes on VHS and to fit as many as possible I would record at SLP and use a 6-8hr tape. After a while my stack of tapes was quite high but when the Simpsons DVD box sets started to roll out you would get so much more content on much less shelf space.
I love those DVD promos on VHS tapes. They were so OTT!
DVD was the first time I ever had entire seasons of shows I loved, versus commercial tapes with 2-4 episodes, or home recordings with a smattering of episodes in no particular order (eg my Simpsons homemade tape had 8-10 episodes from the first two or three seasons recorded from BBC2).
I always used VHS, and i still do.
VHS looks bad. Adapt now. Then again, I still use DVDs.
They will never understand how cheap our movies are. No paying for hulu dvr. Great format
Makes sense for hard to find stuff, or if you find tapes in the trash that might contain old commercials /tv programs. Obviously not for "everyday use".
Shiiiit I do too.
@@elijahfordsidioticvarietys8770 Just because it looks bad doesn't mean you have to upgrade.
I recently dusted off my old GE VHS camcorder and got it working again after replacing some worn drive belts. I bought it new in 1994 and thanks to all the time I've spent watching your videos I was inspired to see if I could capture some of the old magic that made this video camera - the first I ever owned - so much fun to use. I found at the time that the quality of VHS could be very good depending on how good the recording and playback equipment were, and upon revisiting some old videos I discovered that they do seem to be better than I gave them credit for over the years. Your work is always very much appreciated!
I'm 17 in 2 weeks, when I was like 8 or so VHS was still a massive thing over here even though DVD was taking over.
I remember being at my grandmother's house, she had over 200 tapes which I still have no clue where she got them from. Everytime we'd go there we got to choose a movie to watch. They had the typical late 90's black VHS player and a mid 90's CRT (that CRT still works to this day!)
It feels so strange to think back about that. We don't do that no more, we start up our smart TV and select a movie to watch on demand. Not even a DVD or a Blu-Ray, we don't even have a DVD player.
At that time there was Videoland, which is yet another video rental place, which was massive. In our small town we had 2 of them. If one of them didn't have the movie you were looking for they'd call the other one to ask if they had it. I remember DVD massively overtaking VHS, and a few years after the Videoland stores vanished. One got replaced by a bakery and the other one simply vanished. The building is different and I don't even know what's inside there now.
I'm only 16 at the moment, yet I feel like so much has changed and I missed out a lot.
I'd love to live the world of 10 to 15 years ago again, just to experience it one more time. I was so young at that time I don't remember shit. I just know what is now, and now is smartphones and other high-performance handheld devices, online streaming over networks of speeds up to gigabytes a second, and 1080p60fps gaming with photorealistic graphics on rather small high-powered PC's with sophisticated microprocessors, everything digital and picture being displayed super slim displays with insane resolutions.
I've never really witnessed the old things and right now it's too late for that.
Makes me feel sad quite a bit actually.
same here
She wasn't a hoarder, was she? Seems everyone on the Hoarders show has stacks and stacks of VHS tapes...
+deWaardt I don't do streaming because of all the compression and lossy audio. I'm still not sure how the idea of lower quality is getting to be so popular with everyone, but since they were all stupid enough to dump Betamax, I can safely say that I'm not the least bit surprised. Still if you have a crt, vhs will continue to look good on that.
It's interesting how advances in film scanning and mastering in general can improve the viewing experience even on VHS.
I'm certain that remastered versions of old movies recorded onto VHS will look even better than the original VHS release.
The audio is the only thing that still impresses me to this day...
What I really hope for is a comeback of CRT displays, as well as the 4:3 aspect ratio (the ideal way for viewing 4:3 content). Out of all things, I miss CRT displays most. They are great for entertainment purposes, and an alternative to the analytical and pixel perfect modern LED displays. PS2 games also look better on a CRT than on a 4K LED TV, is something I've found out the hard way.
Audio cassettes suck in respect to audio quality. But its sound character will be missed. In my experiences, how good a music will sound on an audio cassette depends mostly on the style of music.
I just like watching how much of an interesting guy my dad was 25 years ago, and how people acted in front of camera then, since it was recorded by a friend during 3 vacations during the 91-92 years. Very interesting, and shows that video recording was still a big deal, considering that a VHS camera was around $1,000 back then.
Video tapes are still cool, and many of the old movies are not available on DVD or Blu-ray disc! Thats why i still have a lott of video tapes, and also collect video tapes. Thanks for the information, great quality that you manage to get out of these old VHS tapes!
Looks pretty good.
I love vhs i have a lot of them
same. even tho im buying my favorite movies on a blu-ray format. whatever movies i will come across no matter if its a DVD,Blu-Ray, or especially VHS i just buy it. but VHS is the cheapest alternative which is the best thing about the format :)
ME THREE
Meme Star Me too
@@Mayala285 exactly
@@Mayala285 honestly with DVD and boy ray there's not much of a difference except bluray being newer so usely having more features
I was skeptical going into this one, but as someone who has watched the dvd version of My Cousin Vinny at least once a year between 1998 and 2008 or so, and the laserdisc version once a year from 1995-1998 probably, your capture of the VHS version looks every bit as good as the DVD after its processing.
Sound quality is a mixed story. The stereo sound you achieve is pretty good, but it doesn't quite manage the dynamic range of a well-made all-digital soundtrack on LD or DVD. Still, much better than I had remembered it.
I love all my old formats. My Laserdisc writer is one of my favorites!
Yes exactly! It's all a matter of having a good VCR. VHS isn't exactly an HD format, but it's still not nearly as bad as people think it is, and it's because most people in the past 10 or 15 years had cheap junky VCRs. Plus, people would use the EP/SLP recording mode which is very low quality even on a better VCR... plus they'd use the coaxial cable to hook it up, and even on a standard definition TV, the difference in quality between composite and coaxial is just like night and day.
the best thing about vhs is that theyre diiirt cheap. you can usually find them at thrift stores for less than $1
vhs is trash dude picture
A couple years ago all the goodwill stores in my area got sealed copies of Gone with the Wind. It was a two tape pack, not surprising considering the length of the film, and I just had to get it considering it was only a dollar. It's honestly the best version of the film I have ever seen. The film is already in 4:3 aspect ratio and it doesn't do any of the remastering that seems common on rebroadcasts on channels lile turner classic movies as well. Got 3 and gave 2 away to film buff friends and they love them too.
the sound is great, but the picture is still very vhs to me
+fuckJuly "VHS Hi-Fi", or FM modulated audio is still really really good. The problem with VHS, even super VHS, is the very poor quantity of color information.
+MarcoZ I know, but - at least for me - this sample isn't any better as I remember VHS
@@jukpulfer plus 2 be fair it is a RUclips video so it is worse than in person
I expected it to be noisy as hell... WOW, it's so clean, and sharper than I expected.
I liked your choice of movies. Apollo 13 is one of my favorites.
Mine too! He has a great choice of movies
Great soundtrack too.
I think that HD VHS (also a video from techmoan ) need to come back because the quality is very nice and sharp
just like bluray
Still better than 240p videos that are out there
Not exactly any kind of feat.
@@BilisNegra lol exactly
@@BilisNegra but I think it's just O.K.
I still use my 2 vhs recorders to playback and record of the sources and then edit onto the HDD. I even still use audio cassettes to play and have still unopened blanks to record onto from all my sources. Though yes these are analogue, these are giving me great quality in the audio and video resolution. I'm happy that I never let these formats go. I find digital formats OK as a storage medium but it doesn't have the same heir of quality. The same general thing applies to all formats that good equipment and maintenance goes a long way.
Let's hope VHS will make a comeback
Maybe like d-vhs
lisciatoredimele89 most likely
No please! If lots of retards are willing to spend significant amounts of money on what is such a mediocre quality format, we (I mean, we, sensible, not retarded folks) will lose the only reason why it's worth getting VHS tapes: they being dirt cheap or even free (trash found).
ToyStoryNBarneyFan I don't think it will, but it's going to appeal to a niche market. I personally love watching classic 70s, 80s, and 90s blockbusters on VHS, Unedited and still working! It's doesn't really have any hidden superiority in quality, but for me it's just a awesome nostalgia trip, and it's really fun to have friends over and just watch the classics!
Man, that Star Wars promo was nostalgic as hell! I started remembering lines from it out of nowhere while watching.
The sound quality is much better than I remember! However, the video quality is about the same. Don't count CRT's out! They're the only way to make interlacing look good.
I'll tell you one thing I love about VHS. I popped in a tape of Seinfeld episodes I recorded back in the 90s and within 5 seconds, I was watching the tape exactly where I left off 15 years ago. Can't do that with modern videos.
Picture looks very good maybe even the quality of a cheaply encoded DVD - especially for that cheaper VCR. Though you unfortunately can't encode 7.1 audio into a VHS!
VHS does support Dolby Pro Logic surround sound. Most of the tapes I featured here were encoded with it.
+vwestlife Ahh, that is how the Pro Logic on my old (1989) Pioneer VSX-D1S works! Not sure if it will ever really make a comeback though.
D-THEATER VHS TAPES was a digital version of standard VHS instead of having the film stored as pictures on the tape it was stored as 1s and 0s the length of tape was used as data storage. The machines output 1080i & some models came with HDMI, these could basically output 5.1 DOLBY DIGITAL / 7.1 but not lossless audio
Jesus, I remember renting these so much....
I'll tell you one thing that's worth noting is at the time 4:3 was standardized at home and a number of movies had been re-framed in terms of how they fit the format. If you're a film enthusiast, it's worth taking heed over the different conversions and looking at the comparisons to formats like DVD and Blu-ray. In fact some films being filmed in "Open-Matte" are known to take advantage of this, including some such as Secret of Nimh and Spies Like Us. In fact look at some of the movies Stanly Kubrick did after he threw a fit over 2001 was broadcast in pan-and-scan.
Movie producers originally introduced widescreen in the 1950s as a way to differentiate movie theaters from TV because they feared that if people could watch movies on TV, they would never go to theaters again. So they came up with widescreen, stereo sound, 3D, "smellovision" and other gimmicks to keep people coming to the theaters.
vwestlife It's funny now that In the HD era, some were trying to do a reverse by getting movie goers to see Interstellar and Hateful Eight in Imax, which uses that 15-perf 70mm format. Everything's in widescreen digital now, which is why I profoundly reference the need to go and search for the best aspect ratios possible because of the way current releases on DVD/Blu-ray are getting cropped, while often programs on cable will still get the full 16:9 treatment. VHS/Betamax and some other format I can't remember tend to stand in their own ground in regards to this and sometimes you'll be getting lots more then what the intended cinematic experience is providing you.
Yeah... That's just as bad as I remember
+Subzero Arctics
Exactly what I was about to say.
Yeah, but that's exactly what happens with audio cassettes. Yet, they made a comeback
Subzero Arctics the best reason is they're cheap as fuck, but yeah also the nostalgia
fairly recent playback machine, dnr via capture device, youtube compression on top of everything, how is it supposed to look?
but a decent pal off-air recording will beat all 480p (and below) yt videos....heh...because it has 576 scanlines...and destination format will not be yt h264 (which will destroy a lot of detail along) but mpeg2 at 5mbit, or mjpeg at 10mbit/s.
dnr? yeah, some, but motion compensated, not crude algorithm from camcorder...
dedicated pc capture card means you don't need tbc, because purposes/ways of working of those two overlap.
ivo kostić I enjoy these items today
Yup, that was as bad as I remember. Very nostalgic format, though. Brings back memories of going to Movie Gallery and renting Jurassic Park for the 50th time.
i have apollo 13 on VHS, but mine is a Block Buster Rental.
I like watching VHS tapes when I want to feel nostalgic
Somebody here watches Techmoan... =P
VHS through a FireWire camcorder into a computer? Someone watches Oddity Archive. These VHS transfers bring back some serious memories...
We had a number of Caldor stores here on Lawn Guyland. One of them I go past every now and again is STILL empty.
Well, time to convert all of my movies and home movies into digital files and add them to my collection of movies for a media center PC. I'm planning to get an old laptop, clone the current SSD to a bigger one, copy the converted digitized movies onto the larger SSD, and turn the laptop into a useful portable DVD/Media Center with the help of Ubuntu Server with KODI. Of course, the portable DVD player will have Internet access just only at home to watch Netflix.
Get a BD-R XL drive and a BT878 video capture card. It can record macrovision encoded tapes losslessly in HuffYuv format and it takes up 35 gigabytes per hour, but once digitized in the format it can provide any future lossy format without having to go back to the original tape. Learn how to use a file splitter. SuperBowl 12 took up 4 25GB BD-R discs.
One thing to remember is that not all Fullscreen releases (What an odd name for 4:3 content, shouldn't 16:9 be that as well when the image has no black bars?!) are Pan & Scan, some are open matte - so you see more than intended instead of less than intended. Dunno aboot US but it seems like the last few years of VHS releases we in Europe got mostly letterboxed releases. Though there's been some letterboxed tapes way back in the 1980's as well.
8:12 - The audience is now deaf.
I grew up with VHS and never stopped using them to this date. Since my old CRT TV was absurdly power hungry I switched to an old LCD TV recently which I bought for 10euros at a thrift store. Its a Sharp Aquos 4:3 SDTV LCD, still Made in Japan, with superb picture quality. Its perfect for VHS and old school gaming (no upscaling, no input lag).
VHS looks amazing on it.
Overall VHS is better than Video CDs but Laserdisc is even better than both of them! I use laserdiscs mostly for karaoke coz the instrumental audio is CD digital stereo and vocal is stereo too which sounds best if it was encoded with CX sound. VHS and VCD on the other hand is mono karaoke as it only have both channel audio.
are u blind!!! vhs is trash!!! dvds have a better picture on the film then vhs so dvd wins!!
@@Mariofans-gn1lu I’m not blind but you don’t have to be rude. In my honest opinion I have no interests in vhs but I do agree with you that dvd is better. Wait till you see a VCD then you know VHS is better than the VCD.
@UCIGObsh9YLovekxiSssYHbA yeah for you. But for old films don’t be disappointed when you get the edited versions of films but honestly I’m staying with laserdiscs.
@@卡拉永遠OK唱不完 ok
Great video! Most "fullscreen" movies on VHS (and then on DVD) had the openings in their original widescreen format to allow for the opening credits, which often used the full 16x9 aspect ratio and would be difficult if not impossible to include without cutting off names and titles.
I like the graininess of VHS, it's nostalgic at this point. I have a select few of my favorite movies on Blu-Ray, everything else is VHS. Of course I only own one HD tv and about 5 CRT's that I use so VHS is always more convient for me than hooking up a bluray player to a CRT.
Glad you know who techmoan is :)
inb4 copyright claim
+Cyrillo Baggins
What about it?
VHS can get pretty murky because the quality of playback can vary greatly between machines. I've never had a Sony VCR but from what I remember they jacked up the 'sharpness' like crazy (I say that in quotes because increasing the sharpness adds a bunch of video noise) for a perceived sharper picture via RF on channel 3 or 4. My 4-Head Hi-Fi Sharp VCR plays back tapes with a better contrast range and with a sharper-while-noise-free image than my JVC S-VHS with all the bells and whistles like a TBC with built-in DNR. I guess the JVC machines were popular with the restoration crowd because they played well with other hardware like proc amps, etc.
I still have Vhs
One thing I do remember is that I had no 'coasters' with VHS and very few of them got screwed up in the tape mechanism, whereas a large number of my DVD discs that I made myself, went faulty or ended up as coasters right after burning. I use a good quality Pioneer DVD writer and always sought the best blank media, with the best dyes that I could, and yet they still ended up unreadable. However re-writeable blank media has been very reliable. I no longer trust DVD for backups or video, and now just have NAS devices with storage drives, my current one being a Synology DS415+ with 12TB in caddies inside the NAS. I then save to that and stream it around the house.
You made this video on the back of Techmoan's cassette-praising video, but he also made one about VHS, more specifically how a specific VHS format was the (by and large) only storage medium on which HD movies were available before HD-DVD and Blu-Ray were invented. It was called D-Theater, which was a variant of Digital VHS.
Holy Crap I worked at Caldor in Poughkeepsie.. ahhh
in the uk most vcr's had the rgb scart socket, picture quality was much better compared to composite and s-video, scart was Europe only I believe.
+gamerdude0 I don't see how it can be much better, the video was recorded in composit on the tape.
What do you mean by the video was recorded in composite?
gamerdude0
The picture recorded on the tape is composite video. That's how vhs record video on the tape. So you'll never have better than composite even if you put it through rgb ou s-video.
I disagree. The picture recorded on the tape is an analog color video signal which contains luminance, brightness (Y) and chrominance (C) of an analog television image. When combined into one channel, it is called composite video. Analog video may be carried in separate channels, as in two channel S-Video (YC) and multi-channel component video formats.
gamerdude0
Yes, but you need a s-vhs (hence the name) to have it. Standard vhs don't have high enough bandwith to have any difference compare to composite or s-video.
I think they will make a come back.
VHS is actually a remarkable leap in technology don't deride it. As far as prerecorded films, VHS came a long way from the reel to reel and CEDs an was technologically superior.
With 8 hour tapes, you can create AWESOME mixtapes! I use the AG-1960 for most of my recordings, and I have to say, the audio quality sounds fantastic!
It will hold two 1800 foot reel-to-reels with room and sound quality to spare. Now instead of capturing the feeling of a whole era, you can capture TWO eras on a single tape. The Dungeons and Dragons reel tape was 3 hours and 12 inches at 3-3/4 inches per second both directions.
I stopped what I was doing to watch this video the second I got a notification for it on my phone... I love these kinds of videos!
Judging VHS tapes on their picture/audio quality, as they exist now in 2017, is silly. The tapes are all old, rotting relics at this point. Growing up in the 80s/early 90s, watching VHS tapes on a CRT TV, they looked and sounded fine. That's because the image was being displayed in something much closer to it's native resolution. Try an experiment - watch a DVD using composite cables on a CRT TV - looks fine, doesn't it? Then watch it on an HD or 4K (if it even has composite jacks) TV. Guess what - that exact same DVD will look like shit! That is because the image is being stretched like crazy, and while up-scaling can help somewhat (if using HDMI), it can't work miracles. An understanding of how magnetic tapes function, and of the resolution that different forms of physical media output at is required here.
If you're watching 4:3 video in stretched fake widescreen, then you're doing it wrong.
Quite right, but you completely misunderstood my point. I am not talking about stretching a fullscreen movie into a widescreen image. I am talking about the natural resolutions of different types of TVs and movie formats. In North America, VHS tapes were capable of (AT BEST) 240i, which translates to 320x240. DVDs were 480i, meaning 640x480 for fullscreen and 720x480 for widescreen. Most CRT TVs were 480i, and therefore display a DVD perfectly at its natural resolution. Refer to the example I gave in my original post. I stated that a DVD being played with composite cables on a CRT TV would look better than the same DVD being played on an HDTV with the same setup. That is because 1080p HDTVs have a resolution of 1920x1080. Therefore, the picture the DVD player is outputting is being stretched to fit that resolution, resulting in a blurry image. The entire point of my last post is this - people who were watching VHS tapes and DVDs on CRT TVs were not getting nearly as poor of picture quality as people now seem to think. A DVD played on a CRT TV will look extremely crisp and sharp. VHS tapes looked perfectly acceptable too, especially when they were new. Any tape surviving now has likely been played a million times (remember, magnetic tapes degrade with every use) and has probably begun to literally disintegrate. I will reiterate my original statement - judging VHS tapes in 2017 is silly.
You are confusing analog lines of resolution (a.k.a. TV Lines) with digital lines of resolution. Analog lines refer to vertical lines going across the screen, while digital lines of resolution refers to the number of horizontal scan lines going up and down the screen. Thus the two numbers are not directly comparable. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_lines
Standard VHS is good for about 250 TV Lines but it's a 525-line NTSC video signal just the same as from a LaserDisc or DVD player. Of those 525 lines, 480 are for the video content while the rest are for blanking and synchronization, thus when converted to digital, it becomes 480i. VHS, Betamax, LaserDisc, and any other composite video source all end up as the same exact pixel resolution when converted to digital (480i). And as I explained in the video, if you upscale it to HD on a computer the quality can be much better than on a TV, because a TV has to do the upscaling in real-time while a computer can take as long as it wants to process the video, so it doesn't have to sacrifice quality in order to speed up the upscaling.
I understand the difference. I am aware that an analogue 240i signal doesn't directly translate to a digital resolution of 320x240, but it is a rough approximation and for the sake of this conversation, is more than adequate. Once you get into digital video (DVD/Bluray and HDTVs), it does directly translate. I am not interested in turning this conversation into a treatise on video resolutions. Once again, I feel you have missed my point and are getting hung up on irrelevant technical details.
Again you are mixing up terminologies. There is no such thing as 240i. Some video games used 240p, but 240i does not exist. VHS is 480i just like Betamax and LaserDisc. VHS is good for about 240 to 250 TV Lines, but again, that is analog resolution which is not directly comparable to digital resolution. You can read all about it here: www.digitalfaq.com/forum/myths/5098-myth-comparisons-analog.html
i do not mind vhs image and audio quality as i grew up with video cds. its just too much hassle and lots can go wrong with vhs and vcr... i honestly prefer video cds, as with roughly similar quality, you got much less hassle, more stable output (no need of those tracking nonsense) and it wont degrade 😢 thats just my opinion
As an Asian, I have thought of those advantages of VCD too, but as a hearing impaired viewer, VHS supporting analog captions is a huge plus.
caldor, value city, and many other big names like sterns as well as the wiz were gone many years ago. walmart and giants like amazon not only put these other large retailers out of business, but totally crushed small business which is sad because by doing so it brought wages down for everyone.
no longer do you have the mom and pop family run pharmacy or hardware store. sure some still exist, but they cant compete with the large scale that large companies like costco can buy items in bulk for less. also of course the influx of cheap chinese products destroyed many us manufacturers as well.
I try to buy from small businesses, but my purchases are just a drop in the bucket and its really sad to see our nation run by large corporations. sure you can buy cheap products for less, but no one ever thinks of the long term domino effect. lower wages, less jobs, and a dependence on cheap crappy goods from overseas.
Those of you saying this is as bad as you remember....keep in mind that the average person had a barely mid range crt and vcr with the cheapest RCA cable you could find. We did get anywhere close to this
Didn't you copy cassettes- better that you dont rember from techmoan
NO WAY!!!
I don't miss high speed rewind. My Technics cassette deck from 1997 has it and, no surprise, it operates exactly the way your Panasonic VCR's high speed rewind does.
Quality is about as I expected.
Also, RUclips can actually do 480p60.
As far as I've ever seen, no, it can't.
vwestlife
I have a video on my channel that has it, thus, yes, it can... but maybe for specific formats only?
Skawo Which video? Does it give you a 480p60 download option on clipconverter.cc ?
+Skawo Only vertical orientation (portrait) videos support 480p60 or 360p60 playback on RUclips. It does not work on normal 4:3 or 16:9 videos.
vwestlife
Huh, interesting. Well, that's good to know, I suppose.
Use your VHS vcr videorecorders and blank VHS tapes to get even with the news media and tell your friends to just use their vcr videorecorders !
Yep. looks about as bad as I remember for sure. Ah.. the classic chroma bleed. I DONT miss that, thats for sure.
Lies 10 year old spotted
Dad used to rent a lot of movies on VHS when my sister and I stayed with him, then my mother bought a VCR in 1998 when I was 15, and again, we'd rent quite a few movies on VHS tapes. Now, I've heard other people talk about DTMF tones on VHS tape, but I don't remember hearing any DTMF tones on any VHS prerecorded tapes that I've personally watched. I do remember on a couple of tapes there'd be a slight high pitched buzz at the start of the tapes, but not the DTMF tones I heard during this video. Do you hear those tones on every single one of your prerecorded VHS tapes, or just some of them? Are you saying that there were some DVD/VCR machines that didn't play video tapes in Hi-Fi Stereo? Are you saying some of those models only had mono VCRs in them?
Of all the tapes I showed clips from, the first one is the only one with the DTMF tones at the beginning. And yes, there were some DVD/VHS combo units in which the VCR was only mono.
OK. I'd say it's possible that VHS tapes released in the PAL format may have also had such DTMF tones, but I've just not experienced them. If I have, I don't remember them.
mmm sorry dude but the image quality is still lacking. I think DVD and blue ray does a better job. But sound is fantastic tho.
I had a JVC S-VHS-C camcorder and same brand S-VHS VCR purchased at the same time. Using standard "premium high grade" tapes gave extremely clear, stable results. In fact, the color space was actually a bit truer than DV. I also remember watching a new release from Blockbuster on a top-of-the-line Sony VCR around 2002. Even without artificial sharpening it looked near DVD quality. We're talking about VCR's costing around $200. The nice thing about digital is even the cheesiest blu-ray player will look fantastic over HDMI.
yeah, it looks as bad as i remember.
Holy fuck, I can't believe they pretty much gave away the big reveal in that Star Wars trilogy preview, the dicks!
to be honest when i clicked this video i thought it was going to be techmoan,
+Ryan Wolfe Same
+Kain SpareAccount +1
+Ryan Wolfe
LOL, are you "blind" to the channel names right under the video titles in thumbnail mode?
+Maxx Fordham yup I am totally blind. How am I typing this
I didn't say "totally blind," Ryan Wolfe. That's where the "to the..." came in, DUH.
bought a S VHS back in '94.. the most expensive philips, hooked up to one of the first 100 Hz Philps Matchlines, audio to my marantz 2238. I KNOW how good it can be and sound.. :)
Even a top-of-the-line VHS player is no match for a cheap dvd player in terms of picture quality. I plugged in my 6 head Panasonic VCR from 1999 to my 46 inch LED display and played an original movie. Barely passable. The bigger the screen the more obvious are the drawbacks and flaws. Today one wonders how people endured watching VHS movies in the 80's and 90's.
Many modern flat panel HDTVs do a poor job of upscaling analog standard definition video.
Fair enough. I have kept my old CRT tv and it looks good enough - yes, better than I recall - even with films I recorded off the tv in my childhood. I always purchased the high quality tapes and it was a wise investment. Not too many 10 year olds read hi-fi and video magazines but I did.
Cool memories with VHS. DVD and Blu-Ray are better formats. This was a fun video and I am glad you did. I hope you had fun taking the time to make it. I'm sure the editing and what-not was a pain in the ass to do; this one must have taken a few days to be ready for an upload. The THX one was great, I think there was an old Simpson's episode were a guy did that in a theater and his head exploded. That was great. Thanks again for the memories, man.
Techmoan joke!
VHS has always been a bit blurry and the colours slightly "flat", but - and there is a big but - : So was TV back in the 1980s and 90s. I remember watching a lot of VHS movies in the 1990s and when the movie was over I expected the anouncer to say something about the next programme but it just went to black, and then I remembered that I was watching a VHS so I had to start rewinding now. That to me is sort of a proof that VHS was not inferior to ordinary TV - a least not very much. But then came HD TV and DVDs and suddenly VHS seemed flawed and obsolete.
Wakko's Wish was on VHS in 1999 in Hi-Fi stereo, & released later on a single disc DVD in a keep case without a slipcover in 2014.