The Impossible Feat inside Your VCR

[@nicolasrusso7516]

I’m a vhs enthusiast and I absolutely love how much attention to detail you put into your videos when it comes to discussing vhs and it’s different tape speeds.

[@oldtimer2192]

I couldn’t agree more, what an excellent description of relativly early A/V recording and playback systems. Always wondered why the reading head/drum was on an angle though. Brilliant video and thank you sir!

[@EmeraldEyesEsoteric]

I remember buying VHS tapes of the anime "Macron One," from Saban entertainment. Saban was so cheap, that even though you only got two twenty minute episodes per tape, it was recorded in SLP on cassettes with very little tape. These were official tapes.

[@LastLetterisZed702]

Thanks for the advice on VCRs. You were talking with such intelligence and I was keeping up with you. But after all that was settled, you started using Imperial units, for example, inches, feet and miles? That is so 1960s. Did you consider other countries watching this VCR technology? They don't know how far 11 miles is. And neither do I.

[@waynezeller]

The title caught my interest and made me click. When I realized what the video was going to talk about I figured I'd give it a minute or two. Eighteen minutes later I was still spellbound. You've done a GREAT job with this video!

[@JanStrojil]

Thank you for saving me typing that comment, I also did not expect to watch the whole clip! I am sure glad I did!

[@199NickYT]

I remember looking in a VCR in the 90's and seeing the wonky-leveled head drum. It's a weirdly fulfilling experience to understand why it's angled that way decades later.

[@ericvosselmans5657]

I feel the same!

[@jakefriesenjake]

Same here!

[@denelson83]

BTW, that is actually how VHS got its name, originally standing for "vertical helical scanning".

[@jamesslick4790]

@@denelson83 Nope. VHS stands for "Video Home System". There were other PRIOR video tape formats that used helical scanning including Betamax, U-Matic...ETC. In fact helical scanning was the default on videotape for YEARS before "VHS".

[@stephensnell5707]

​@@denelson83 it actually stood for Video Home Service(VHS) not what you said

[@grid45]

Nice video. I worked at a TV station in 1977. We had 3 Ampex 2 inch quadraplex videotape machines. Television stations lock the synchronization of all their sources so the picture doesn't roll when video is switched. Synchronization on the Ampex reel-to-reel machines was analog - so it took 7 1/2 seconds to synchronize the playback to station sync. As a result, videotapes had color bars at the beginning of the tape, and usually also had a countdown at the head of the tape. There was a cue channel on the tape, and that was used to record a tone on the tape to be able to find the beginning of the program. That allowed the videotape operator to find the beginning of the program. A 7 1/2 second tone was recorded, so the tape operator could quickly find the cue point. A Quad machine had 4 heads, and playback had 4 video amplifiers. Part of the process of setting up tape playback was to play color bars and set the controls for each of the 4 heads for similar gain, to prevent "banding" in the video. Commercials (spots) were recorded individually on small reels. A 2 minute commercial break had four thirty second spots. With 3 videotape machines, 1 machine was reserved for news segment playback, and 2 machines for commercials. In preparation for a commercial break, the operator pre-loaded 1 commercial on each of 2 machines. Mount reel; thread tape; set video gains; fast forward to cue tone, and stop. The first machine was started 7 1/2 seconds before the commercial, then the video was "taken" on the video switcher. 22 1/2 seconds into the first spot, the second player was started. As soon as the first spot ended, the operator then had 22 1/2 seconds to rewind the tape on the first machine, take it off, mount the tape for the third spot, set the video gains, and cue it. Then the same for the fourth spot. The news video tape was usually a 12 inch diameter 2 inch wide tape. They were heavy. Often there were multiple segments on the tape, so each segment had to be found by fast-forwarding the tape while listening for the cue tone beeps, then set up for the 7 1/2 second pre-roll. Often the newscast used recorded segments out of linear order, for example the 3rd segment, the seventh segment, the first segment, and the twelfth segment. Fast forward and rewind had powerful motors that spun very fast, so stopping took a few seconds. The news director had to plan the tape segments carefully to give the tape operator time to find and set up each videotape segment. The worst case situation was a videotape news segment, back to the news anchors for the handoff, then a 2 minute commercial break, during which the videotape operator is real busy, then back to the anchors, then another videotape news segment. After a 30 minute newscast, the tape operator was wound as tight as a spring. After I left that station, around 1980, Ampex came out with 2 inch quad cartridge video recorders. There was a large cartridge storage section. The machine automatically selected the cartridge and loaded it. Synchronization was digital, and only took .002 seconds to lock-up to station sync. You could program an entire newscast in advance, and the machine would play all of the tapes in sequence. They were amazing! One of the problems the video carts caused was if the technical director pressed start on the cart machine and "took" the video at the same time, there was a .002 second period of no video going into the transmitter. Video transmitters were analog at that time, and analog video was inverted, so no signal to the transmitter put it at 100% power for .002 seconds, which caused an alarm on the transmitter and an error message on the automatic log. So we had to train the technical directors to have a slight delay between pressing start and "taking" the video. We later built that into a digital timer to prevent the issue.

[@KdubTraX]

hell yeah

[@Catsarethebes5eva]

Lol Noone cares

[@favoritemustard3542]

@@Catsarethebes5eva paragraphs are scary! "L0L'' ...why are you here? Signed ~ No'One* **I read it twice, thank you for that insight OP*

[@xcitive]

Amazing! Can’t believe how much work the operators did in the background to keep the broadcast running smoothly. After reading this those “sorry for technical difficulties” or “pardon for the interruption” cards seem much more forgivable. :)

[@h.markhorton8188]

Great Stuff! Why do us “modernaires” find such human and artistic fun in this and Mr. Techmoan. Thanks!!!

[@nickmonks9563]

I did not expect this to hold my attention for 18 minutes. But it did. EXCELLENT video. Subscribed.

[@bellvnv2000]

Nick Monks Yes, life has become just that banal for me too .

[@REARTYPE]

Nick Monks I only realised that this video is 18 minutes after i read you comment

[@TheGunmanChannel]

Same here.

[@frogz]

.....same as the other people, i didnt realize i've been watching for 17:22 now... good job host, good job

[@CenterpointConnect]

Yep, once I got over the background, I quite enjoyed it.

[@StopChangingUsernamesYouTube]

I just spent nearly 20 minutes watching a video about VCRs with a backdrop reminiscent of 80's/90's instructional videos. I don't regret a single second of it, either. Thank you. I had no idea that the one machine in my house that I didn't take apart and re-assemble (sans a few extra screws) was possibly the most interesting of the lot.

[@davidstone921]

Brilliant! I am a semi- retired Broadcast TV engineer. I was involved with very early VTR's/VCR's. There were many other weird formats, including one by Panasonic, that used standard EIAJ 1/2 inch tape literally fired out of a single-spool cassette and was automatically laced up on to a normal tape spool in the machine! They were fun to work on! I wish you'd been a lecturer at some of our training courses (Time-travel permitting, - you're far too young), you would have made the various subjects much more interesting. An excellent & most interestingly compressed story of video tape recording. Dave.

[@mgabrysSF]

The BBC also had one that used metal instead of tape because of the speed. It was in an armored room because if the 'tape' broke it was a literal fragmentation bomb.

[@electricpalace4720]

That was the Blatnerphone, an audio recorder. It was used for a while in the 1930s but was later abandoned as the BBC went back to recording on discs.

[@craigh5236]

Heavy metal

[@justsomeperson5110]

Mmmm. Engineer gibs.

[@alex0589]

Damn. Tv is metal af

[@mz7315]

@@alex0589 This deserves way more likes.

[@child_of_god_]

Your video is so jam packed with information, i have to reduce to 75% speed and still pausing now and then and even sometimes replaying some parts.

[@apolloandwarrior_3229]

He couldn't afford to record on a longer VCR tape

[@NoorquackerInd]

I watch all KZbin videos at 2x speed, it's only this and MinutePhysics where I have to rewind

[@kipkipful]

Noorquacker no one ever asked you

[@burzasardaukar]

@@NoorquackerInd have you tried science asylum? That s another channel you may end up watching at normal speed

[@assistanttothetravelingsec8301]

Yep me too

[@233kosta]

The engineering involved in this old school stuff is just marvellous! Though conceptually simpler, these machines are much more mechanically and electronically complex (at the component level) than their modern counterparts with all the hard work being done at the hardware level rather than via software through microcontrollers. Absolutely wonderful!

[@oofingberg]

That’s exactly why i love old hardware. My hifi system is from 95 and my VCR and CRT is as well.

[@233kosta]

@Alexander Ratisbona I think I may have been a little unclear in what I meant by "conceptually", which is that fundamentally all this machine does is take a raw analogue signal and convert it into analogue magnetic pulses which rearrange particles on a tape (and vice versa). At the top level, that's a lot fewer steps than say an MP3 player, which has to read a file, decode it, apply DSP (itself a complex process), then convert to an analogue signal and amplify. Modern miniaturisation has abstracted most of that complexity away into the ASIC (which we all recognise as the ubiquitous "blob" on the circuit board) which runs everything, so it appears deceptively simple when it is, in fact, not. That technology wasn't available back then, so all the beautiful engineering, the complexity of the implementation, is on display for all to see 😁

[@233kosta]

@Alexander Ratisbona It's the implementation that's complicated, not the concept. And if you knew what went into these integrated circuits you'd understand why they _are_ so much more complex, conceptually. But manufacturing processes of ICs lend themselves VERY well to automation (in fact, many are impossible without it), so the huge volumes possible reduce the unit cost of a single IC to pennies. On the flip side, a mechanical system which, at the conceptual level, does something much simpler, is nevertheless significantly more complicated to implement as it requires that all actions and coordination in the system be mechanical. All the "thinking", so to speak, has to be done by the mechanics. Whereas a microcontroller abstracts all that away and all the mechanical parts have to do is activate when signalled by the μc. Macromechanically - much simpler, but the μc is in fact a lot more complex electronically. I mostly agree on programmers though, these days they're like administrators - available everywhere and at the full range of costs, but really good ones are hard to find. The work culture is different, much more emphasis on quantity and prototyping than creating a finished product, which then gets misemplemented, spilling over into consumer electronics, resulting in the release and sale of half-developed products. Video games are a GREAT example - day 1 patches and DLCs (which should have been part of the game on release). Frankly it's disgusting, but all the gray beards have retired, so there's no one left to put the brakes on ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Management is to blame too, I hear the gaming industry in particular works on impossible schedules imposed by retarded directors. I'm sure that spills over into consumer electronics too. You mention quality dropping... that's a function of inflation. People don't like to see increased prices, even though their currency devalues significantly each day. Something's got to give and it's usually quality.

[@Bob-1802]

@@233kosta Exactly! More the science is advanced, more invisible it is. It becomes like magic.

[@Anuj_Tomar]

Also they could last decades and were easy to fix then, still have some things working just find , bought in 80s , just need some cleaning and batteries

[@robertholtz]

Watching in 2018. Did you know that the engineer at Ampex that devised the flying head design and, for that matter, invented videotape, is none other than Ray Dolby, inventor of Dolby Noise Reduction and eventual founder of Dolby Labs?

[@terranmarine7395]

Robert J. Holtz did not. In high fidelity audio, it seems a combination of Dolby and Dbx yields the best results. I knex Ampex was vital in multi track professional grade studio equipment.

[@stevek8829]

He would have had to invent video tape when he was about 18. New York studios filmed television on magnetic tape since about 1950, the early days of television.

[@Rogue_Leader]

You don’t do heavy metal in Dobly.

[@JSmithSS]

​@@stevek8829 He was born in 1933, the Ampex VRX-1000 was the first commercially available video recorder and widely used by television studios (as the VR-1000 and later models). It was released in 1956, and used Quadruplex videotape (released the same year).

[@allanrichardson1468]

@@stevek8829 The video narration in the beginning makes clear that there were earlier experimental systems to record video tape, such as the one developed at BBC using the insanely high speed of 3 miles of tape in 15 minutes. Most likely, when the Ampex Quadraplex tape was introduced in 1956, those studios were happy to upgrade (if they hadn't given up and gone back to kinescopes before that). Stations in less populous (and less lucrative) markets didn't get videotape at all until after Ampex was available. Also, remember that studios in the major networks' "flagship" stations (New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles for the most part) provided most of the video signals for nationwide broadcast, so they had the incentive to be the first, or "bleeding edge" adopters of the newest technology.

[@_unreel]

I'm addicted to your videos. Your voice is really soothing. I usually just have your videos on autoplay while I do homework or am cooking something for a long time. I found your channel through The 8 Bit Guy!

[@vwestlife]

In later years, Panasonic introduced an even slower VP speed, with the tape running at only 0.262 ips (1/5th the speed of SP), providing 10 hours of recording time on a T-120 tape.

[@KRAFTWERK2K6]

Oh hey VWestlife! Nice to see you here :) Yeah, the later years of VHS were quite interesting. I remember my LG VHS deck had some nice features like a video doctor, that warned you about dirty heads and cleaned them for you. Didn't really work that well thou and as much as i hate VHS cleaning tapes because of the possible damage they can cause… they still solved the problem better than the built in solution. However… some Panasonic Decks can be permanently ruined with using such cleaning tapes, rendering the tapeheads completely useless in an instant.

[@Natalie-ez1zc]

Now add Hi-fi to that, now you have 10 hour youtube videos in 1989.

[@studiopapa5874]

KRAFTWERK2K6 All of the tech channels like to talk to each other. So far I've seen a band of uxwbill, bbishoppcm, and VWestlife. There are still more that talk to each other

[@electrictroy2010]

Panasonic’s VP speed is non standard. It was introduced in the late 2000s after VHS was effectively a dead format (replaced by DVD and Bluray).

[@electrictroy2010]

The longest tape I own is a T-240 (four hours). That’s 12 hours using VHS slowest speed. Or 40 hours using JVC’s Digital VHS. (The nonstandard VP would put 20 hours of analog video on a tape.). It also looked like crap.

[@buckrogers5331]

I used to teach service heads how to service RCA and Thomson VCRs back in the mid-90s. One other thing of marvel in the VCR machine is the amount of tape speed control for quick rewinds, precise stops, etc. - all using just a two-bit control signal. I believe the guy in Germany who came up with the control algorithm was given a internal technical award. Truly a solid engineering feat!

[@InsideOfMyOwnMind]

Buck Rogers much of the tech developed for vcrs is still with us today including the multiple methods for connecting a large array of buttons to the cpu with only 4 wires as well as the general robotics that made all the later mechanical formats possible.

[@johndododoe1411]

Was that the I2C or Inter IC protocol still used for various low speed chips like configuration flash memory and motherboard temperature sensors?

[@STARDRIVE]

A few sidenotes: The grooves on the drum are there to create a film of air. To reduce friction. Also, Philips had their own V2000 system, using tapes you could flip over for use on ¨both sides¨. The head used piezo electric actuators to track the tape. Benefit was not only tracking and storing more data, but also a perfect freeze frame and slow motion without divider lines in the picture.

[@danek_hren]

Gonna switch to it

[@Jlipnicki]

Phillips were such a clever company, devising the audio cassette. Seem to have been almost too idealistic.

[@STARDRIVE]

@☆ Astro and Willy ☆ 2x1 hour? Nope. The tapes ranged up to 2x4 hours, even up to 2x8 in long play mode. They lost the war because the porn industry chose the more abundant VHS format. Philips VCC was far superior to both VHS and Betamax, but only shared their parents with Grundig as I recall. JVC shared its VHS patents with half the globe, hence it became more popular despite its shortcomings.

[@STARDRIVE]

@☆ Astro and Willy ☆ Techmmoan is awesome! Love his peculiar devices and formats. As it happens, I started fixing TV's and VCR's as a kid, made a career in tech, and even owned a Philips VCC. When renting a movie I never needed to flip the tape. The only 1 hour tape I ever saw came as an extra with the recorder :) But perhaps your experience differs. Have a great day!

[@Twit.Tw00]

That is truly incredible.... never knew any of that. So complicated yet so taken for granted .... What a waste of knowledge 😂

[@Tharkz]

Wow that switch back to digital HD is like a slap to the face - or the eyes - after slowly getting used to tye VHS qual. playback

[@AshtonCoolman]

It's 2017. I was born in 1982 and am 35 years old....before this video, I only had a rudimentary understanding of how a VCR worked. I knew that it was magnetic and that the information was striped diagonally because I used to take them apart as a kid for fun and was always puzzled by the slanted head. This video blew my mind. We tossed decades of engineering away and now ridicule it. In another 20 or 30 years I wonder if young folks will ridicule us for watching youtube on a 2D screen compared to how they experience things first hand with their brain implants.

[@studiopapa5874]

"You had to use your hands?? That's like a baby's toy!"

[@davidbrenner5806]

JohnnyNismo "ha ha, he doesn't know how to use the sea shells" -Demolition man

[@BillAnt]

You guys had to actually charge those smartphones?? lol

[@elerian9702]

The general form factor (sitting in front and viewing TV screen or computer screen) has not changed since then, you don't have mechanical player and CRT screen, but what we use today like LCD screen and content being stored on thumb drive or is downloaded via computer network does not change whole a lot about the thing.

[@InsideOfMyOwnMind]

No, they will ridicule us for watching KZbin at all.

[@joescott]

This makes me want to go dig up my old tapes where I recorded three movies on one tape.

[@Richard-Freeman]

Somewhere we have a box filled with every Tom Baker and Peter Davidson Dr. Who episode.

[@Tresquall]

Huh. What a fun KZbinr crossover... I watch both of your channels!

[@roberth.5938]

What a surprise, seeing you on the commentaries 😂... And I love watching your channel

[@GabsareSarg]

I know your channel.

[@toadguy3135]

Did you find em?

[@MIO9_sh]

14:20 that sudden increment in video quality is actually more uncomfortable than i expected

[@nikkiofthevalley]

14:20? Lol

[@melissahalle8398]

It made me jump when it changed

[@handlesrtwitterdontbelivethem]

delete ur comment dum anime girl IM WITH WITH SCIENCE TEAM

[@bwhog]

Seeing the moire was what surprised me.

[@TimeSurfer206]

Boomer here. We are spoiled. I suffered through the first two seasons of Star Trek on a Black & White set. And for sound? I get Bluetooth Speakers nowadays, with quality that would have cost a Single Soldier a few month's pay, back in the 70's-80's, for Dirt Cheap.

[@patton303]

I still have most of my dad’s Ampex machines from the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. He ran an advertising production company and never sold or threw gear away. He kept it all in storage in a building on his property. After he passed, it all went to me. When Covid hit, I started restoration on a VR 1200 2”. I’ve been using a Tektronix PAL Vectorscope to see what the quadruplex heads are doing, analyze and retune it. It has surprisingly held up well over the years. I’m going to use it and perhaps lease it to commercial studios for “period” recordings. Digital still can’t quite replicate it. Great vid.

[@jetenginee.]

I'm a 15 yo kid who still watches my vhs tapes about 2 to 3 times a week I have kept all of my videos and came here to find out about how one of my favourite machines works. Thank you

[@jordanblackbird7223]

That's gangster to gangster I'm jammed out now kinda shook too

[@SpicyTexan64]

Where did you get the tapes?

[@Ichibuns]

I had a couple left to me by my Grandpa. Terminator and Top Gun are still in the plastic wrappers

[@lIlIIlIllIIIllIIllIlIllIllI]

@@Ichibuns i found jurassic park at the thrift store

[@Dennan]

vhs was already out of fashion and dvd was becoming popular when i was like 14-15 and im 36 now, you saying you were watching vhs normarly like in 2014?

[@marty5300]

I love the flashing 12:00 on your vcr.. very authentic lol. I was always amazed by how robust tapes were, they could withstand hundreds or thousands of replays. It always amazed me how the tape physically contacting the rollers and capstans, and the head drum continuously and yet not suffer any ill effects until years down the road.

[@jamesfrench7299]

Probably because so much tape passes through resulting in a given spot of tape not contacting four long. Now we understand why pausing too long is bad for the tape.

[@stephensnell5707]

​@@jamesfrench7299 you mean for long

[@hyenacub]

In all the years I watched VHS tapes, I never knew that it actually pulled the tape out of the casing in order to play it. O_o

[@owl77]

I knew because it ate my tape.🙄

[@eval_is_evil]

I figured that out when it got stuck once. Was pretty weird to behold :)

[@eval_is_evil]

@@owl77 hear hear

[@paulhetherington3854]

It's an electro- mechanical- chem pulley. It deceives, only. NASA-- no oxygen in, space, and burn fuel. Atmosphere is, required. OS'= ocean in HAW! os= foundation in kaldean.

[@circuit10]

Paul Hetherington ???

[@VincentStreak]

14:15 Holy crap that buzz hit me right in the nostalgia

I really like the effort involved to deliberately damage the tape just at that part so the effect can be heard.

[@HadomPadom]

this video was exceptional I couldn't have possibly found a more descriptive presentation I hope you go far with your videos awesome job bro

[@L0j1k]

When you went from VCR video back to normal KZbin video, it was like I was hit in the face with a shovel.

[@darkracer1252]

you were not the only one. i was like holy shit. that's alot of extra wall

[@S501Airborne]

Bro my eyes couldn't process for a second. I got dizzy

[@silkwesir1444]

For me it was like "Whoa, did something just happen? No, nothing happened, everything's the same. WAIT, something DID happen, the picture is back to full quality!" It was like my subconscious already knew but my conscious mind was puzzled.

[@donsinai2554]

Memories. What a great presentation. Your explanation is concise and clearly explains some of the more technical elements of the machines. I was an electronic apprentice who cut his teeth on the earliest Mitsubishi VHS machines in Australia. They were awesome pieces of tech at that time and I was lucky to be chosen to repair and align them. After my apprenticeship I moved from home VCR to commercial and professional VCRs like SVHS and Sony Betacam SP, another 1/2” type format. If you thought A home VHS machine was impressive the Professional end equipment were staggering. VHS and Betacam formats died when 1/4”DVC came along for home use and DVCPro and DVCam was used in the Pro side. The plethora of 1/2”broadcast formats was crazy around this time too. Then tape died when the solid state Professional/Broadcast recorders were introduced by Sony, Panasonic and JVC and here we are today. I’ve now retired from the electronics game but it was one hell of a ride and the stuff they can do today still amazes me.

[@High-Tech-Geek]

This was great. I'm an early 80s kid and lived through VHS formats. This stuff was not common knowledge for consumers. Thank you for a simple, yet powerful explanation.

[@KastaRules]

Old tech is *fascinating.*

[@JediWitness2]

Yes it is. I still have my older mini VHS camcorder that still produces a hell of a picture, about 5 VCRS with three hooked up to TV's still for when the DVR fails or is out of space, or when i want to keep something. I have CB and HAM radios which can be very useful if things ever get really insane in the country and the grid goes down, I also have older digital cameras from Kodak and Canon that work great too. People are finding out that digital stuff is not all that it was made out to be. That is why records and record players are making a Huge comeback because people would rather use something physical than all this digital stuff. ALso it's FAR easier to just put a record on with 8-10 songs and know exactly what you're getting an having an IPOD or your phone with 20,000 songs and have to make play lists, folders and stuff to organize it and still have to scroll to find what you want or search. Even Flip Phones are making a comeback as many people are turning in their smart phones for the ever reliable flip phones as many people don't need or want to be online with their phones. As long as you can make a call easy, send some text messages and take a decent picture when needed, that's all many people want. All the old tech that a lot of the younger generations now mock, is the FOUNDATION for what they're using today. The tech actually DID exist decades ago, it was just TOO expensive to bring to the market until now. But it was actually invented long before most people were born.

[@radellaf]

My firewire miniDV cam from ~20 years ago is still better than a "webcam" of today. Not 720, but the optics are so much better. Why all digital camcorders (& still cams) don't have a webcam mode is beyond me.

[@Waccoon]

Complex enough to look like awesome magic, but simple enough so you can understand how it works by reverse-engineering the circuitry. Bonus points for circuit bending! I still use my Amiga on a regular basis -- minus the circuit bending, of course. 8)

[@thatonethattalksalot7656]

KastaRules yes it is, even though im like 18, looking back at what my parents used just fascinates me, the old fashion ways of media is more interesting because most of them ( correct me if im wrong ) needed to be manually done with patients and care, it was like an artist who needed to paint a picture if he wanted to remember the moment that he knew never will happen. Old technology is soo much better that todays piece of plastic sheet with wires to display pictures and produce noise! I can tell by being amused just sitting in silence for hours straight literally just looking at all the parts in a vcr or a crt tv.

[@MegaBojangles99]

F A S C I N A T I N G

[@MrPacMan36]

I wish KZbin would have a "VHS" button and perfectly mimicked the different types of tape formats...

[@BigOlSmellyFlashlight]

it did on one of the april fools days

[@danagibbs3265]

Not this time unfortunately

[@InsideOfMyOwnMind]

That would have been completely gangster. Or "gangsta" as they put it.

[@christoneymotionpictures8847]

Red Giant's Universe plugin has them. They're totally excellent.

[@Zero_Ninety]

They could call it 'hipster mode'.

[@maniakkid25]

"If you're not watching full screen, you should be; it's awful!" I giggled.

[@allanrichardson1468]

I backspaced and replayed it in full screen just to see how awful it was. I'm watching on a 15 inch wide laptop screen.

[@OfMoachAndMayhem]

as a 90's kid, I think you've just earned the coveted Trophy for Making Me Go "That's what THAT was!" the Most Times in One Single Video! also, how on earth do you keep digging up hardware that's the exact same make and model that my grandpa gave me and my brother to play with when we were 10yo?! (as it had been broken for about 10 years by then) man, ppl say all kinds of things about childhood nostalgia, but having been through it I'll just own up and say it: Video quality really was totally shit back then, I'm glad we've evolved into the civilized internet-dwellers of today! Post 2000 kids, you haven't missed much.

[@JeremyMcCracken]

16:08 "SVHS never really went anywhere" It got some use in the low-end professional market. I was in high school audio/visual (late 90s/early 2000s) and we used SVHS for the stuff that ran on the community cable channel. (Using a linear editing system complete with Video Toaster on a 15 year old Amiga.)I still remember people making VHS copies on the SVHS machine and forgetting to flip the switch back- someone wouldn't notice and would start editing, but the teacher could tell the difference just from watching the screen. He'd point to the monitor and say "that looks like the difference between VHS and SVHS..." And we'd check, and he was always right, and we'd have to start the entire real-time editing all over again.Awesome presentation throughout- subscribed

[@WhoWouldWantThisName]

I believe I still own my SVHS camcorder from `89. When that format came out I remember it looking like 4k UHD today on the good screens of the time. Almost too rich and saturated. I'm sure it just looked that good compared to VHS and such of the time, but wow. You could make something that could be shown on broadcast TV with your home camera. It was good enough. Now our phones can do the same I suppose.

[@arricammarques1955]

Panasonic released Proscan Hi FI Stereo VHS SP late 90's TV monitors. Commercial advance, clunky but it worked.

[@MrROTD]

LOL we had Amigas and video toasters and that was cool but then we got a nonlinear set up which had a whopping 8 Gigabytes of storage LOL my favorite thing about the toaster was Lightwave 3d

[@DFX4509B]

ED-Beta meanwhile might as well have not even existed with how little market share it got even in the semi-pro and low-end pro segments.

[@islandaerial3414]

I remember when getting a 26" TV was a BIG deal!

[@blackbeard6861]

Now they have 26" computer monitors

[@Jaymac720]

Nowadays, 55 inches is the standard for “BIG” screens

[@friedchicken1]

yeah you had helicopter bring, now it's delivered by pizza boy

[@seamusmckeon9109]

Now we have 98”

[@TechTokOffical]

My family had one 19" TV in the livingroom(80's-90) and when I was like 11 we got another 15" in the basement for the Nintendo

[@golf-freq]

My brother shoved a reuben sandwich into our VCR the very first week we got it. Dad took it apart and cleaned it out and it still works to this day. Remember to feed your electronics tasty, dripping sandwiches and they will treat you right for years!

[@shahram72]

At least he had good taste in sandwiches.

[@harveywallbanger3123]

terrible waste of a reuben

[@timhuggins1993]

Should stop the VCR eating your best video tapes instead haha

[@jasongreek2342]

just pulled a bunch of garbage out of ours so we could watch Mickey's once upon a Christmas on, what my seven-year-old called, "one of those old time DVDs". they couldn't fathom having to rewind a movie.

[@SacrificedSin87]

Apparently I liked to feed our VCR with marbles, toast and jam, Lego and various other small toys. I was 2 at the time. Then at the age of 6, I developed a habit of ejecting the tape and sticking my finger in the slot and pulling it out, until I got my finger caught in between a recorded from TV copy of "the little shop of horrors" (got the proper VHS when I was 8 and still have it 23 years later) and the slot top. My mum remembers the screaming vividly. We had a top loader for a long time after that.

[@chillmonkey6782]

That’s fascinating that the tape speed of some VHS tapes meant that high frequency sounds didn’t get recorded at all. I’ve heard those SLP audio clips before, and I wondered if everyone just had sinus problems in the 70s. Now I know why they sounded like that!

[@allissondiego1989]

this video is soooo well made

[@wayge]

agreed, its not often that i subscribe to someone after viewing a portion of one of their videos

[@dannycarbona]

we'll played sir.

[@fingtechnology2222]

@wayge, I concur...

[@syok1107]

Are we watching the same video?

[@MarkNESStarFox]

Sarcastic, but clever.

[@altoticket]

This is an AMAZING video, congratulations for the awesome research and superb storyline on the video itself. Thanks.

[@MsMadLemon]

Fantastic video, I learned a lot about VHS, I've been binge watching your videos, they are excellent!

[@LittleDancerByGrace]

This was so cool. For some reason or another we always took the cover off our VCR when I was a kid, so I definitely watched the tape get pulled out and settled up against the drum. I knew about the erase head and guessed (correctly) at the capstan, but I could never figure out how exactly the drum was reading and writing information. I had never noticed that little crack in the middle before. So thanks for clarifying some of ten-year-old me's niggling questions.

[@danielmireles6295]

The fact that you converted digital video files to VHS to demonstrate is absolutely mind blowing. The poor sound quality as it is worsened (and Hi-Fi Stereo) is music to my ears.

[@edinfific2576]

Loved the transition to actual VHS tape quality and the shot of this video on a classic TV. You really make your videos a slight work of art.

[@JoePinball2006]

When I saw the video title I was very keen to watch this, only to find no mention of the impossible feat I was aware of, going on inside the VCR! This feat is that in order to get the really best possible recording and playback, the video tape to head gap had to be absolutely nil: merely having the video heads be completely flush with the video head drum would NOT guarantee this! This is why video heads actually project a small distance AWAY from the drum's outer diameter. (this is easy to test using a piece of paper held against a spinning video head: if the heads were flush there would be no regular noise when you did this. Instead you can hear the "beat" as the heads go whizzing past). The head actually STRETCHES the video tape as it rotates, in order guarantee the tape had perfect intimate contact to guarantee that precise recording/playback. As the head continued to rotate the tape would shrink back again. Obviously the precise amount of tape stretch you could get away with repeatedly had to be carefully computed to remain inside the "elastic" region of tape stretching or else the tape would never recover from even a single playing. So, in my eyes, the true miracle inside every VCR was that it physically stretched the tape and let it shrink back again every time it was played or recorded, with no apparent reduction in tape quality or longevity!

[@XX-121]

+joe pinball - idk eventually i'm sure quality suffered.

[@chriscarroll9076]

That's Ok, the tapes are guaranteed for life. Just return them to RCA (or Memorex or whoever manufactured them) and they should send you a new one!

[@memyname1771]

That is one of the best ways to destroy the tape heads! Paper is both abrasive and hard when struck by anything moving as fast as the tape heads. I learned the hard way even before the early days of VCRs. Before VCRs, I had a Sony video tape recorder (VTR) that was an open reel recorder. The tape heads were exposed and had to be replaced three times as something got too close while they were spinning. As I taught myself how to repair VCRs, the saw the same vulnerability existed while working on a powered VCR with the case open. As the years went by, the metal components were replaced with plastic components and the VCRs became such junk that it was no longer worth the effort to repair stripped plastic gears or somehow get the plastic loading mechanism to work without flexing. The majority of VCRs I owned were Beta. This was due to a demonstration I watched on Okinawa where an electronics store had a Beta and a VHS VCR side-by-side playing the same program/movies. The Beta clearly had better quality picture.

[@memyname1771]

Tapes recorded in the 70s and 80s still play back with no loss of quality.

[@electrictroy2010]

Heads touching the tape should not be a surprise. Audio heads in cassettes and 8-tracks also touch the head.

[@volljoseph]

You sir deserve FAR MORE subs than currently have. I've added my count and I encourage all others to do the same. Well done and best of luck with the channel!

[@PsalmFourteenOne]

VHS Hi-fi was pretty awesome at the time. I actually used it to record my own songs (guitar, drum machine etc) as it really didn't loose quality like going back and forth with regular analog tape.

[@coreyjones9183]

I’m actually doing that right now just for fun and I’m honestly blown away by the quality!

[@VauxhallViva1975]

I was trained as a VHS video machine technician. I have not serviced a VCR in about 20 years. ;) Removing and replacing slide-plates, and sometimes annoyingly placed mode-switches, pinch-rollers, back-tension bands, belts and heads - ahhhh, memories of my youthful apprenticeship.... :p HiFi Stereo VCR's used to be used to record live FM radio-shows here before computers and HDD space got so cheap. A E180 tape would hold 3-hours of live radio show at standard speed, or 6-hours in long-play. As mentioned in this video, the audio performance was excellent on just about any brand of HiFi VCR - far better then using normal cassette tapes, but also far cheaper then using an expensive professional reel-to-reel machine. They would often re-transmit from the archive tape so the DJ only needed to do the show once, but it would air at least twice.

[@PsalmFourteenOne]

@@VauxhallViva1975 Indeed it was. If used Frequency Modulation to store the audio from what I remember. I worked on a repair shop for a while in 1990. I also remember the pinch rollers and the crappy take up reels that would start to slip and then the machine ate the tapes. They did later come up with better tech for the take up reel. The slipping rubber wheel idea was doomed to fail

[@VauxhallViva1975]

@@PsalmFourteenOne Ahhhh, yes! The good 'ole "Idler tire" replacement! ;) I remember replacing quite a few of those that had either perished or become rock-hard, and so then just slipped and did not drive the take-up spool at all. Munchy munch munchy on that lovely tape! ;)

[@KhazWolf]

I really appreciate this explanation, I remember being confused by the slanted head but never really gave it much thought. I'm astounded by the brilliant engineering that went into designing this machine.

[@RichTheNoun]

Great stuff! I would have liked to see an explanation of what is actually happening (and why it happens) when a VHS machine “eats” a tape. You touched on it briefly, but it also would have been neat to see a comparison of the “pause quality” between machines with different numbers of heads. Would also have been interesting to get a little more in depth with “tracking”, how it started out with the need for manual adjustment and how it evolved to automatic.

[@shawnerz98]

I am continually amazed at the information you pack in to each video! Great work!

[@wisteela]

Excellent, and yes, Techmoan is great.

[@philrod1]

Paul Potter - absolutely. TechMoan is fantastic. Anyone who watched this video through should definitely check out TechMoan's channel.

[@wb5648]

Its crazy just how complicated out dated tech can actually be 😂

[@InflatablePlane]

A necessity in the days before microprocessors and digital technology.

[@stephensnell1379]

@@InflatablePlane digital media is also prone to degradation but this happens over a longer period of time

[@electrictroy2010]

Digital media degrades faster. Minor damage can erase wholr scenes (black screen of nothing). Analog media just plows straight through, while still producing an imagez

[@andrewmd10]

@@electrictroy2010 that's not how it works. digital media has autocorrection

[@euvo_sound]

@@andrewmd10 yeah

[@waynecoffman2886]

I was privileged to see and work with an Ampex VR2-2000, required 90 psi air for bearings. TV station Studio recorder magnetic tape several inches wide flying head. Looking back at what a fantastic machine. General class licensed. Had to change a Klystron final amplifier tube driving 350 thousand watts, one time in my tenure. That is a four foot long vacuum tube and 70 Ibs for you newbees. Neat stuff.I am now 72 yrs old

[@Fightre_Flighte]

I'm gonna watch this again in another five or so years when KZbin recommends this again. If not only for the nostalgia slapping me in the face for the little VHS recorded bits, then for the reminder of how we got into the digital era of video.

[@billlco]

Who still remembers the loud gray static screen ?

[@ThePhantomSafetyPin]

and the beep of doom.

[@Joel-vx7hz]

That is the QUICK STOP REWIND moment lol

[@rogehmarbi]

The memory still lingers. That static was like 50% louder than the normal sound, and the sound was unnerving at least

[@darkracer1252]

i do remember waking up a couple times at night when programming ended. ofcourse somewhere in the late 90's and early 2000's that time was filled up with nothing but back to back ads for 0906 numbers. (titty ads. for adult phone numbers)

[@nyccollin]

billlco white noise?

[@flat_stickproductions209]

As always, for those of us interested in learning how things work, you make great content.

[@magdalenazivkovic4173]

im amazed at the consistent high quality of your videos. they're interesting, informative and enjoyable.

[@cocoelacanth]

Every VHS tape ever: Please do not touch the tape. VCRs: Nah.

[@stephensnell1379]

That's only the world that's on the tape itself

[@HunterRodrigez]

its 2017... and iam learning how a vcr works...

[@oiyabastard5360]

Hunter Rodrigez. DEVO....WE MUST REPEAT

[@loudogthefrog]

oiyabastard D E V O we are DEVO!!

[@tionstav5799]

I still use VHS tapes.

[@ledzeppelinsucks]

Louis Gomez Are we not men?

[@David-gk4kw]

Yea that is frustrating, engineers design the VCR's, the company markets them, and the television company producers hire writers and actors to make useless delusional movies to make money and they get the most views, instead of videos the engineers made about the television equipment, so truly useful and educational shows were hard to find back then. The educational networks never did a good job, they would lump some intellectual material together and show it, and things you didn't understand would get skipped over, and the rest of the show is cryptic, assuming you the viewer knows what they are talking about. Video hosting sites where anyone can upload and anyone can search keywords they want to learn about are more valuable.

[@PhilipStephens007]

EXCELLENT!!!!. I am so glad there are people from a younger generation who realize the amazingness of older technology. Today us dinosaurs (and I am only 55) are considered technologically ignorant , until one starts to try and explain some of the old technology to some kid, and then our intelligence shines. I have a friend of only a few years older than me who edited video by literally physically cutting and splicing the tape. I graduated a couple years later to having 1 second editing accuracy but tape to tape, then studied TV production and had computer controlled tape editing, to 4 frames accuracy. I worked in a TV station with Uband tapes and then finally went digital. I just did a VHS transfer for a friend a week or two ago. The tape was from the early 90s, wouldn't work...but with a finger placed in just the right place (for a couple hours without moving it) and we rescued history.!

[@cyansius3950]

I mean, to be fair the majority of people who are over 40 do not understand newer technology at anywhere near the levels of the younger generation. That being said, there is a major difference from a user's perspective and an engineers perspective. While I am not saying VHS is unimpressive in terms of technology, especially considering that for more than 5,000 years nobody had the ability to record network television; but if we look at today's HDD the head can differentiate on such a small scale that quantum effects start to mess with it. Then we have computing and understanding how the data-path works in the respective processor, how instructions are stored in hex, and much much more than that and more than I am willing to get into for this comment; and I will point out that as a CSE major, nothing he said in this video remotely tripped me up or was foreign to me and I understood all the technical terms, but keep in mind that I am an engineer and the average user isn't going to have the knowledge to talk on an engineering level so its probably going to sound more impressive and advanced to them because they don't really have a grasp on how much more advanced the systems that go into today's technology are. What I am trying to say is this; you sound like someone who has a technical background, and for that reason you know how much more impressive the technology from yesterday is than the average person prior to watching this video. I also have a technical background, and I know that older technology is impressive in its own right, but when you tried to argue that the newer generation sees your generation as technologically illiterate and claim that obviously isn't the case because engineers and technicians existed back then, it doesn't make sense because most of the time the older generation is completely lost when it comes to newer technology from a user standpoint and engineers and technicians are a unique case. I could not count the amount of times older people ask me to help them on something on a user level, and this is where that stereo type of older generations not being as good with technology comes from, but I can still bury people from my own generation with my technical knowledge, and I would suspect an engineer from the 80s or 90s could do the same, but it isn't talking about the same thing; the younger generation is on average, much better at using technology than the older generation, and just because an engineer managed to wrap miles of tape into something doesn't change the fact that from a user level the older generation often is less capable when it comes to tech than the younger generation. Newer tech is more impressive in terms of how much we can pack into it, which is to be expected, but none the less, I enjoy looking at older solutions to problems, even though we are now years ahead of those solutions. I get irked when people act like nobody from an older generation can understand newer technology, but I also get irked by people from an older generation acting like what was achieved back then is still the greatest thing ever and that newer technology isn't more impressive because of x, y or z. There is no reason for the young to insult the intelligence of the old, and there is no reason for the old to insult the intelligence of the young.

[@Kaiwala]

I was born only in 2002 yet i clearly and vividly remember owning a VCR with multiple VHS tapes, one of our most prized tapes being the original star wars trilogy. Sadly these have been lost to time, which is upsetting since i actually want to watch the originals again in all their glory.

[@danyf3116]

Now to be fair, there is the other older crowd who continues to evolve with the technology. I am of that generation. What I don't like of today's technology is the fragility of it compared to say, PhilipStephens007's time (which is mine also.) Take a car radio of my time when I was 12 years old, and these things were tanks. Ok, they just played music and if you had the money, you could get FM as well. We didn't. We had a good old AC Delco AM only. But the distance it could pull stations compared to my car radio today, what a joke. Reason? Today's technology is getting smaller and smaller and by doing so, what makes the magic happen is lost. In this case, traces on boards and components. Minimal voltage required means we can't supply to much amplification in circuits. Open the AC Delco and some traces are as wide as 1/4 inch and the thickness of it is high as well. Another thing that is sad about today's technology is that it may advance too quickly. Why not fix and make sure something is dully working and safe before releasing it out to the open? In this case, software. Don't charge me money on a product that I have to buy and beta test for you when you release patch after patch in the same month. Also my generation compared to yours differs as things were built to last. We didn't have to learn how to operate what replaced what had just broken cause it would be a few years if not decades, between them. That's why mom and pop didn't want to upgrade to the next best thing. They were happy with what they had. In this case, I'm talking about TV's. Again, I have always been on the forefront of technology thanks to parents that liked the weird and wonderful gadgets as they came out. TV's were one of them. I have seen the slow build of sizes while at my parents so the above line didn't apply to them. I bought my first HDTV 15 years ago. It was so new then that I had a resolution that nobody even knew then. 576i. Talk about primitive!!! 15 years later, we are now with 4K TV's, 8K are already out-phased, yet we can't even have an OTA from ALL TV stations to send 1080p signal. Even cable is lacking in that department. Let alone 4K, don't think 8K OTA is for tomorrow. By then, PhilipStephens007 and I will be long gone and you will be the new older generation and your kids will make fun of you with their holographs when you talk to them about 1080p!!!! The generation I actually blame is the one below yours. They have NO clue whatsoever of how things got to where we are today. I know as I worked in a school for over 12 years. If I showed them something that they used to day that started in a totally different form from my time, they made fun of it. Rude as if during my tech time, they hadn't invented it, it might have skipped their generation. So as you can see, we are all new techies that slowly turn into dinosaurs. Your turn will come and get it. We all go through it. ;) LOL

[@TheRealColBosch]

@@Kaiwala Look for a good LaserDisc player. The best-quality, original-cut Star Wars films are on LaserDisc, and really aren't that expensive. I've seen New Old Stock, in the shrinkwrap, standard-speed (CAV: the one you want, with the best picture quality and perfect freeze frames) copies going for $30-$45 per film. If you're okay with CLV "extended play," then you can find them MUCH cheaper, perhaps $10/film, but you'll lose out on the nifty LaserDisc trick play features. There is also a THX-remastered Definitive Edition boxed set, which goes for about $100-$150 and is fully CAV speed. Just be careful, as the Special Editions were also released on LaserDisc, and you'll want to avoid the Japanese releases unless you want hard-coded subtitles. Personally, and this may be nostalgia talking, I think the Original Trilogy films look best in standard definition. Modern Blu-Ray pressings - besides being of the godawful Special Editions - look strange, thanks to whatever method was used to convert the 35mm film to HD.

[@Kaiwala]

Hmm sounds interesting. I don't really mind the video quality of the films though, so i'd much rather get it digitally or a CD at least because i don't really have access to laser disc players or the like. OR i could just try and find my old tapes and pull out the VCR but i doubt i'd have much luck lol.

[@PushingThroughThePain]

Oh! My! Goodness!!! THANK YOU for making this video!!! As a Xennial, having grown up in the 80's and 90's, and having been a HUGE A/V geek, I have to say that I have always wondered about this! You answered SO MANY lingering questions I have had... I was especially blown away by the idea of DIGITAL VHS! Oh how I wish I had known... Thank you again for this vid and your channel! I'm hooked 😁👍👍

[@MrTeknotronic]

8hrs of MacGuyver on a single tape. Those were the days.

[@josephcontreras8930]

I still got my next generation episodes on sony& tdk vid tape and they still viewable today. Also most real ghostbusters toons too. It's a wonder vcrs worked so well due to all those mechanical parts moving and rarely had any tape eating issues. Vhs and vcr good old days.

[@joeblankenship377]

For a while, it was the best thing ever that you could go rent 3 movies and record all of them onto one tape with a 2nd VCR. We had a ton of home bootlegged movies back in the early 90s.

[@ItsaRomethingeveryday]

I really like how precise and clear that you did a break down on this, I've been fixing and restoring this wonderful machines for decades and still have numerous units still in use to this day, my friend's and co workers always bring me these things to repair for them, Big Like on your vid!!!

[@chrissavage5966]

Just came across this. Thank you for doing such a good job of explaining the format for the uninitiated! I started work as a broadcast engineer back in 1981 and spent a large part of my time working in VT. When I joined, we had a mix of Ampex VR-2000 quad machines and VPR-2 helical scan machines. We used a lot of the 'domestic' and non-broadcast cassette formats too, U-matic, high-band U-matic, that sort of thing. One machine that always made my day when I had to work on it was the Ampex VPR-20. Those clever chaps managed to cram all the necessary bits into a small enough package to make a portable 1" C format machine. I spent many, many hours nursing those machines. The quad machines in particular required constant tending.

[@DeanandLisa1803]

Be kind please rewind 😃

[@leifvejby8023]

You made me think of a dvd rewinder I saw somewhere! X-)

[@0Myles0]

Do millennials even know what "Rewind" even means? lol

[@PsylomeAlpha]

0Myles0 yes. millennials are people who were born in the 80s and 90s. people who came of age in the 00s.

[@MaryStewart]

to err is human, to rewind is divine

[@dennisneo1608]

NO! >:(

[@joshuacook275]

You taught me something in an interesting and understandable way. Subscribed

[@HistoryandFacts]

Excellent, amazing video. I used to repair VCRs for more than 10 years in my workshop

[@Rusty_B_And_The_Gang]

Thank you for explaining how analog video is recorded. Fascinating stuff.

[@shootmcrunfast]

Excellent video, really enjoyed that. I always wondered why the drum was at such a funky angle.

[@toddmiller5322]

I'm old enough to remember when my eyes and ears sampled the world at a higher fidelity than electronic media did.

[@benjaminmarks8765]

Lol

[@shivorath]

So... today? Even the best cameras and microphones in the world don't come anywhere close to our natural senses. Our best displays lag even further behind.

[@Azmythometre]

@@shivorath Every pixel of perfect raw 12k video is about 0.006° which is a bit better than 20/20 vision. I still wouldn't swap my eyes out with cameras just yet.

[@shivorath]

@@Azmythometre Sure... because resolution is everything. Color gamut especially, Digital Cinema standards only cover about 53% of the human eye's capability. Most cameras get a lot less than that. Not to mention dynamic range, low-light performance, etc.

[@GogiRegion]

@@shivorath True. In fact, a lot of ultra high resolution screens are trying to solve that problem by having more pixels than the eye can see and then by averaging out different pixels you can get more colors than the number LEDs in the screen can display. The difference between 4k and 1080p isn’t resolution, because at a reasonable viewing distance you’re not telling the difference, but instead it’s that the 4k has more displayable colors for you to see. When you look at a 4k screen for the first time, you probably won’t be able to see it as sharper, but it’ll look _way_ more colorful and vibrant assuming 4k video.

[@stragulus]

Great video! I never thought about the signal transfer between the rotating heads and the stationary drum. Very inventive solution. I have the same RCA VCR, I love that clunky beast. Sadly on mine, the tape tension mechanism is broken. I have another similar model that I restored which does fully work and has a like-new set of video heads. The picture quality on a CRT is still surprisingly enjoyable to watch.

[@SavannahBurris]

I just found a VHS player at Goodwill for $10!! I had to open it and fiddle around to grt it to work, but I'm so excited to watch the old tapes my family still has lying around. It's been so long since I've used a VHS!!

[@video99couk]

Don't forget Beta also went digital. The professional version of Betamax was Betacam, and the digital version of that, Digital Betacam, was a huge hit with every TV studio in the world. Professional versions of VHS hardly got off the ground. It's fair to say that Sony made more money from Beta than anyone ever did from VHS.

[@LinearBob]

The Betacart was THE "money machine" in most TV stations because it played all of the commercials and news stories, and used the same Beta cassette as the home Beta machines did, although the tape format was much different and the tape moved through the transport much faster so true broadcast quality video came from those machines. The average Beta cassette was only good for 20 minutes in the broadcast format, but I can assure you that Sony sold a lot of Betacart machines to TV stations around the world (once they made machines that could handle those 3 mutually incompatible color encoding systems; NTSC, PAL, and SECAM).

[@SteveM1998]

Digital Betacam is still alive and well as the best physical archival format for SD television. It’s successor, HDCam and HDCamSR use the almost same cartridge as DigiBeta (the larger variant) and is still the professional delivery method of 1080p programming on tape. Some of their decks, which only recently ceased production, are backwards compatible with DigiBeta.

[@NUCLEARARMAMENT]

@@SteveM1998 I'm very poor and all I can afford to shoot on is the old standard definition, professional VCR formats made by Sony, such as Betacam (1982), Betacam SP (1986), Digital Betacam (1993), Betacam SX (1996), and MPEG IMX (2001). I bought an HDCAM SR (2003) portable VCR recently and some tapes, but I have no camera that can record to it as I only possess standard definition cameras.

[@londislagerhound]

Digital Betacam was a revelation. Suddenly we could use multiple passes at an edit without quality loss. Before then the only digital device available to me as an editor was an Abekas A66 with just 30 seconds of record time.

[@tomcal25]

@@londislagerhound D-1 would have given you multiple passes and longer recording time. It was around before Digi-Beta and was also a component recorder vs composite. Expensive machine but well worth it for editing and graphics.

[@WAQWBrentwood]

It was the amazing complexity of VCRs that had me pissed that early DVD players were so damned expensive. They were mechanically no more complex than a CD player and couldn't even record. I literally didn't go to DVD untill recorders became available. DVD did have a better picture quality than VHS, but without recording ability, it was not much use to me. Fortunately that changed, but I still respect the sheer genius of videotape recorders. It's amazing that they could make them so good and yet relatively cheap as consumer devices.

[@gfox9295]

The early VCRs were crazy expensive. And there were VHS players (with no recording possible) available during the VCR era. For those who couldn't afford or just didn't want/need the recording variety. Not that surprising that DVD players / DVD recorders followed similar patterns decades later.

[@ricknelsonm]

You are Brilliant, this is one of your talents

[@calypso22]

I agree. A truly excellent video on a complex and fascinating subject. I'm 76 years old, so I have lived through the analog to digital revolution and watched complex analog machines being replaced by much simpler digital equivalents. Obvious examples were typewriters, video cameras and projectors, telephones etc. Although digital equipment is cheaper, simpler and more dependable , I cannot help being impressed by the sheer ingenuity shown by old analog machines.

[@MrDehicka]

Kudos for wearing anti VHS jacket!

[@DanHarkless_Halloween_YTPs_etc]

Moiré city! 😵

[@ilnicco]

MrDehick

[@willmich1]

Looks like his jacket is aliasing

[@Canabees1090]

explain_?

[@sindrehansen9647]

Alvaro Rodriguez The pattern on his jacket works horrible with VHS quality

[@joeb2588]

The VCR was...is the greatest. I thought Matsushita made VCR's were the most reliable and built really well.

[@robertwhite6203]

joe b Matsushita electric owned Panasonic & Techincs stereo equipment & quasar . They one of Japan’s largest electrincs firms . Panasonic built some of vcrs & very reliable . & you can google Matsushita electric on line !

[@TARDIB]

Robert White well that makes sense why the Panasonic made cdrs my friend was getting in the mid 90s said Panasonic but came up as the company name you mentioned. I sure wish we would have waited just a few years later as prices heavily dropped when CD burners came mainstream in America.

[@airborne2876]

I remember when I was a kid, I always looked into my VCR, and thought that the video head was broken, but the VCR still worked, so I never did anything; but when the VCR would mess up, I always hit the top of the VCR, thinking it would bump the head back into place lol.

[@spvillano]

And to think, I used to fix those damned things for a living. And LaserDisc and DVD players and CD players... Then, the price started dropping and I saw the handwriting on the wall, jumped to computers and networked systems, the rest is history. Still comes in handy for when something breaks on a holiday weekend, as I know how to repair switch mode power supplies to component level, still have a solder station, meter and oscilloscope. Although, after replacing a probe, I had to remember how to properly tune the replacement probes...

[@abpsd73]

@@spvillano A friend of mine did electronic repairs for a while. As electronic things approached the "throw away" stage, he got out of the business. When parts/labor cost more than a new replacement, it's hard to justify keeping the old outdated one.

[@tlaroche38]

@@spvillano laserdisc repair eh?? Funnily enough I just bought a pair of Philips VLP 600s which (unsurprisingly) don't work and am going to attempt to fix them!! Don't suppose you'd fancy giving me some pointers? Never worked on one before so don't even know where to begin really!!

[@3ffrige]

You’re absolutely amazing when trying to portray technical information to an audience. When I do demonstrations of our products to my customers, I say, “uhm...” a lot. A LOT. To the point that it’s cringey (is that even a word?) to review the WebEx recording of my demos. How do you not say ‘uhmmm’ every other word?

[@electrictroy2010]

Just don’t say “um”. Learn that it’s okay for a little gap of silence between each sentence, as you compose your thoughts.

[@tjnickles4782]

I still use my vcr to this day

[@enzoperruccio]

Tj Nickles X2. Black and white movies and a 40 tape stack of home made recordings of tv programmes i found in the trash is my go to media. Usually a family video also shows up to the party. VHS is an awesome format that sadly isnt appreciated as it should today, if people just knew the ammount of engineering that went to create the format and the machines. Have you ever worked on a vcr? I did, and let me tell ya, having to sync an entire mechanism from zero is not fun at all. Take care of your vcr, theyre time bombs that could fail at any moment. As i always say, never talk about how good a vcr is still working, it can be the last time you say it.

[@danagibbs3265]

I still have VCRs and a bunch of tapes

[@tjnickles4782]

Dana Gibbs What brands of tapas do you by I like Kodak and Polaroid and there’s a couple other brand I like to buy and use

[@coydog7902]

Same

[@autogolazzojr7950]

I have lots of tapes but no vcr. Every year we get lots of vhs players donated for kids to take apart. Maybe I'll get one working and rip video off the tapes.

[@AlphaControlBroadcasting]

Great video! You covered all of the things I personally think is impressive about recording to videocassette. As a side note you are very right on the 90s sort of "taking" features away from the format. Feature wise, the best VCR's tended to be released in the late 80s. The only problem with these is due to the amount of features they pack, they tend to break down a lot more. While late 90s dedicated VCR's tended to be the most rugged due to being simplified and essentially, perfected for mass production. Using VCR's from all different decades will yield different results but will always be super fascinating to compare and contrast. Going further, once VHS started to be combined with DVD the quality of the VCR portion itself started going downhill even faster. Most would think it would go up due to time, but honestly my 1989 Sony VCR blows my 2008 VHS/DVD combo player out of the water. I'm rambling now, but again, great video and thanks!

[@glaceRaven]

Watching in late 2020, and this was quite the nostalgia trip. It brought back a flood of memories of watching VHS tapes from my childhood. It also tells me how much of those memories of it were nostalgia. It's really interesting to see the inner workings of something I'd never even thought about. Amazing as usual! ^.^ also is it weird to find the VHS sound quality almost relaxing?

[@Diwasho]

Oh so THAT'S why the head drums were slanted and not level with the tape. This has bugged me for the longest time and, in fact, a few minutes into the video I started hoping you'd explain it. Thank God you did, now it makes so much sense.

[@truckinman86]

11:55. I just got thrown back into elementary school, watching Bill Nye The Science Guy on a (back then) couple year old CRT TV, which sat on a roll away cart.

[@InflatablePlane]

I always knew it was going to be a good day in class when we came back from recess and that TV was rolled out in front of the classroom.

[@charlie_nolan]

I love the sound of spinning VCR heads. It’s so calming and cool.

[@matthewalexander9343]

Reminds me of my childhood growing up.. I’m only 15 but it brings back so much because it amazed me when I was like 5

[@BlameThande]

Great video. Interesting you say that LP vanished in the 90s on VCRs in your region, because it was the opposite in my experience (in the UK) -- it didn't seem to be a well known thing in the 80s (and many VCRs couldn't even play back LP tapes) but suddenly became huge in the 90s. I remember my family had a VCR that also had an 'EP' on the digital display but there was no way to actually select EP, so we wondered what on earth that was for (presumably only available in other regions). As far as data storage goes, even without D-VHS, there was an obscure computer card you could buy in the late 90s that would let you back up your computer hard drive on an ordinary VHS tape using a plugged-in VCR, and it could take over 4 gigabytes - which was usually rather more than your hard drive even was at the time!

[@SuperFunkmachine]

The Danmere Backer VHS Hard Drive Backup System, LGR did a vid on that. (/watch?v=TUS0Zv2APjU)

[@benconway9010]

Urm mate I remember having a vhs recorder with LP on it here in the UK

[@MaxwelThuThu]

EP = SLP They changed the name in the later 90's for some reason.

[@crashbandicoot4everr]

@@MaxwelThuThu Panasonic called it SLP and JVC called it EP. JVC VCRs and VCRs made by manufacturers that got the license from JVC didn't have LP as a recording speed.

[@silkwesir1444]

There must have been several incompatible LP formats around. I remember lending a tape from a relative which they recorded in LP, but when I played it on my VCR, the picture was in black and white and there was a hiss in the audio, making it sound as if everyone had a lisp. That even though my VCR was LP capable, I could record LP with it if I wanted. So we figured that even though both our VCRs were offering something called "Longplay", they actually used different incompatible formats. Though we never got around to see what would happen if I record a tape with LP and we played it back in their device.

[@DIY-valvular]

This lecture remembers me the very first lesson of the VHS repair training course that I take at the legendary Ce.Ar.Tel (Centro Argentino de Televisión) in the early 1990's. I was an engineering student in my early 20's in that times. I repaired thousends of those machines along over fifteen years. Years of near poorness and hapiness.

[@DECCAS8]

Always wondered why the drum in a VCR was on a slant like that, no idea it had so much engineering behind it!

[@stephensnell5707]

Well you now know why

[@hrnekbezucha]

And you never get a clean picture when the tape is paused because the whole image isn't available to both the heads.

[@Ballowax]

That's becuase every frame of video on VHS is an interlaced feild since VHS is an anoluge home video format that runs in 480i

[@catonthemoon2084]

With a 4 head player you could

[@nexusxe]

@@catonthemoon2084 A frame buffer would also do the trick

[@Thegonagle]

@@nexusxe When talking about what was possible at an affordable price in a consumer machine in the 80's, putting 4 heads in the spinny part was a much more practical solution.

[@stephensnell1379]

@@Ballowax you mean Analogue

[@Vgp-rp4iu]

Man I remember our first our vcr when I was a kid. It must have been a late 70s or early 80s model because one thing I do remember about it was the "remote". Well not really a remote but actually just a switch that said "pause" and "rec" and it was attached to a 20ft cord that plugged into the vcr so when you are recording a show off tv you would have to switch the little switch to "pause" during commercials then back to rec when the show came back on. I always wanted to control the switch but my dad wouldn't let me lol.

[@rafasimsim]

+1!!😂 😂 😂 😂

[@lordkayx]

Its amazing how many people have viewed this video. Still shows people are endlessly curious. That goes for me as well. Thanks!!!

[@hexzyle]

So the tracking of the tape's recorded speed is why you get those audio pitch changes for the first couple seconds of resuming a VHS tape?

[@electrictroy2010]

Yes for cheap VCRs. Quality Super VHS VCRs with shuttle & jog functions carefully control the tape speed precisely.

[@Mega88zero]

Super informative. Loved the video.

[@phobos2k2]

I remember learning about this in a video production class I took in school in the 90's. God I'm getting old.

[@terenceokane]

WOW to that segment where you displayed the levels of VHS quality. Such incredible attention to detail! Thanks!

[@natheria4933]

The 80s were such a bad ass decade.

[@Saboteur709]

Wish I could go back.

[@natheria4933]

Saboteur same

[@switchel_schnitzel4154]

wish I was born then lol

[@dashbrannigan850]

Barrel 999 at least you know you missed out.

[@switchel_schnitzel4154]

yup lol

[@DukeHastMich]

You missed the part where Sony tried to lock everyone out of the market and force them to pay royalties to be a distributor. VHS took over because they handed it out like candy and made it easy to make movies on VHS. Betamax actually had superior quality.

[@karlito_sway]

totally agree, attention was kept til this point, sony kept the patent for themselves, only betamax machines made were by sony & sanyo & no matter what vhs lovers say, betamax was still a superior image to svhs...

[@KRAFTWERK2K6]

Sony and their patent royalities… THAT has always been the doorblocker for technical innovation and ruined the success of Minidisc drastically >_> However it saved them from dying after the development of Blu-ray almost ruined Sony financially. If that medium would have tanked, Sony would not really have survived that failure that easy.

[@ned8880]

Slightly better video quality didn't mean squat to the average viewer. Being able to record two hours (VHS) instead of one hour (Betamax) was way more enticing. That made it easy for consumers to reject Betamax.

[@karlito_sway]

betamax had 3hr tapes available?

[@KRAFTWERK2K6]

I don't think so. Even the biggest Betacam tapes only held up to 2 hours maximum for standard play. You could only get more than 1 or two hours if the tape was recorded with LP mode. Betamax had I think 2 LP modes, making it possible to even record up to ca. 3½ hours for PAL and 5 hours for NTSC on 254 Meter tapes (which is… i guess 833 and a third Feet). So that was the only way to get feature film length movies on Betamax for homevideo.

[@g.oatmeal8813]

The VCR is an elegant device from a more civilized age.

[@Ballowax]

@@TheWashableBomb you didn't get the joke did you

[@gladonos3384]

What age? You mean the fucking age were in now? Jesus... This isn't isn't some long lost technology from centuries past. It's only like 40~ years old.

[@glubone]

But only V2000:P

[@locke103]

before the dark times. before optical media.

[@cageybee7221]

reactionary detected

[@bokiantic]

🎩 tip of the hat for the video! I was a kid to go for any vhs problem in 80' but never find answer - how does video works?! I guess it was your God given life role to explain it 35 years later. Bravo maestro