VHS Tapes - Were they as bad as we remember?

[@jamesallen5627]

The thing is, it wasn’t bad quality… just seems it now because we have the tech that we do. No way in ‘87 would I have said “I can’t watch this, quality is terrible”

[@shinyhorse8045]

We've gotten spoiled haven't we

[@claudiocruzat8777]

@@shinyhorse8045 Im 42 and yes..spoiled to the core but when you watched vhs tapes in very bad condition even for.. mm 1990 i remember that i started to curse a lot.. jajaaa.

[@Decoy303]

I know... As if.

[@flybeep1661]

@SlowHandMcQueeg I'm 41, my grandparents at that time had some beta tape and no it wasn't soooooooooooo much better, it was just slightly better but not by much, I remember. If I'm not mistaken 8-bit guy has a comparison vid between vhs and beta on his channel and pretty much confirms my argument and drills your into the ground. So stfu with hyperbolic BS.

[@nickh5081]

I grew up in the 70s watching hockey on a 13" B&W T.V. with rabbit ears. Now I can't change the channel fast enough if I end up on a non-HD channel by mistake on my 65" 4K. Like you said, we accept what we have.

[@KanoWhite53]

Kids these days will never know the pain of having to rewind a movie, because the last person was too lazy.

[@PloffyNZ]

be kind, rewind!

[@KanoWhite53]

superplough We didn't have this saying in Australia. We had "Don't be an a#$hole, rewind"

[@YaGirlJuniper]

GOOD. That means I'll never have to experience that again either! It sucked.

[@rickyrico80]

Kano Animation We didnt have a saying, we had to pay for a "rewind service". We are Dutch, after all.

[@venix20]

omg yes that was so frustrating !!!!

[@ccc1362]

We didn't know any better. It was fun as hell going to the rental store.

[@Princeton_James]

And finding that your movie was not there.

[@wannabeetiger]

I completely agree ! It was so fun going to the rental store for VHS and video games! I was too young back then to go in the adult section lol.

[@twangyeh]

Straight to the horror section! ;)

[@johnunkerman]

unless the person before you failed to rewind it

[@Gencturk92]

@@wannabeetiger i wish i could go back to those days again, back when there was no internet, wi-fi, Instagram and iphones

[@JerseyJeff84]

I miss the whole VHS "process." The whole "be kind rewind" at rental stores, the large plastic case(including the snapping sound), buying blank ones to record, forgetting to snap off the tab and recording over a favorite event.

[@frankmerker630]

Squeezing the vhs out of the box with the blockbuster plastic on it is the best feeling in the world

[@WegrennerX]

I loved recording over favourite content. 😎

[@theonewiththeeyeoftruth884]

Did you ever record over rented movies? 😆 I never did, but it was tempting.

[@brainspin7518]

Ahhh the good ole days. I understand jeff. As my buddy told me once: it's not the convenience that we miss necessarily... it's the nastalgia .

[@sc885]

My man!

[@cincyfan987]

Not once did I ever think that vhs was bad growing up. When dvds came out I was only excited about the amount of space on the shelf they would save and not the boost in quality.

[@SpongeSebastian]

​@Ken Lompart They actually did have DVD recorders, but I don't think they were too common.

[@Funnylittleman]

I loved DVDs because I was (and still am) a film nerd and the directors commentary blew me away. I loved hearing the filmmakers and actors talk about the film

[@shardulsingh3174]

@@SpongeSebastian They did but were expensive and needed a writable DVD which were also expensive, they gradually became common and cheaper but we were moving onto sd cards and usbs.

[@itsmestan]

The only reason I don't still use VHS is because when our old TV broke (it was one that had the player built in) my Dad threw out all our old tapes.

[@michaelarojas]

True VHS takes up a lot of space but it’s still better than collecting DVDs.

[@XtoriezNovel]

VHS didn't freeze or skip, and you could fast forward through the FBI warnings.

[@nbrown5907]

Try usenet no fbi warnings no commercials.

[@OldClam5]

You had to manually rewind it every time. There were so many limitations to VHS-don't kid yourself into thinking it was any good.

[@ghostpeyton]

A simpler time

[@adjam7782]

OldClam5 VHS was a pain with all the rewinding and so on I admit. But there were many movies out on video that have yet to be released on dvd, or versions that have been released but have had scenes edited out. So unless you’ve kept a version of the movie on Video of which you can get transferred to a dvd, it could be hard work trying to find a version, or an original version of what you’re looking for.

[@buttermybizquit9797]

lol, you guys are just lazy. When I was a kid I would let it rewind and choose the next movie to watch to pass the time.

[@MIKEYPOOHBEARJACKSON]

In the classroom in elementary school we didnt care about quality. We only cared if we were going to do a free day of nothing

[@SilentKnight43]

lol - so true!

[@stevenalexander4721]

Unfortunately for me, the teachers always played crap like Barney which the rest of my class seemed to enjoy. All I could do is sit there and think, "What the hell is wrong with you people." I also use to get in trouble for not wanting to watch Barney or take naps with the rest of the class.

[@lemons2300]

I think kids still dont care. They just wanna see movies or bill nye in class

[@mi-ka-eltheguardian3837]

While giggling with your best buddy and making fun of virtually anything , which would eventually get you in trouble.

[@gjtrue]

Amen.

[@iaindunc1]

A friend and I have VHS Sundays. He's a collector of VHS so I still get to have that Blockbuster experience of walking about and picking a film lol

[@iaindunc1]

@Jeric White huh?

[@danimcfly5992]

Good old days, renting VHS movies based on the covers 😂

[@iaindunc1]

@@danimcfly5992 haha yeah!! Luckily though for me I've got my mate lol he's obviously not got a full shops worth but one of his livingroom walls is just VHS and it's a big room! So many I have never even heard of!

[@mr.berardine1694]

Is it the Nerd?

[@iaindunc1]

@@mr.berardine1694 lol sadly not

[@rattmann36863]

Looking back, VHS does look bad. But only because we are now use to better video. VHS was about the best we had for home use at the time. It is nice to have lived long enough to do the comparison.

[@robintst]

There were the odd enthusiasts that were into Laserdiscs at the time. I knew no one personally that had any but my high school music teacher had a Laserdisc player for the classroom upon which we watched West Side Story. That always struck me as hilarious, not only having a machine that not a lot of people own but also a movie that not lot of those people would probably buy for it. :)

[@Musematt11]

I had a laserdisc player with about a dozen or so movies, and they did have a somewhat higher video quality than VHS, plus CD-quality digital sound. The biggest selling point for me at the time was that they tended to be letterboxed, showing the full width of the movie, while VHS versions tended to use the severely cropped "pan & scan" format. Eventually, DVDs hit the scene, which had a slightly higher quality than the analog-video laserdisc.

[@GoldSrc_]

Beta had better quality than VHS, Beta only lost because of its shorter duration tapes. Oh, and Laser Disk had the best quality for home use at the time.

[@robintst]

I have some Laserdiscs now but they're more for just novelty. I only paid a couple bucks for each, two of them being Ghostbusters I & II. :) The overwhelming majority of my video collection is VHS and I'm perfectly okay with that. I'm not all that hung up on picture quality when it comes to old movies. I've seen enough classics remastered in high-def to know I don't want to see all the imperfections in props, costumes, makeup, and sets that we never used to pick up on in SD being exposed. Hell, I have several obscure movies that never received DVD reissues so there's not many other ways to view them outside of videotape.

[@pippolupin8715]

Bad Blu-ray Disc, also 4K, is very fuck and is dead.

[@saturnproductions1827]

People in 2030: DVDs - Were they as bad as we remember?

[@LegioXXI]

May those unskippable intros, "piracy bad"-clips and overly animated menus rest in hell.

[@zaltmanbleroze]

In 2030 we will have holodecks. We'll be part of the movie. You will actually be able to experience the hoverboard from BTTF2.

[@sethhorst6158]

It will be 2080 and I'll probably still have my VHS tape collection if every single one of them manages to stay intact and not get destroyed in some kind of flooding or house fire.

[@sebastianmignolet628]

Netflix: Was as bad as we remember?

[@brandonpage7087]

Yeah, just give it some more time & we'll be nostalgic for dvds & Blu-rays, once they're obsolete. I know i'm gonna hold onto mine. I will never accept streaming. I want a physical copy of a movie or tv show, to own.

[@girlytoads]

It’s not really the quality being bad, it’s how my VCR would eat a tape. If you’ve never had your tape player EAT a tape, then you are fortunate

[@noslost-z7r]

Happened to a very dear recording from 2003 here. It frazzled a good 10 seconds of it - I thankfully was able to save the rest. Cause: a plastic pillar that had come loose and decided it wouldn’t catch onto the tape. Instead of just rejecting it, the tape was already out, fully exposed and it got caught in the rest of the mechanism as it ejected. So much fun. I took for granted that it would happen eventually. Got a new machine, top of the bill late 2007 build, and have been happy since 👍 as for the precious tape: it comes out at special occasions only 😂

[@manmaje3596]

@@noslost-z7r It might be a worthy investment to have it transferred and copied onto a DVD. You can still keep the tape.

[@philiponicho]

I had a cheep player from 1989 for over 10 years and it never damaged a tape

[@jessecruzen1597]

That’s cause you were a poor. Just make more money. Duh

[@livefomthebarbecue468]

yep

[@MrPuNkS27]

They were never that bad, they just got outdated. Everything for the time was literally the best until the next best thing comes along then we get spoilt by it.

[@scottandrewhutchins]

Streaming isn't higher quality that DVD/Blu-Ray/4K.

[@BatmanisBatman]

@@scottandrewhutchins Streaming is MUCH higher quality than DVD, what are you streaming 480p?

[@greg1030]

@@BatmanisBatman Most streaming sources don't have the lossless sound quality of BD (e.g. DTS MA); eventually this may change.

[@lumer2b]

LCD screens were better only on resolution and size/weight against CRTs, everything else (color, contrast, brightness, viewing angle, response time) got much worse and things are only catching up now

[@cainabel2553]

DVD was not clearly best: lines horizontal lines than VHS and first generation of videos were not that good.

[@Rozoboy]

Considering we used to watch on such small screens, the quality was fine. I miss the VHS, it was so cooler than opening the netflix app.

[@Princeton_James]

Corona virus would have spread faster back then.

[@T1Oracle]

Hmm... 🤔 I'll keep my Netflix. 😂

[@bryanrmcf]

Oh really?

[@barryphillips7327]

Television screens are a series of dots like pixels watching a VHS tape on say a 14'' the picture quality was reasonable but change it to a big tv say a 25--29'' then you will notice the difference, do not sit to close it looks ok but get in close the picture quality is not as good, i am not sure if the dots ( sorry i can remember the correct name ) varied between say a cheap tv and a higher quality tv.

[@Pit1993x]

I don't like streaming services, so luckily i don't have to experience opening the netflix app. I do enjoy popping in a BD though, retains part of the VHS era. ^^

[@Atomic.101]

Be kind rewind!! & If you don’t it’s a $1.00 rewind fee!

[@stevehenrichs5091]

YEP!

[@Toogoodtobetrue458]

I had a dedicated rewinding machine!

[@hennylo68]

$.50 in my area.

[@david-spliso1928]

More like a fine.

[@scottbreon9448]

My local movie store had to stop charging because literally nobody rewinded the movies. I did, because I'm not a fucking lazy twat. But most people around here just didn't bother. It always sucked when I used to rent a movie and had the rewind the damn thing.

[@mikeoxmall7917]

What a remember was hours in video stores trying to pick a couple of films for that night, that was part of the fun

[@zipzip8239]

i hated it and now it takes even longer since there are so many more options streaming.

[@theonewiththeeyeoftruth884]

Yep, and getting 1 or 2 NES games while I was there. Lots of fun.

[@BabeTheAstrologer]

@@zipzip8239 Meditate. Get fresh air. Listen to birds.

[@zipzip8239]

@@BabeTheAstrologer why?

[@zipzip8239]

@Coo Chi its not about being lazy, its about wasting my life trying to decide what to watch.

[@Ashi8No8Yubi]

Man I miss less efficient, lower quality, less perfect tech. Makes things much more fun

[@robertrowland3750]

I don't remember VHS tapes as being bad. They suited me just fine.

[@silvafox07]

Thats cause TVa were also bad . And let's be honest you didn't know what 4k was yet . You didn't actually see anything better until years later .

[@silvafox07]

@Coo Chi lots of people care... hence the market for 4k tvs....

[@silvafox07]

@Coo Chi oh dear... you have an extra chromosome don't you? You poor thing .

[@silvafox07]

@Coo Chi You said something stupid I'm gonna tell you you said something stupid lol. Do you even know where you are right now ?

[@TheZombiesAreComing]

@@silvafox07 TVs were indeed bad back then. They were bulky and weighed as much as a bag of bricks.

[@Smokydoggg]

Maybe I was just young in the 90's but as far as I can remember back in those days we weren't as obsessed with picture quality as we are now. I think the big obsession with picture quality came when DVD's came out and flat screens started showing up.

[@kz1000ps]

That's because standard TV resolutions hadn't changed a bit since the NTSC standards were put in place in the early '50s. It was only with the rise of digital that things started to get shaken up.

[@Clay3613]

LaserDisc was better, however the players cost too much for most people and very few places rented discs.

[@irtbmtind89]

Some people certainly were, there is a reason Criterion Collection sold 100+ dollar laserdiscs.

[@specialsnowfake6744]

Smoky Doggg Well the focus was just getting a copy of the movie. Even crappy tape copies would do.

[@ramairgto72]

It started with the LP sized Lazer Disk. I can rem watching Star Trek (wanna say it was III) in a department store, the disk was rather beautiful, I rem hitting the Eject Button and this glorious shiny rainbow reflecting thing smoothly slid out.

[@danlivni2097]

VHS were good. They gave people the ability to record off TV and rent movies. VHS didn't have the picture of DVD, but thank goodness for VCRs in the 80s and 90s

[@capcom23]

when life was simple

[@michaelmartin9022]

I've already seen some people saying that there's a "flat spot" in the history of archiving broadcast TV around the end of VHS and the start of modern "Smart" formats (or just big enough hard drives to save loads of video to). I think there were DVD Recorders back in the day, but people just wanted "a DVD player" and got the cheapest one, without recording. There were hard drive based "boxes" for the likes of Sky TV, but they only had limited space and deleted old stuff automatically, also people didn't record the ads / news / other interesting bits and pieces, only shows and movies, which you can get on DVD anyway.

[@xjunkxyrdxdog89]

@@michaelmartin9022 not all history is worth saving. I think we'll all get by without spacejam and Clinton trial commercials.

[@andrew_koala2974]

NO .. People were NOT recording Off of a TV .. They were recording OFF AIR Stop it with that nonsense.

[@feraflauna3238]

+Dan Livni-They sure didn't have the audio quality either. . .Or the durability. . .Over time, the more you used VHS tapes, the more you destroyed the film inside of it to where it eventually became slowly degraded. . .unusable. . .Fortunately, and through a sheer miracle, despite that we owned our own massive library of VHS tapes (which I wish we still had even today :D, I'd definitely want to hold on to them. . .), very few of our tapes ever suffered that problem. And between eight people in the entire house, our tapes were ALWAYS in heavy rotation, rewinding, fast forwarding, and rewinding all the way back to the beginning. . .Especially because we only had one major tv system throughout the entire house, and one tiny tv/vcr player in the bedroom, so every moment you could claim the vcr player for yourself was utterly indispensable. :D. The VCR players were often far more unreliable than the tapes, for us, they would often jam, or one of my nightmares, occasionally spit out the tape where the entire film was left unspooled, broken, and completely unusable. Despite all their problems and unreliability. . .I still do miss VHS players/tapes and had a hard time getting used to the emergence of DVDS. (And now I just mainly stream everything in an instant online, and pause, rewind, and fast forward with the click of a mouse. ..) Despite their problems, they were great for the time they were in. They were the absolute best we had at the time. Like every piece of technology throughout time, each new successors get far better with time. Improve from their predecessors to where probably even in the next even five years, streaming (or whatever will come after streaming and Blu ray) will become even better. The quality has vastly improved so much within the last 20 years between vhs, then dvds, then blu ray and streaming (and video recording making way to dvr, which made way to clicking with a button on your remote, to just an internet streaming feed), that I wouldn't be able to go back to using tapes. If I had to, I would use them again. It's so far ingrained in muscle memory, I definitely know how to still use them, but I really wouldn't like them as much anymore and see far more of the flaws I wasn't able to as a kid. . .But I am forever glad we had vhs as a kid. . .

[@TheCosmicFool]

As a kid in the 80s just the fact that I could watch cartoons when they weren’t being broadcast on tv was a big thing. We didn’t care about picture quality, because most tvs were the same (the big fuss was if your friend’s folks had a big tv, which in those days might have had a screen somewhere in the mid 20 inches!). I have a handful of VHS for nostalgia but for me the leap to DVD was phenomenal. The picture was massively better, no rewinding, able to skip to any part of the film and all the extras! Sure, the piracy ads were a pain but you just did something else whilst they were on (and with how slow Blu ray can be it was preferable). I have found a lot of those ads can be skipped or fast forwarded anyway.

[@SuperFunkmachine]

Screen have a lot to do with it, a small CRT across the room is miles away from massive 40+ inch LCD or a modern disk top monitor in terms of display.

[@DinoNuggies4665]

Piracy advertisement?

[@kovyvuri]

@@DinoNuggies4665 They mean the FBI warnings about piracy before the movie.

[@dguy0386]

VHS was much better for cartoons anyway, they look just fine, the picture quality only really starts to look bad with live action, and even that's only because we're now playing these tapes on flat screens 5 times bigger than anything they were designed to be played on

[@jmjacinto3114]

you guys are probably native english speakers so maybe did not care so much. But another great advantage of DVDs was being able to choose your audio language and subtitle tracks, which is a big leap as well if you live in a country with systematic and not always nice audio dubbing.

[@NekoFever]

A 1985 VHS with a flyer for a 1993 movie in the package? Well, I suppose it is about time travel...

[@KrazyKittyTailz]

It makes sense because the MCA/Universal Home Video pressing of BTTF was from 1994, the same year Jurassic Park made its home video debut. I had that same VHS copy before I upgraded to the 2002 DVD BTTF Trilogy Pack

[@hotchalupa]

stoopidmonkeyful - You didn't get it...did you?

[@retrovhsmanvaultfromthe70s97]

Olly Dean in the 1940s there where no vcr players

[@ridjexmc]

What? That has nothing to do with anything discussed here.

[@retrovhsmanvaultfromthe70s97]

Ridj some of the Looney tunes VHS tapes are not cheap on eBay

[@krzysztofczarnecki8238]

2:32 Who else felt the "new VHS cassette" smell watching this?

[@spaceman022]

Still burned into my head

[@franckydookie]

I couldn't smell anything because of my tears

[@nicholasdickens2801]

Krzysztof Czarnecki Me!

[@calambres6614]

I used to just love smelling the inside of the clear plastic cover on the white plastic Disney movies boxes talk about a gateway drug weed has helped me cope

[@benakanecrophile2878]

Too young to remember the “new cassette smell”

[@redoberon]

I still find vhs cool. I remember when I was a kid watching a movie was more like a ritual than todays routine of clicking a file or taping a screen. It was a special time

[@stephensnell1379]

Well you won't ever get to use VHS again anytime soon

[@birdysama2980]

@@stephensnell1379 except if they get their hands on a VHS player (which are pretty cheap nowadays)

[@nazninali1575]

What move title

[@speedracer1945]

I remember the first VHS film on a machine in 1981 Superman 2 . At the time I was on rough times and still owned a B/W tv and color was nice to watch but this made me think of all the movies and tv shows I would buy when I got mine which wasnt till 1986 and that vhs machine cost $300 steep for the time . Bought it at Wards on monthly charges .

[@garrysmith6734]

Mk Amen

[@vertz1515]

To think that all these artifacts and quality imperfections are now pretty much an aesthetic in its own league is so charming, yet so weird to think of.

[@rorz999]

I guess it was inevitable, people are nostalgic for their childhood and it's a reaction against the overly crisp, digital images we're used to nowadays

[@agentepolaris4914]

@@rorz999 it proves once again that more, isn't necessarily better

[@SviatoslavDamaschin]

You mostly notice these artifacts and imperfections on modern screens because they aren't designed to display this type of content/signal to begin with, lol. A 720p video on a 4k screen will look like crap but a 480p video on a 2k CRT will look waaaaay better and that's only the tip of the iceberg.

[@poolboyinla]

I love seeing movies in HD but I had more fun watching movies in the VHS days.

[@michi155]

That's true, because then a copy of a movie was really special. I remember when I got Toy Story as a kind. I watched it, rewinded it, and watched it again. Nowadays we are overloaded with movies throught netflix and prime

[@onehappynegro]

we rented moviebox (vhs unit in transportable bag with handle) and chuck norris movies. if you notice at home that the previous renter hadn't reversed the tape you would rant about it. after watching a movie me and my brother would ask who of us that got to reverse the vhs tape. we also competed with switching channels on the tv, mind you sweden had only 2 channels. the whole family watched tv and movies together.

[@HelloKittyFanMan.]

Not necessarily, Michi, because we can get the physical copies in HD on Blu-ray Disc.

[@airaero5473]

I remember watching Gremlins on my '98 tv set

[@FactLOCO]

A lot of that has to do just with younger age. Everything just seemed more fun :)

[@michaeldavidson8971]

VHS machines were built like tanks when they first came out, by the time they were going out they were made incredible cheap as were the VHS cassettes. If you have old cassettes from the early 80's you'll be surprised at how heavy they are compared to cassettes from the early 2000's.

[@retrovhsmanvaultfromthe70s97]

Michael Davidson I have a portable vcr player

[@okaro6595]

The old VCRs were heavy as they were full of individual components. Latter ones were far more integrated and therefore lighter. The older ones were not more reliable.

[@TimurTripp2]

I do, and yes they're quite a bit heavier compared to VHS cassettes from the early 2000's. However, there are some improvements in the newer ones and I think it's safe to say they're not much worse terms of video quality, perhaps even better.

[@retrovhsmanvaultfromthe70s97]

Michael Davidson I have a portable vcr player

[@joelmiedema7089]

Thanks, that's a cool fact. I have about 250 VHS tapes laying around, and I noticed how some tapes are a lot heavier than others, even though their runtime is shorter. Never thought about how they developed them lighter over time.

[@AmbiencePT]

VHS was awesome ! We cared about content not image quality. I miss the whole ritual of going to the videostore and having friends come over to watch movies.

[@pauleckert4321]

I agree. Hey remember when McDonalds would sell movies. I remember buying Back to the future for like 6 bucks new. I forgot what other movies were sold but I think it was a deal with Universal so they only sold movies from them.

[@GMAH111]

I don't think we stopped caring about this.

[@TombstoneChris]

Hello there and greetings. You guys must also be from a place we called the 90s. Where times were simpler. The world while not perfect seemed a lot more pleasant. And human beings actually interacted with each other. If you guys know how to go back there could you let me know?

[@harzfier]

@@TombstoneChris You just interacted with two guys you don't even know. Not bad these modern days.

[@CharlesHepburn2]

ChrisS82 if you just watch the video, there is a movie shown that will help get you back to the 90s if you go 88 mph.

[@ShootAUT]

The only bad memories I have about VHS are when the tape had finally gone bad. Apart from that, I have no idea what you're talking about when you say "as bad as _we_ remember".

[@frankmerker630]

All I remember is how bad every news broadcaster looked when they upgraded to HD quality, that much is for sure.

[@robertmcmahon4549]

Cool pic,max headroom brings back memories

[@ShootAUT]

@@robertmcmahon4549 Yes. If there's one tv show that would need to be rebooted, it's Max. They'd just have to change the tv stations into social media outlets. It would work now just as fine as it worked back then, maybe even better, with all the 80s nostalgia and dystopian cyberpunk craze going on.

[@robertmcmahon4549]

@@ShootAUT yeh i watched him recently and it doesnt look like its aged

[@ShootAUT]

@@robertmcmahon4549 Exactly.

[@AlisonBryen]

The thing is though...VHS was all we knew back then...it didn't bother us because we had nothing better to compare it with!

[@mctv6486]

actually beta was better however way too expensive for consumers

[@Stigmatix666]

@@mctv6486 Beta was indeed better, but vhs' aggressive marketing paid off

[@melaniepitingaro2001]

Laserdisc was a thing

[@scottbreon9448]

Beta had better picture quality, but VHS blank cassettes had longer recording time, which was the seller for VHS....also porn went with VHS

[@jeffreydotson4842]

My thoughts exactly! I don't recall sitting there thinking, "Oh, man, this really sucks!" while watching a VHS tape. However, something that I did notice was how easily VHS tapes and VCRs could be worn out.

[@mightymightyironhead]

When i was 12 years old. A whole Universe of films opened up for me to be able to watch on both Betamax and VHS, any time i wanted to. My mother worked at a video rental shop and i was also allowed to go and sit up stairs in the shop and watch all the latest releases before they were even available for customers to rent. VHS played a huge part in my childhood.

[@futuresocieties.]

You're so lucky mate

[@mightymightyironhead]

@@futuresocieties. golden days mate.

[@adventureguy4119]

What happened to your mum?

[@mightymightyironhead]

@@adventureguy4119 my mum died about 4 years ago. When i went back to attend the funeral and help clear her belongings, she still had a ton of old VHS video's stored in boxes, including a load of promotional tapes. She was watching and enjoying the tapes until the end.

[@milesipka]

@@mightymightyironhead My condolences to your family for your mother. I grew up in late 1980s Yugoslavia (born in Australia though) and I grew up on VHS as my uncle had access to bootleg tapes. I still use VHS to this day (still have three working VCRs which I keep clean by using cleaning cassettes and isopropyl alcohol cleaning fluid). Your memories with your mother are special - cherish them dearly.

[@Peter_1986]

I actually kinda like the VHS look; it has a sort of warm and smooth look.

[@Barney_rubble983]

Me too. I was not impressed with the whole DVD transition

[@le_plane]

Me too! It has that feel that DVD can't reproduce.

[@zyxwfish]

Me too, I like the old VHS quality.

[@jamesfrench7299]

They really could go the way of records, going by these comments!

[@bluebull399]

@@le_plane I never liked DVD, it just felt worse. Bluray is what changed the game.

[@JHallam77]

My brother had his first VHS player and we used to watch Wayne’s World over and over, the tracking used to go out so bad and we had to hit the machine to get it to work again. Great times.

[@dougrogan379]

Party time, excellent!

[@benjones6030]

VHS was fine! we didn't have anything HD to compare it to.

[@jacksonskyline]

Capacitance Electronic Disk

[@SpongeSebastian]

Unless you saw the movie in theaters.

[@joroc]

Exactly

[@jacobfelix9452]

Are you all special? Those formats (except for BetaMax) were rarely used in comparison to VHS. BetaMax could have been better quality than VHS had Sony used larger cassettes with more tape that would have allowed them to use the Beta 1 speed, but that speed was removed from most BetaMax VCRs by the early 80s. Thus, BetaMax was equal in quality (except for the ability to have somewhat better color and sharper background images) to VHS. U-Matic, another Sony format, was primarily and almost exclusively used for broadcasts. They were incredibly rare VCRs in regards to being used for home video purposes. CED, on the other hand, was unbelievably minuscule in the market, which is why it was discontinued in the mid 80s. Ask almost 99.5% or more of the Greatest Generation, the Baby Boomers, and Generation X and you’ll find that they will have never even heard the word “CED”. Not to mention the fact that NONE of those formats are HD.

[@SkinweedCorp]

Ben Jones I’ve been recording to VHS recently and it’s not even that bad.

[@matthewvanrensburg3824]

As a parent now, and child from VHS days, I'm rather missing those darn things. They were so much more robust in surviving the antics of a 4yr old ruffian than dvd's and whatnot is today.

[@mattwhitley8781]

Not if said 4 year old ruffian figures out how to get to the tape and gives it a good old yank! Like I did....my father was most annoyed.😆

[@aperson22222]

I don't remember them being bad at all.

[@Mookie12911]

aperson22222 it's because they were the latest technology we had back in the day. I remember when vcr's were hundreds of dollars lol

[@joedufour8188]

You also remember the humongous(for the time) 36" CRT TV being the holy grail of entertainment. 36" and 2 billion pounds(sure felt like it) of pure, grainy entertainment.

[@cultofmalgus1310]

and the standard TV screen being 19"

[@joemieszczur9735]

ya the shift in technology isnt noticed when its progress forward, tv always looked presentable as it evolved, but going back in time you could see how poor it really was. as a kid i grew up on married with children for example. watching it as it aired all episodes "looked" the same. but rewatching them now you can see the quality changes over each season. i think the same applies to mono sound in tv vs stereo. the change wasnt super noticable unless you had the better equipment and watched some media of lower tech. i think we can all agree when we flipped to digital broadcast the change was so big its impossible to go back. sparking the decades of "remastered" media to make watching tolerable. i do miss snow tho. was so much easier to watch a tv show with a little static than as it is now, where any loss of signal turns into a blocky unwatchable mess.

[@superperfectstranger815]

Joe Mieszczur Well only 1920eds film reel work on the moon so NASA can,t go back 😋 but robots on Mars have such limitations so you need such robots to help you with your blocks

[@bleeneo101]

No they were the best thing to ever happen in my life as a child.

[@VGALife]

"1985 VHS.." *Let me take this advertisement for a movie released in 1993 out of the package..*

[@Blackarachnia1996]

That shrink wrap was a tell tale sign it was resealed... he bought a used copy

[@jaybird8192]

Back in the days, VHS wasn't about picture quality, it was about watching blockbuster movies in the comfort of your home!

[@AutismFamilyChannel]

Back in the 80's and even 90's when you took a tape or DVD home, you were committed to watching it, and to some extent, more grateful and attentive to the content on screen. Now we can easily abandon ship if we don't like the way a movie is going in the first 10 or 15 minutes and sometimes cheat ourselves out of a good movie without knowing it. Also, with the digital workflow being much more accessible than film to video, everyone is making movies and the market is oversaturated with poor filmmaking. Just food for thought.

[@haskpts]

Yes, there are many movies now made ... and you wonder why?

[@perstephanies]

While I think I see what you're saying, I don't think I can agree. I had a lot of tapes that were recorded for me, due to not having cable, and they weren't just disposable content. In fact, sometimes we would watch the same recorded show or movie over and over, and FF through parts we didn't want. It was easier than when we would copy/bootleg/share music on cassettes! But maybe I just never had a great cassette player that would give me time marks! Loved VHS back then, but wouldn't trade it for streaming and saving shows/movies today!

[@michaelmartin9022]

Oh I dunno, I remember bailing on some rented movies back in the day which were terrible.

[@honkhonkler7732]

I somewhat agree. At least on the premise that there are too many garbage movies these days.

[@burntvirtue]

It's the same situation with all digitally created, and shared entertainment content now. There's an insane excess of youtube videos, podcasts, and soundcloud rappers all with Patreon accounts.

[@BlackFlagHeathen]

“Was VHS bad?” *Several mid 70s-early 2000s kids are typing*

[@WerewolfLord]

Early 70s too...

[@BlackFlagHeathen]

WerewolfLord VHS came out in the US in 1977.

[@mctv6486]

NO It Came Out in 1976 in the US and Beta came in 1975

[@corinneininahazwe2796]

Chloie Kwirant hhhhjjhhdjdkdlksjhxzkxk"zkjhhxhgxgzgdhggxhzjkkskkzhbhzhzkzhxjjzjzvvjdjixhhffjjhdhhggdhxuixkcjhjjhdggxghxhhhdhxjjxxudkxxjcjcjjxkkxn xxnxnxmxmjxcnbv

[@benzimer]

Corinne Ininahazwe someone guide this blind guy

[@rager1969]

The halo around Marty's head in the "original 1985 VHS" is an epplied effect called edge enhancement. It was meant to make the picture look sharper. It probably looks better on a CRT.

[@JarodJoseph]

1. No one thought what we were watching was “bad” in real time. It was revolutionary tech. Hindsight. 2. It’s amazing that you chose this film. When I talk about certain movies I’d PREFER to watch on VHS, BTTF is at the top.

[@scottandrewhutchins]

It was always a little worse than TV.

[@Psyopcyclops]

We’re they actually ever bad!? I find them incredibly nostalgic. It was part of the entire movie experience.

[@khangphamchannel016]

the quality is bad, but the nostalgia is surprisingly good.

[@MichaelOfRohan]

Nostalgia has to happen twice. Your comment doesnt make sense.

[@P4boot]

*Were

[@willh3972]

I got a recent copy of evil dead 2 on VHS, movies like that are best in that format.

[@medidou8340]

He is talking none sense, the matériel of recording is bad as well, what is he expecting

[@phreak1118]

S-video did exist on higher end VCR's.

[@KRAFTWERK2K6]

Yea but unfortunately the market share was too low.. and I never saw any prerecorded movies being sold as SVHS releases. Man, a SVHS release of the open matte version of Back to the Future would have been amazing :)

[@TroyBrophy]

Yep, I remember my dad buying an S-VHS player back in the late 80s. I remember being shocked that you could pause and get a perfectly clear image, without the warping you'd get from pausing standard VHS. Some S-VHS players did have S-Video out.

[@WAQWBrentwood]

phreak1118 There were also SVHS camcorders. The difference was stunning for the pre HD era. I had one (by JVC). Now we get full 1080 HD on even cheapo phones!

[@alexatkin]

A 4-head VHS players would also give a clear picture though, maybe not perfectly clear but pretty close. Of course SVHS had much more improvement than just that.

[@alexatkin]

And 2160p on mid-range phones.

[@1997LT1Camaro]

I remember when auto tracking came out and how it helped get the fuzz/lines off the screen. We are so used to HD resolutions today.

[@Alyssa-ci7sw]

i’m only in my very early 20s but still grew up watching vhs tapes and started collecting them a few months ago… the quality gives me such a nostalgic feeling

[@zacharyrollick6169]

Welcome to the club. I snap up any decently priced tapes that interest me. You can find interesting things on old recorded tapes.

[@Bighaus1234]

Same!! I feel like I lived through the last part of the VHS era. It kinda began to die around early 2000s. But I still remember watching cartoons as a kid on them!!

[@LLCoolJ_25]

Same. I was born in 1999. We still had a vhs up until 2008. I specifically remember watching The Little Mermaid and rewinding it back in the mid 2000’s.🥹

[@user-ayush818]

Same, let's form a community together

[@vinnien]

I love VHS, the quality is great, still. But I do have to mention I live in a PAL region.

[@pd3331]

PAL is a little higher quality than NTSC.

[@emmettturner9452]

vinnien Why do you have to mention that, exactly? Lots of people live in PAL regions. Is that supposed to explain your love for it?

[@sciencetestsubject]

and the chance is very high the cable between the vcr and tv was a RGB scart cable instead of composite.

[@emmettturner9452]

Erik Bruijn Uhh, but the SCART still carried composite unless he lived in France.

[@sciencetestsubject]

nope, i'm from NL and even there scart had RGB (and I'm sure because I had a TV that indicated it's receiving a RGB signal.)

[@ryankramer]

One of the reasons the purchased tape looks worse is because the actual tape you bought would vary in quality, EVEN IF IT WAS NEW. Why? Because of how VHS tapes were made. (This was hinted at at the 8:55 mark) They literally have a master tape play and dupe that signal to thousands of other VHS recordings. But that master tape used to make dupes only has a finite amount of plays until the signal gets progressively worse. You would then toss that 'master' tape and replace it. If one of the VHS copies you bought was near the end of the life of the master... it would be even worse. As an example, I was an absolute NUT for the Lion King when it came out in 1995. I bought it three times on VHS. Each one of those copies had varying quality played back on the same equipment. Which is what you would expect, considering that was the most duped VHS title in history for mass production.

[@carlosoliveira-rc2xt]

They were also high speed duped.

[@perihelion7445]

I don't remember VHS as being bad when that's all that was available technologically at the time. If you don't have anything vastly better to compare it too then it ends up being brilliant during that time. Comparing it now, yes it was bad.

[@corwin.macleod]

VHS was bad comparing to regular TV broadcasting. And here in Europe we had PAL format which had better resolution and didn't mess the colors like NTSC format did, so that plus a nearly crystal clear broadcast makes it a lot different than any consumer grade vhs tape. I also remember that live broadcasts were the best quality, clear as hell, because it was a direct signal from camera and not a recorded one.

[@doctorfeinstone6524]

regular t.v. format sucked ass back then especially if you had a crap cable company. Channels were all fuzzy and would go off and on alot. a rented VHS tape was Crystal clear compared to that

[@corwin.macleod]

Don't forget there was a satellite option as well, and by regular TV broadcasting I meant a signal from regular antenna. By the way we still have analog broadcasting in our country and it is as clear as it was back in the day. Well, maybe a bit more clear, because the quality of cameras and storage mediums increased drastically, so basically I don't see the difference between digital and analog signal at PAL resolution at all at this point. Of course there is a difference between channels, some are really fuzzy, but main channels always had the best picture quality.

[@NYCJoeBlack]

Perihelion74 - Agreed! Same applies for the video game industry.

[@DonRobertson82]

Imagine what you will think of todays tech 30 years from now.

[@Neelo5000]

I remember VHS being pretty bad, but I usually recorded in SLP mode to fit three movies onto one cassette. Years later I dubbed a DVD onto VHS in short play mode using a combo DVD/VCR unit, and the quality was far better than anything I'd ever watched on VHS in the past.

[@m3chan1zr]

I actually never had any bad memories of VHS... only good ones. On my TV I had back in the day, watching cable or a VHS had no discernible difference. Good memories of going to blockbuster or Hollywood video, being able to pop a tape in and record anything I wanted, being able to connect camcorders to and transfer it onto a full sized tape to be played anywhere... and the list goes on. I actually feel there has not been any technology in modern times that could offer that much convenience as VHS tapes.

[@sampleentry5253]

Brandon Ly Don’t need to record stuff, when you can just search it up on the internet.

[@m3chan1zr]

True, but the feeling was different. See something I liked, pop a tape in and press record. Watch it later. With camcorders nowadays, sometimes people want it on bluray, DVD, or online. All of those formats require transcoding. Back then, plug the camera into the VCR, press record, and share. Do edits on dedicated equipment later if desired.

[@captaincrunch8333]

Not everything is on the internet.

[@charlescampuz5812]

I’m guessing Nostalgia is somewhat blinding you on the past. VHS wasn’t a perfect format & the introduction of DVDs demonstrated that the public was asking more than what VHS could offer by the turn of the millennium.

[@StringerNews1]

There's so much wrong in this video! Let's go down the list: *1.* The old CRTs lacked resolution to see the flaws in VHS. *A.* This is false. TV sets capable of resolving more than the full ~330 lines of horizontal resolution that the NTSC signal was capable of sending not only existed, but had become commodity items by the mid 1980s. My first new TV set purchased c. 1986 had 400 lines of resolution, available through its "monitor in" jack. VHS had 240 lines of horizontal resolution, so any not-crap TV could easily resolve that. *2.* Composite video is a limiting factor. *A.* This is false. In fact, much of the reason why we were seeing significantly clearer video from broadcast TV in the 1980s was because of Type C VTRs, that used direct-color _composite_ recording. Type C was so good that one could not tell whether the signal was live or taped just by looking at it. I should know, I worked in TV broadcasting at the time, it was my job to deliver the best picture possible. BTW, every broadcast TV station that I worked in and visited used composite video throughout; it was the gold standard. You blaming an entire technology for you buying garbage is cowardly. *3.* Maxell tape is professional, darker is better. *A.* No, the Maxell brand was not used by professionals, nor was VHS. 3M, Ampex and Sony were the main professional brands, with Ampex being the king. Ampex 296 would be a good example of "professional videotape", it's 1" Type C, no consumer uses whatsoever. I used to purchase cases of Ampex 196 VHS tape for my home machines when I picked up virgin tape for the station. It was as cheap as anything when purchased by the case, and better than most. The oxide was not black because that's just nonsense. Some Compact Cassette Type II formulations were dark because of the dopant, but the notion that "dark = quality" is pure superstition. *4.* Direct composite fallacy *A.* What you showed was not some failure of composite analog video, it was 100% operator error. You see artifacts because you neglected to transcode the digital video to D-1 Rec. 601 before shoving it into the NTSC encoder. If the object was to make an "apples to apples" comparison, that would have made the 1080p video into an apple. Needless to say, using a NTSC chip that was at best an afterthought on a piece of consumer electronics primarily meant for use with HDMI only shows that you didn't think first before doing a D/A conversion. Back in the day we used composite video without any of the problems that you have because we were aware of our signals, and designed things to work together properly. It's not rocket science, but it does not do itself. *5.* Color artifacts = composite bad *A.* Again, it's the poor technique and low quality hardware, nothing else. Good comb filters are not as costly as they once were, but still cost more than the penny that WD likely spent on the NTSC portion of their box. Yes, the VHS machine low-pass filtered out what _you_ should have filtered in the digital domain. *6.* VHS is not capable of S-Video *A.* In fact, it was the VHS consortium that came up with the S-Video jack for use with S-VHS. S-Video is literally synonymous with VHS for that reason. Sony color-under VCRs had a "dub cable" that took the RF straight from the video heads and passed it to another machine for editing purposes. This came from U-matic, which shared the same frequencies with Betamax. When camcorders became popular, the large VHS cassette made VHS models bulky, so VHS-C cassettes were developed that were smaller, but did not play in standard VHS machines. Because the tape format was the same, adapters were tried, but proved problematic. The solution was to use a dub cable for VHS, that allowed dubbing from a S-VHS-C camcorder to a S-VHS home machine with minimal loss. This was done not by taking the RF (because Sony owned the patent to that), but by keeping the baseband luma and chroma signals separate, saving cost on quality NTSC encoders and comb filters. At the same time, inexpensive S-VHS editing machines also became available for a fraction of similar U-matic models, and S-Video became the enabling technology for semi-pro editing. The _only_ point of S-Video is for color-under tape recording. There's literally no other place where it matters. S-Video is not component video, so it can't do that. It has no place in digital video. Where did you think it came from? *7.* I can record my own tapes with better quality *A.* Yes, of course. Betamax and VHS duplication facilities were slipshod arrangements of poorly-maintained consumer grade machines that were anything but professional. I guarantee that they didn't run RG59 cables to the slave machines. The source machines had to be VHS because no other format could play for 2 hours. They could have had tape operators make skilled transitions as they do in movie theaters, but these places did not hire skilled labor, or buy costly pro equipment. So when you have a digital copy of a restored and scanned at HDTV resolution as your source and a VCR that hasn't been run into the ground, _of course_ you have a big advantage over a duplication mill. *8.* 4-head VCRs no better quality than 2-head at SP speed *A.* Wrong. 2-head multi-speed VCRs essentially have only EP heads. That makes them as good as a 4-head machine (yes for FF & RW effects too) at _EP_ speeds, but makes them poorer quality at SP speed because the smaller heads don't write full SP tracks. This makes the S/N ratio worse on the same machine, and really bad when playing back a recording made at SP on a 2-head machine on a 4-head machine. *9.* VHS stores a composite signal *A.* No. VHS, Betamax, U-matic etc. use color-under recording. The chroma portion of a composite signal is separated by comb filtering, and recorded onto a sub-band below the carrier that contains the luma part of the signal. Whereas direct color systems have the RF bandwidth to frequency modulate (FM) enough baseband video bandwidth to include the color information directly, inexpensive formats like U-matic, Betamax and VHS lack the bandwidth to support color directly because the chroma subcarrier would be attenuated by the limited FM bandwidth. To enable color, the chroma information is amplitude modulated (AM) in a small band just below the main FM carrier. Only expensive open reel VTRs with fast tape speeds can do direct color in the analog domain. *10.* There is no separation of the color burst and the luminance *AA.* Wrong. The color burst _always_ happens during video blanking, so there is _never_ any luminance signal while the color burst is happening. If you're talking about the chroma _signal_ again wrong. In NTSC video the luma and chroma are separated by frequency division interleave multiplexing. It works fine. As I mentioned above, color-under must strip this apart because the machines don't have the RF bandwidth to support direct color, but VHS absolutely does keep luminance and chrominance separate. *11.* Higher quality tapes would have made things better *AA.* No. Although tape dropouts and head clogs are certainly facts of life when dealing with analog video tape, I didn't see much evidence of either in your situation. Your VHS deck has no adaptive technologies that allow it to check for tape "quality" and improve its specifications accordingly; those are preset and no amount of expensive tape will improve them. If you had an S-VHS deck that would be a different story, as S-VHS takes advantage of a newer tape formulation to store more information per square inch than regular VHS. Some S-VHS decks even have a technology called S-VHS ET that _does_ check the tape on regular VHS tapes, and allows recordings somewhere between regular VHS and S-VHS resolutions. But it doesn't work without the enabling technology. As I mentioned above, the mass production of VHS movies could have been done much better. But the studios were greedy and the work was sub-par. Even the telecine process back then was not the best. One place where I saw exceptional video quality was in direct-to-tape pornography. It's not my field and I still don't know why people would show it at parties, but I've seen more than I wanted to, but enough to notice that one that was obviously not shot on film first looked great. One scene that showed a deep blue sky made me remark that I didn't think that VHS was capable of that level of saturation. It just shows that the big guys aren't the last word in quality, and that a well-made underground operation can achieve high technical standards.

[@Connie_TinuityError]

I've never had to "TL;DR" on a comment before until now.

[@StringerNews1]

@@shade221 If you use an S-VHS machine with ET capability (to record / play back almost S quality using regular tape) the machine will scan the tape and optimize playback dynamically. You won't see huge improvements over a good 4-head machine, but if you have the choice, that's the best option there is. If you have tapes recorded at SP and EP speeds, a 4-head deck will give a better picture at SP speeds. IME "combo unit" typically means cheap. You may not get 4 video heads or even Hi-Fi audio. There are always exceptions, so check the specs if you already have one. If it's got 4 heads (6 with Hi-Fi, though they don't count the audio or erase heads) it's 99% of the way there. I got a late-model S-VHS deck with built-in TBC and all other bells & whistles when they announced they would stop making them soon. It's good to be compatible with all analog VHS formats, but quality-wise it's not any better than a '90s vintage Panasonic AG series pro machine.

[@StringerNews1]

@@shade221 It's possible that worn or mis-balanced video drum components are causing more severe than usual time base errors in the video. My Canopus capture device seemed to prefer the signal with the TBC off, but that's with a new VCR and very good quality recordings. (I'd replace my recorders regularly.) You might benefit from a VCR (S-VHS or otherwise) with a TBC, or an improvement along the line. Or it might be the deinterlace software. I never got satisfactory results with free software, and while the really good commercial products (Snell/Grass Valley) cost a bundle, the results are sublime. The Faroudja DCDi chip was almost as good as the best broadcast stuff, and was put into consumer products. AFAIK there was no stand-alone deinterlacer box, but if you can find a TV, projector or AVR with the DCDi chip, you can use it as a scaler. My old Canopus capture device is FireWire, and it's been a while since I've had a computer that supports that, so when I needed an interface for HD streaming I got a Blackmagic Intensity Shuttle that also has analog video inputs for my VCR. It's $200, but has been handling 720p60 without a glitch. If you're looking to upgrade that's a possibility. I've been using more and more Blackmagic stuff in pro and broadcast lately, it's surprisingly good for being so cheap.

[@StringerNews1]

@J Blackmagic is great semi-pro gear. True professional/broadcast gear has a level of support that you need because in this business you can lose your clients and be bankrupt in a week if one link in the chain fails and isn't fixed in hours. Blackmagic saves a ton of money by not even trying to field-support its products. It's a double-edged sword.

[@shootinputin6332]

Enjoyed the video, but enjoyed your reply even more. Good stuff.

[@chriswatts5921]

You also need to consider that CRTs are fundamentally different from LCDs, so the original tapes you had were optimised for smoother displays with low colour gamuts. Also because your capture format uses interlacing, you are getting a lot of artifacts in your final results that wouldn't exist on the CRT. This video explains more: kzbin.info/www/bejne/jGmlh4d-rchngq8

[@claudiorenato182]

Same for 8bit to 32/64bit videogames. Much better in CRT with no progressiva scan and with scanlines.

[@DoubleMonoLR]

And that capture devices typically aren't that great. DVD recorders are generally pretty good for VHS captures though.

[@gavinp5940]

Not just that but the crt you have makes the difference. 20” and below are perfect for vhs. Anything above that really isn’t ideal. Another thing is cables. My vcr has svideo and component out which are lightyears ahead of composite and rf.

[@jaystephens3115]

@@gavinp5940VHS doesn’t benefit from those higher quality connections (S-video / component) because it’s encoded in composite.

[@cameraman655]

Waxing nostalgic over my huge VHS porn collection........Good Times.....Good Times.....

[@JoseTheFumblr]

cameraman655 A true fucking american hero.

[@cameraman655]

JoseTheWeeaboo Soon to be otaku Thanks, right back at ya.....

[@user-Mrbruce]

oh ya!!! lotsa good porn back then...with real puebs to boot!!!!!

[@BTVagrant]

"waxing" hehehe

[@user-Mrbruce]

wax on...wax off....wax on....wax off......

[@MSW96]

I miss their smell when they came out of the VCR :)

[@EveryoneElseIsWeirdImNormal]

I like the warmth after rewinding them and taking them out cause I'm part of the 0.01% who rewinds them after Thier done

[@BlackFlagHeathen]

That smell... *pops open plastic VHS movie case* *sticks nose in* *inhales deeply* Instant happy. 🥰

[@dirkkrohn1907]

What I don't miss from the vcr my family had was it trying to eat the tape at least once

[@advancedhell42069]

I liked how hot the tape was when I got done recording them

[@MSW96]

@@EveryoneElseIsWeirdImNormal I'm a part of that small percentage, too! Haha we had a car-shaped rewinder. I think it's "trunk" was where we placed the tape.

[@PkmariO64]

I actually think that VHS doesn't look half bad.

[@PkmariO64]

Nah, I actually find the imperfections to be rather charming. It doesn’t take a blind person to say that.

[@PkmariO64]

If you have the right equipment, they can actually look pretty good. I’m not saying that it’s great, I’m just saying that it’s not that bad. Don’t just assume that “VHS doesn’t look half bad” means “oMG VhS Is bETTer thAN 4K XD”.

[@tonydelariva7163]

It doesn't. Now, after it's been played 10,000 times, or if it's old or otherwise damaged, than it does lose it's clarity. Personally, I don't mind at all watching a 70s Clint Eastwood movie from a videotape. I like that old-school feeling. It doesn't have to be Blue-ray or even regular DVD. Why do you think people still buy and/or collect LPs or cassettes? It's Nostalgic.

[@Mr-Trox]

They look better if you've got an old CRT to hook your VHS player up to. My old VHS copy of The Blues Brothers is older than I am, but hooked up to the 32 inch Sony Trinitron we watched TV on when our even older one (with wooden fucking panelling!) was killed by a power surge, it looks pretty good. Hook it up to the 60 inch plasma screen however, and I have to turn it off, it all depends on what equipment it's using, you've got to use equipment the format was meant to be played on.

[@t_k_blitz4837]

Seriously, I must have really low standards if that clip from MIB was "surprisingly bad." Looked fine to me.

[@deathbystereo-]

As child we had a guy come round every tues and fri nights in his van kitted out with vhs rentals. Jumping in the back and pick a film was brilliant and a fond memory from my childhood

[@Whiteboykun]

That sounds so unbelievably creepy.

[@deathbystereo-]

@@Whiteboykun only a creep would think like that

[@hikkamorii]

Probably somebody already mentioned that, but this rainbow effect is only on NTSC signal, if it were PAL signal, it probably would have better contrast and no rainbow effect...

[@SuperSmashDolls]

Daniel Hikkamorii that's why it was derisively nicknamed Never The Same Color. The engineers had to do a lot of trickery to get color to fit in the existing signal specification and it suffered for it. I believe the European standards (PAL/SECAM) were built from the ground up for color and thus can mix chroma and luma better than NTSC.

[@hikkamorii]

Super Smash Dolls I know that, just think that needs to be mentioned.

[@Pr.Shadocko]

Et ouais! french invention Bitch! :p Tu peux pas test!

[@allmycircuits8850]

PAL/SECAM still use the same bandwidth which B/W and NTSC uses, but they really were designed after finding out NTSC problems and they were resolved in rather tricky way. The main signal is luminosity in all of color formats and there are two "color difference" signals. In NTSC they were coded simultaneously using "quadrature modulation" and because of radio interference they often ended mixed up. In SECAM only one color diff. signal is transmitted at time. For example, odd lines have "blue minus lum" while even lines have "red minus lum". Each TV set has ultrasonic delay line which in fact stores one of these signals, so each line have all 3 needed. That way horizontal resolution of colors is 2 times less than of luminance, but that's OK, it's the way human eye percepts them. PAL is a little more tricky, it actually uses quadrature modulation as NTSC does, but it rotates phase 180 degrees from line to line, thus its name: Phase Alternating Line! Some stupid TV sets decoded signal "on the fly", while the better ones used the same ultrasonic delay line to store previous line, so the two could be averaged and this way most of artefacts are gone, but resolution is still reduced by factor 2. Oh, the sweet times, building PAL/SECAM converters :)

[@12voltvids]

Mostly correct. Both PAl and NTSC used quadrature modulation. PAL rotated the phase, and you are correct the resolution of the chroma signal is reduced. The big limiting factor on NTSC was the placement of the sound subcarrier. For years I had a big C band satellite dish, and would receive the broadcast NTSC signals (with the sound at 6.2 and 6.8MHz and the resolution was superior. I used a good monitor with a comb filter for color separation, and never saw all those bleeding colors that people with crappy cable TV did.

[@007robotchicken]

I love VHS so much. I actually like seeing the imperfections. It brings me back to a simpler time.

[@AlisonBryen]

I miss having to reset the tracking on VHS!

[@joe_q_jr]

if you have a high end vcr and tape there won;'t ve imperfections. and yes it is simpler because it was well thought out

[@joe_q_jr]

@@AlisonBryen high end vcrs did auto tracking so you always had great picture quality!

[@sudochop]

As a kid, I never really noticed. It was the "norm" back then. lol.

[@scaryboi2897]

I collect vhs horror movies to this day! And yes I have a vhs player and still watch them on the reg.

[@FrightfulAccountant]

There is a lot of nice stuff out there on VHS, that never made it to DVD, so yeah I understand you :p

[@scaryboi2897]

@@FrightfulAccountant true. I still need to track some of those super rare 70s & 80s horror vhs.

[@mad_quack]

scaryboi me too and recently my VCR stopped playing them. I think the head finally died on it 😒 it saddens me

[@scaryboi2897]

@@mad_quack oh no! If you have a goodwill or thrift store near by go see if they have any for sale.

[@joozemane9894]

@@FrightfulAccountant Indeed, and most VHS releases in Europe were usually also completely uncut... So many DVD releases of the same movies are horribly cut or censored, even when the box says "uncut", it really isn't compared to the VHS version, especially not for horror movies. You took a wise decision in keeping the VHS collection (sadly, i was stupid enough to sell most of mine in the mid 00s, before i started to really notice how many scenes were missing from the DVD releases). Also in my opinion, nothing can beat old slashers on VHS, no matter what...the sound, even if it's supposedly worse quality, just does em so much more justice on VHS, and defects/gltiches just add to the atmosphere (same goes for the blurry picture, there's just something to it).

[@DanielSchmidt94521]

I miss going to rental stores and video games. The whole family went.

[@garrysmith6734]

schmidty im with you all the way there, every Friday night was horror night and we used to go to the local rental store be it Pharoes or Apollo and oder a rental, loved the choice loved the anticipation.

[@MrVisde]

...wandering the store on a Friday night, hunting for something to watch because all the new releases are gone.

[@DanielSchmidt94521]

And watching the older movies. I recently watched North By NorthWest. Amazed at how good of a movie that was.

[@fourlightsorchestra]

I seriously miss rental stores, especially the cool local ones with all the hard to find stuff.

[@xm_heecka.laddder.job_mx5962]

- That special smell - Ah, just nostalgic

[@benjaminbrady2385]

Anyone remember when the last person was too lazy to rewind the VHS, so you had to.

[@armanelgtron4533]

Just buy a DVD rewinder!

[@warnerbrosanddisneyvhsdvdb9015]

Benjamin Brady i'm into VHS tapes DVDs and blu rays medias

[@luissan515]

I remember the times when grandpa use to make me sit and manually rewind movies because he would say that the companies would intentionally make rewinders fast to break the film and ruin the VHS so u would have to buy more.

[@FamilyHistoriandude]

I had a toy raceway that would rewind tapes.

[@nerychristian]

It's not a 1985 VHS tape. It had a coupon for Jurassic Park.

[@Charliecomet82]

Ikr? That bugged the shit out of me.

[@johnsnook6084]

still 20 years old though

[@vintagecameras9623]

+

[@almostliterally593]

Jurassic park was out in 1985???

[@horrorversions9387]

the coupon was for the 80’s Jurassic Park

[@digitalmetadata1]

As a TV broadcast engineer your presentation is quite good. Although there are some incorrect assumption which have been identified by other commentators. I would like to add that all helical tape formats including VHS have a severe timebase error. This means to record a color TV signal, some fudging must be done. Broadcast helical formats are highest quality and must use a costly (in the 1970's) digital timebase corrector to stabilize the chroma for playback. Cheaper Umatic, Betamax and VHS formats use a color under record methodology which means the luma and chroma are first separated. The luma is recorded on a conventional fm carrier and the chroma amplitude modulates the same carrier. The composite signal is reconstructed on playback. The separation of the luma and chroma is essentially S Video and may be interfaced appropriately. The S Video interface is therefore readily available on a few high end VHS machines which were used by broadcasters.

[@VideoSpecialtiesLa]

I have several SVHS decks which not only have s-video but also component outputs. These units have a TBC built in as well. These work great for capturing the old tapes directly to a hard drive using a capture card. The main drawback on the higher end decks is they only playback SP recordings.

[@ZagnutBar]

Terry, thanks for that insight. Also, isn't it true that the professionals would having used Betacam, not pro-grade VHS tapes? I remember using pro-grade VHS for school projects, but when I interned at a local TV station (this was in 1995), it was all Betacam. Were there actually professional applications of VHS? If so, what would the rationale have been behind using them?

[@Stargaze79]

Damn, I can smell those VHS tapes!

[@rustinpeace8642]

Smells like a bad circuit.

[@jerryspann8713]

Smelled like Radio Shack or Bestbuy

[@leo2nd261]

As a kid in the 80s, growing up on VHS, as bad as they were at times, getting many from Blockbuster that people didn't rewind, especially the fuzzy while recording over them over and over and using the tracking, I still miss them. I still have a few tapes in 2021. They had charm, throw them around and wouldn't get damaged unlike Blu ray. They were bulky but loved them. It's a shame they no longer are seen much and world moved on from them mostly except finding them in thrift stores, yard sales, or select places. VHS will always hold a special place in my heart.

[@bluebull399]

Block Buster was awesome. Going to the store, arguing with your parents over the wildly overpriced snacks. As a kid, it was exciting seeing all those tapes on display and picking one out. There's just something about actually handling all the boxes that you don't get picking with movies on prime.

[@schmitley]

"Original 1985 vhs tape"? There was an ad for Jurassic Park in the tape when you opened it! lol That VHS is a re release from 1993

[@schmitley]

Nope.

[@G33KN3rd]

back to the future wasn't released for VHS until the 90s, hence the jurassic park ad.

[@schmitley]

First off Tigger - Used VHS didnt get repackaged in stores WITH brand new movies ads slipped into the box. No store is taking a used tape, wrapping it for resale and putting an ad in there - this literally and simply just did not happen. ALSO the Universal symbol in the corner of the vhs box was the 90's change over of the logo. The original tape HAD the original logo.

[@schmitley]

Secondly - "Back To The Future wasnt released for VHS until the 1990's" - What are you talking about???I STILL have the original release FROM 1985. VHS was KING in the 1980s and BTTF was the biggest movie of that decade - OFCOURSE it was around in the 80s. So bottom line - This tape in the video is a re-release when Jurassic Park was ALSO coming to video that year. Its not rocket science.

[@EyeAmBatman]

back to the future predicted Jurassic Park... mindblown :P

[@cornishchris8404]

That's *not* the original 1985 VHS of Back to the Future. u can tell it's an early or mid 90s VHS because of the Universal logo on the case/tape label

[@domoncar6782]

And the Jurassic Park promotion

[@pinchopaxtonsgreatestminds9591]

It was the 1985 version but it went Back To The Future.

[@jordanriver722]

Pincho Paxton it all makes sense now

[@josephfrye7342]

it's not???

[@glurp1er]

There was actually no need for better VHS quality back then since most people were watching them on poor quality TVs. The same applies to the audio industry today, the quality has been down for 20 years since most people will listen to digitally compressed music on their earphones.

[@RizkhyDestatama]

Digitally compressed reduce the quality. But most todays music isnt bad because of that. Music is not about audio quality. Back then there is high dynamic and flat equalizer from the studio which we can set it as we like using our device equalizer but todays music is mastered with super bass and low dynamic. Digitally Compressed or not if the source is worse then the result is worse.

[@angrymobsters1599]

Once in a while i still use my vcr. For some reason i just love the old pixelated picture it gives off its more nostalgic than anything for me. Plus i love watching the old previews before the movie started and i love the physical feel of vhs tapes over dvds. I was using my vcr alot to watch the old Disney movies before disney + came out.

[@AnthonyLeeBand]

Cool, gotta love Disney plus, it’s the best thing out there! 👍

[@phillipharris7784]

VHS wasn’t bad. It was just the technology of the time especially for home entertainment

[@vincentschumann937]

composite is a big problem there in my opinion for me the scart port looks 100 times better

[@vincentschumann937]

@NathBro scart carries rgb not composite (in my case, i know that it also can carry composite)

[@UNAL0504]

@@vincentschumann937 very true I always used scart

[@MixedByTheScientist]

I can only watch a film in 4K HDR on an OLED with Dolby Atmos Audio 🤷‍♂️

[@alyssacrypto]

I feel you! I loved VHS as a teen. But with 4K UHD discs with Dolby Atmos we finally got the quality we were promised in the first digital era with DVD... Only took near 20 years lol Unfortunately while i have an OLED to enjoy the picture fully (LG B8), I can't show off Dolby Atmos yet... apartment living condemns me to Stereo audio!! Speakers go down to 30hz though and go loud with little distortion.

[@ganjabobby]

You’re eliminating a lot of old content then. I mean, we all want the best quality available. But I just watched Willow (1988) on DVD, and while the quality drop is noticeable, you soon forget about that fact and consume it as you would back in the day. I think we’ve all been spoilt and are now way too fussy with these things: to the point where it can take away from the movie watching experience.

[@MixedByTheScientist]

@@alyssacrypto Yeah I grew up with VHS myself. I currently own an LG 55” E8 and an LG 65” GX. Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoy myself an older film every so often, but I have to admit, I always try to check to see if there’s any HD/UHD remastered version first lol. I guess it’s just my crave for that crystal clear picture that takes over but I still don’t believe that takes anything away from the cinematography or acting that made a lot of older films great. And honestly a lot of them actually work better with that “VHS quality”. I kind of wish I still owned a tube TV with VHS so I can enjoy the nostalgia here and there 😩

[@MixedByTheScientist]

@@ganjabobby Yeah I get you. In the end there’s just something special (though mostly nostalgic) about that “VHS quality” and it doesn’t take away from some great acting, cinematography, etc… There are definitely some great films that still hold up extremely well to this day. I just can’t lie, I still love the fully immersive audio/visual experience that’s possible nowadays lol

[@HECKproductions]

i have never heard anyone remembering them as terrible in fact i loved using them

[@Kyle1444]

KZbin plus old interlaced digitally compressed is never gonna show how a real VHS is gonna look on a 28" CRT with your own eyes. It would be absolutely fine

[@fourlightsorchestra]

Totally. The display is a huge part of it. VHS looks fine on an old CRT TV. Looks terrible on a flat screen though.

[@jetbreak]

I love stuff like this but there’s a huge variable you left out: viewing them on a crt tv. Of course a low res analog source is going to look bad captured and converted to digital and put on a higher resolution display. All those edge artifacts and stuff get lessened in the scan lines of a crt. I know there’s really no way to accurately show this effect with a KZbin video but keeping the source analog all the way through yields results that aren’t as bad as this video here. It’s like how PS2 games on original hardware don’t look very good on an hdtv but are still gorgeous on a crt. Still an interesting video, I thumbs-upped :)

[@KasumiRINA]

PS2 games look fantastic when emulated in higher resolution. PS3's upscaler sucks but PCSX2 looks way better.

[@TheBombShhh]

that vhs cant be from 1985, it had a jurassic park rebate flyer in it, which means it was probably cheaply pressed up to be sold for 5 dollars at a grocery store. the vhs tapes that were sold to video stores were higher quality tape so people could re-watch them alot, those ones usually hold up pretty good.

[@theradgegadgie6352]

TheBombShhh It was also in cheap, shitty packaging, not a proper box. I think you're probably right.

[@kynan9465]

It was probably just a newer copy of the tape from the 1985 master

[@nicolashrv]

I think someone screwed this guy selling him a fake copy............back in the days, even I did that a lot, because I owned TWO vhs players (one was recorder) so I sold copies of weird and rare movies or guitar concerts to people.........good old days!

[@krensauce]

And don't forget that tapes deteriorates over time, because the tape itself is very sensitive to humidity and temperature, and the material it's made of worsen year by year. But even more it's the magnetic signals stored that deteriorates because of the incredible quantity of magnetic fields we're living with, and that alone is responsible for a lot of the noise.

[@27inzenith]

It's probably from the 1994 reissue, because that's when Jurassic Park was released on home video.

[@GrnXnham]

Well, since movies were better back during the VHS days than they are today, the quality difference kind of evened out.

[@checkacola]

No vhs wasn’t that bad! Miss them sometimes

[@DH_Artist]

checkacola I tried watching Forrest Gump a few months ago on VHS and it was absolutely unbearable. The audio was barely there apart from the overbearing white noise and the picture was clearly fading.

[@charlieanddadreviewsandcha2243]

DH_Artist yeah but you have to remember degradation of tape.

[@charlieanddadreviewsandcha2243]

Also we went from TV 480i to 480p to 720p to 1080i to 1080p to ultra hi def so huge leap in the past what 15yrs or so. Technology jumped lightyears over night. I blame it on Aliens 👽.

[@fnregistration]

Yes they were that bad. I miss nothing about them other than not having to be careful about scratches

[@Ailgadem]

@@DH_Artist you probably have to clean your vcr, especially if it hasn't been used in a long time. Dirty heads can cause problems with the picture and sound.

[@llynellyn]

VHS tapes were amazing simply because you could skip all the adverts and anti-piracy messages that DVD/BR force you to watch, seriously if you have seen a hundred DVDs then you have spent an hour of your life watching anti piracy messages.

[@Ethernet3]

I have two screens on this computer, one is in 1080p, the other 1360x768. If I buy a legitimate blu ray, it does not allow playback on the smaller screen, because it's not "HDCP". That didn't happen with VHS too Lol

[@Δημήτρης-θ7θ]

If you knew which players to buy, you could skip unskippable scenes by putting them in a special mode. It also removes region lockout. But anyway, I prefer unskippable scenes than having to rewind or having to manually search for scenes.

[@MrNateSPF]

So you could play VHS on your smaller computer screen?

[@Ethernet3]

MrNateSPF I can play VHS on everything :^)

[@toitd5258]

I always watched the anti-piracy message videos on VHS tapes.. They were pretty interesting I don't know why

[@97channel]

High definition wasn't a huge deal to your average person back then. A watchable picture was enough. I grew up with VHS in the UK. TV's and VCR's were wildly expensive in the 1980's, many people couldn't afford to buy them so rental was a boom market. Better models commanded higher rental charges, so most people just hired the cheapest available. Having a VCR was a luxury, the quality was almost irrelevant. Putting a cassette onto LP record, I don't think we even noticed the drop in quality. Renting a cassette from a video store, chances are there'd be a degree of wear and damage and we hardly cared. Pirated tapes, we'd probably laugh at the poor quality but admire the fact that we got it cheap.

[@michaezell4607]

HD doesn't mean a thing when the programming of today itself sucks...(.cough nonstop fake reality trash tv cough)

[@wangchung6910]

That’s right! Ironically though, as often said, people remember things differently and are prone to the commercial ad tactics and some are a slave to their own emotions and painting thoughts of the past in a better light when the arguments call for it, here comes the ole; “the good ole’days” that never were THAT good at the time they were occurring. As around why people began buying their music cassettes again on Compact Discs (CDs’) and you’re likely to receive mostly an answer concerning the sound quality being better. At least that’s what people used to say was the reason. Maybe now they’d say it’s the convenience of changing tracks at the touch. /shrugs But we were basically forced to begin purchasing music on CD and music stores were basically forced to change to change to selling the CD format by the huge distribution companies and labels that more or less said to music stores; “We will no longer be excepting returns on unsold cassettes in exchange for credit. In an effort to align with the future format in the ever changing market of music and technology, we will only except returns from stores if the unsold merchandise is of Compact Disc format.” ...And that’s when you walked into the store to see that cassettes for nearly gone except for whatever is left on clearance racks. I remember that day very well.

[@NUFCMVFC]

Yeah i remember the "great thing" about DVD's were it was a "clear" picture without snow. No one cared about HD, Full HD or Ultra HD

[@bilbo1778]

@@michaezell4607 2004 called - they want their comment lamenting the lack of scripted programming back.... :-/ Yes - reality TV still exists but in 2018 (well 2019 now I guess) but it's been largely marginalized. By all accounts for the past 10 years we've been living in a golden age of well produced, well acted, & well written scripted television content + high quality streaming content as well from Netflix, Hulu, etc as well. If you think TV is still all reality TV garbage you've been looking in all the wrong places...

[@bilbo1778]

@Maurice Smith Wow - no need for ad hominems Mr Edgelord. Of course there's a lot of crap on the air (I'm looking at you TLC & Discovery Channel in particular) - there always has been - the point of my comment was to contradict his implication the programming quality during the VHS era was somehow superior. I don't know what world you're living in to discount the multitude of critically renown shows from the past 10 years. Not even including streaming services we've had: Mad Men Breaking Bad Halt and Catch Fire Walking Dead (seasons 1,3-5) The Americans Wilfred Atlanta Fargo Legion Vikings Westworld Game of Thrones Boardwalk Empire The Leftovers The Knick Shameless Dexter (seasons 1-2) The Chi Penny Dreadful Outlander True Detective (Season 1) American Gods The Expanse ...just to name a few.... But yes - I totally agree network TV sucks (excluding Bob's Burgers, Modern Family, & Blackish IMHO). All the talent & quality migrated to cable & streaming services a long time ago...

[@roughcutretrospect7235]

Many directors collect VHS tapes. They tapes are just as good as the master copy of the film. Could always be restored digitally. Great video!

[@ElSoloNoco]

Ah man you can't beat the cosy feeling of vhs, I'm a movie fan to the grave, I got a hard drive with over 1000 films stored, plugged into my TV, all in HD with subtitles, that I can choose from and play in a second, without even getting up, but I truly don't think you can match the feeling of picking up a single case with a single film, looking at the case art, the nostalgic smell of the tape when you pop open the box, popping it in, seeing the point at which you last stopped watching the tape 10 years ago or whatever, it's so personal and nice. I think there's a lot of imperfection in perfection and that's what I find with HD, something about vhs is just unexplainable, it's real, its riddled with drawbacks, you can't have subs, pausing can be a bitch etc, but I like it, especially seeing as we live in a time where people don't even want to interact anymore. Typing became too much, now we ask alexia for weather updates and to teach our kids things that we should be teaching them, sheeeiiit, people even control their heating before they get home, and monitor their every step, it's becoming a joke, blockbuster was the best shit ever and I'll miss it too death, going out with a girl to pick a film, and awaiting watching it, making interactions with humans, it's all gone, vhs never forgets though, vhs for life motherfuckers Edit: shit, I forgot about trailers, another enticing feature of videotapes, they're humorous, they sometimes show some great films you might have never even heard of, sometimes it's an old trailer of an old film you love and it's interesting, and sometimes you just come across some hella old Dr pepper adverts that make you laugh ur ass off, the texture of vhs is really good too, it transports me back to my favourite time, not all artists work are crystal clear, and that's what I see vhs to be, you wouldn't critique basquiat for drawing abstract work, it just is what it is and some people prefer looking at things that way

[@m3chan1zr]

er tucch. I feel the same way. It’s nice to know someone else does too lol

[@deckofcards87]

Nicely said. Yes I have the same feelings about vhs... Video stores were awesome, and the cover art! Especially horror, fantasy and sci-fi films. I don't much miss the quality, with the exception that some of the old horror flicks benefit from muddy low resolution and contrast. Atmospherically there's something about grindhouse-esque grainy degrading film that made them work, especially when low grade practical effects were involved; it muddied them unlike HD video which makes the imperfections very noticeable.

[@blackham7]

This was a beautiful comment one that I agree with 110%

[@ElSoloNoco]

blackham7 Thanks everyone I'm glad to see so many people agree! I love dvd too btw for some of the same reasons listed, but vhs is absolutely golden, I was watching a film last week called Killing Zoe off my hardrive and I had to turn it off and watch the vhs one instead, straight away I was transported back to older times, even though it wasn't wide screen and loads of the picture was cut-off, it's all worth it for the process, the sound when the tape enters the vcr it's so satisfying, it's real! And reading the case, looking at the front cover before you watch it just makes you want to watch it 10 times as much! Who remembers putting tissue or tape over to plug the hole at the bottom of a vhs tape so you could record films off TV too or doing the same with cassettes to record off the radio 😂 good times!

[@troywright359]

I don't feel that way about HD. I do feel that way about 4k or uhd whatever

[@AlisonBryen]

Pirate videos in the 80s/90s were spectacularly bad...I miss those days lol!

[@Stigmatix666]

Yup ;)

[@Stigmatix666]

@Teddy James That's right. I remember it being unwatchable because of that

[@Stigmatix666]

@Teddy James Yup.

[@Ansem1313]

My mother got a pirated tape of Atlantis the lost empire in New York and it was straight static

[@Stigmatix666]

@@Ansem1313 I live in Norway, who had the most ridiculous censorship laws back in the 80's. It's all good now, though. But I remember I was so happy to finally get a pirated version of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and yes it was mostly just static. Couldn't make out a single thing..

[@CoolDudeClem]

One good thing about VHS tapes, if they got scratched they STILL played!

[@encycl07pedia-]

Yeah, but what dumbass doesn't rip their own DVDs for backup?

[@daveyboy_]

Or if the heads got dirty

[@USAPethead]

encycl07pedia This dumbass (and actually everyone I know!) First, a big portion of my dvds were purchased before I knew ripping them was a thing. So, is it worth it? Is the software free or paid? Wouldnt you have to buy storage for the files? I just feel like I don't understand the point, I've never had anything happen to any of my discs so it seems like a lot of time and money with no payoff?

[@okovermekeamglight4563]

You'd commenting on the 8-big guy?

[@ritchienavarro156]

DumbAss

[@rnaval6000official]

0:09 "Im pretty sure everyone remembers using VHS tapes" People born after the year (Edit 7/23/2024: 2010):

[@BRIANOCONNOR2003]

I do

[@kwc0435]

I used them in elementary school even though they were already outdated

[@fabulousfrance]

It was a privilege already to watch movies at home and we didn't had the slightest idea of what HD was going to be like. So VHS were great for that time

[@poolboyinla]

I just bought a VHS player at a garage sale for $3.

[@tomymas38]

Nice

[@tomymas38]

Hey you have a comment 2 rows upwards from years ago

[@tomymas38]

I'm thinking of doing the same

[@Julio7514]

Welcome back

[@UltimateShadow10]

Hold onto it and sell online either now or in about a decade. I bet some collector will buy it for a decent price.

[@wolfgamemusicvideo4532]

What I love about VHS as opposed to streaming is that with a VHS, you never have to worry about slow internet and or the internet buffering. I find streaming to be way too distracting and its fun to watch old previews on VHS tapes. Great video BTW!!

[@futuresocieties.]

Yeah, plus VHS for the nostalgia.

[@thatguy6214]

@Nobody comments are not funny you troglodyte hahahaha facts

[@thorstrebla980]

Yeah, some people mock old technology for picture quality (or something else) while being in awe of technology that requires buffering time that in the past we would have never tolerated.

[@lunarbubu]

People in the year 2090: KZbin Videos- were they as bad as we remember?

[@jimcatx3090]

They where great I remember putting tape over the tabs and recording over them

[@TomPlotagon]

I bought the Sony blanks, but that will work if your recording over a crappy movie.

[@alvallac2171]

*were *great. I

[@ghentsgames6371]

VHS never skipped or locked up!!! ...especially at important parts of the movie! :P

[@michaelmartin9022]

I was watching Wonder Woman for work (my job is pretty decent, I must admit) on Netflix, and just as it got to the first battle scene, the quality went potato for some reason. VHS might not have been HD, but at least it was consistent!

[@xjunkxyrdxdog89]

Are you shaking your blu ray or did you just buy trash? I've never once seen a blu ray or dvd skip or lock up.

[@xjunkxyrdxdog89]

@@michaelmartin9022 this video is comparing physical media formats. Streams will always be lower quality than a physical copy. You shouldn't be expecting high quality from streaming services. It's simply unrealistic. Also, the quality on streams is usually dictated by your connection.

[@ghentsgames6371]

@@xjunkxyrdxdog89 you're lucky, then. Many have the same problem. No, it's not due to scratches. These are new, first watch, flawless appearance disks. Don't be ignorant. The publisher burn factories encode & burn too fast and errors are introduced in the bitstream. Data for DVD and bluray are compressed, highly. On audio CDs it's just like a .wav file or raw waveform audio except in plastic pits instead of vinyl grooves like old records. Very little compression, just a little off the top and bottom frequencies. That's why audio almost never had manufacturing defects & skips. You could have a few errors in the burn but almost no noticeable effect on the bitstream. Not so with DVD or blue ray. Smaller pits, more compression, more data lost if a write error happened, which they do, a lot, and the players can't figure out what to read after they hit the error.

[@ghentsgames6371]

@@xjunkxyrdxdog89 wrong, streams can be 4k lossless if you have enough bandwidth. HD streams take ~6mbps. 4k streams use 15mbps. If you put a 4k bluray disk in a player, pipe it to your home network, then watch that remotely in your own homemade "stream", it's the exact same - you just need proper bandwidth.

[@CaptainUnusual]

I never cared about crystal clear quality. I was just grateful to have entertainment so readily available.

[@jamesp504]

I have like 200vhs tapes that I can't bring myself to get rid of lol

[@Sjrick]

Same here. I have tons of Letterman shows among many other home recordings of sports and various tv shows that are no longer on and are not on dvd or streaming.

[@TheoriginalBillBraskey]

I don't know how many I got but it's in the thousands.

[@xxxaragon]

why not convert them into digital format then? if the tapes are in okay condition, you don't have to sit next to it.

[@jamesp504]

Samuel Clough if you have any Disney, apparently they're valuable. I have the original Little mermaid with the boner (look it up) and all lol. Apparently, it goes for $50-$500. Check your tapes! Might be worth something 🙂

[@jamesp504]

xxxaragon I wish I had the time. Even if I did, I'd still have a hard time letting the VHS go lol. It's sentimental I suppose 🙂

[@Crusader1089]

Young 8-bit guy was nice to see. I never thought video tape looked bad, it was perfectly good for the TVs of the time, small CRTs.

[@epic27]

JVC SVHS vcrs have S-Video output. Also, in broadcasting class in high school, they had an old Panasonic SVHS professional VCR with both BNC and S-Video outputs.

[@amirjubran1845]

It's a shame he didn't have a better player considering all the effort he put into this.

[@endawmyke]

Amir Jubran I'm thinking that maybe the VHS tape he recorded onto would've looked a bit better with a better VHS player to record onto it.

[@gnagyusa]

That didn't help much, because the actual signal recorded on VHS was composite. I never owned a VHS VCR. Before digital video, I used Hi8. Much smaller cassette, way better quality. It actually recorded Y and C separately.

[@doctorfeinstone6524]

+lnpilot ah, good old 8mm. superior quality to vhs but boy were they finicky.

[@Kisai_Yuki]

The BNC connectors were likely the separate Y/C channels. Depending on what you were doing. For example, the high school I had, had a Video Toaster that used the BNC as well, but the BNC connectors were just composite video. It just offered shielding, and the cables were 75ohm coax. You can find BNC Y/C to S-Video connectors online. In general, the video is right, but the testing methodology is flawed since he used a first generation master video source that was higher resolution than the recorder. If he had used a S-VHS deck and connected it with S-Video connectors, but still used the same tape, the results would have had less chroma-bleed, but the resolution would have been exactly the same. All S-Video does is separate the Chroma and Luma, and it wasn't until YPBPR (when DVD players came out) that it was possible to get "perfect" analog transfers if the cables are high quality to not induce dot crawl (which is why the "squares" appear, that's dot crawl, improper multiplexing.)

[@EgdeFilms]

Shit always remembered where I left off. So I could take the tape out, pop it back in later and I'm right where I was. I don't see a problem with it.

[@thekittykarate]

This is interesting. I would like to point out that VHS tapes degrade in quality over time. While I do not know if it would have made much difference in quality in your test, it is something to be aware of. The VHS copy might not have been AS bad at the time.

[@johnnycorona8851]

I owned a VHS player with S-Video out. Super VHS support if I recall, but that was the exception rather than the rule.

[@Wallyworld30]

I bought the most expensive Super VHS player I could find hoping it would play my normal VHS collection better. I was pretty pissed when the VHS machine I bought at the Thrift Store played much better then the fancy Super VHS I bought off eBay for $400. Thankfully I was able to send it back to the seller for a refund.

[@johnnycorona8851]

Marty Moose A 4-head player is recommended if you’re trying to play old tapes. Actually get one with a DVD burned and start copying your tapes before they degrade further.

[@Wallyworld30]

@@johnnycorona8851 My thrift store VCR I poke fun of it but it's actually really nice. 4 heads and that dial to super ff is pretty cool. When I was on my obsession with getting the possible picture I also found a 5 head VCR but it wasn't as good as my other one for picture quality. I was surprised when he said 4 head doesn't make a better picture. Maybe not on a raw feed to his capture device but on my CRT TV it was much better. 2 head VCR's always had visible horizontal lines on the CRT but not with any 4 head I've used.

[@Bradidimus]

Yup, I had an S-VHS player that had S-Video out back in the day...

[@RoyCyberPunk]

Me too glad to see I'm not the only one who recalls something like that.

[@nickk5263]

Being able to record cartoons and watch them later!!!! Screw the quality, it was the 80's and 90's man