WVHS: HD Wasn't Always Digital

I travel hither and yon to bring you the crunchiest images of the most in-between HD video format. I was so thrilled to actually get this working, you have no idea.
Don't take the videos of the screen itself all that literally - CRTs are notoriously hard to record, and like I said, pixel peeping flies in the face of this whole format. To the naked eye the output looks simply outstanding, and I didn't find out how it "really" looked until I was editing the closeups.
As I said in the video, if you have any WVHS tapes, I would love to borrow them to rip now that I have a working process.
Metamorphosis: • Sony's Metamorphosis (...
Thanks to Techmoan for permission to use a bunch of clips from his videos!
Support my channel:
/ cathoderaydude
ko-fi.com/cath...

[@genericsweetener1094]

Hold on a second, we have to acknowledge that this absolute legend has all the context of this channel posted under a Creative Commons Attribution license. I know it's a little thing, but I didn't know KZbin even gave the option, and CRD rocks for taking the initiative. This everyone's daily reminder that adding to the public domain or posting under a CC license makes you live 10 times longer, guaranteed.

[@timseguine2]

CC Attribution license isn't "adding to the public domain", it is quite distinct from public domain.

[@willpreston6881]

Not quite public domain, but it's still very smart and good. Video and content creation would vastly benefit from a open-source-software type initiative, and I think we're getting close. Like, we can meme all day about TikTok being a company with interests over in China, but the whole point of that platform is to take content and remix it, and IMO, it has major parallels to free open source software. Of course, maybe it's used for vanity "influencer" and self-important reasons for now, but if you have people like CRD *taking steps to allow for that, there's a potential for a lot of good there. Seeing CRD do CC on his videos just ticks another box for me on why I'm glad he's on Patreon.

[@timseguine2]

​@@willpreston6881 Not trying to say it isn't good. People tend to say a lot of things about IP online that simply isn't true. So I am a little oversensitive.

[@willpreston6881]

@@timseguine2 All good, we’re on the same page. Hope you’re having a nice weekend.

[@timseguine2]

@@sedme0 Yeah probably. I wasn't trying to be catty though, in case it came across that way. Most of the time when I have a "well actually" urge I supress it. Would have been better here too.

[@Palmtop_User]

Im sorry to any HD-DVD hold out but im so glad bluray won. Imagine asking grandma or even your parents on Christmas for the HD-DVD version of a movie. 9/10 times its gonna end up being DVD

[@adampope5107]

I'm holding out hope for my HD-VMD player.

[@Palmtop_User]

@@adampope5107 same dude

[@testcardsandmore1231]

@@adampope5107 I suppose you've been watching Techmoan recently...

[@keithmichael112]

@@testcardsandmore1231 or huge fans of lazy town

[@pokepress]

I think they would have figured it out the difference eventually and only made the mistake once or twice. Plus returns are a thing. If Sony had hit some intractable issue with Blu-ray and was severely delayed or prevented from bringing it to market (that might have been what it took for HD DVD to win), HD DVD would have worked fine as a format (though in this alternate universe we’d have zillions of blog posts and KZbin videos about the “amazing” things BD-Live and other unrealized features would have brought).

[@baddestmofoalive]

I can’t believe I just spent 41 minute watching a video of an obscure format I never knew existed, and will never encounter in my lifetime….. yet you held my attention brilliantly. Well Done!

[@f.k.b.16]

Well said and agreed!

[@damian9303]

Didn’t even realize I was watching it for that long until I saw this and had to look at the time

[@jujharsingh8128]

Ditto

[@TonyArjona]

I still want one. Absolutely! Great video!

[@TonyArjona]

I have multiple displays with component in AND set top boxes with component out I could use as a recording source

[@XMguy]

This is like bookends. Techmoan did HD-VMD, then CRD, does this one. Epic.

[@skuder491]

What a nice saturday

[@ElfinaAshfield]

I literally just finished watching Techmoan's HD-VMD video lol

[@cjshields2007]

Christmas has come early

[@thekornreeper]

Yup

[@rustymixer2886]

@@ElfinaAshfield that irobot 1080 hd vhs?

[@beardsplaining]

When I was a cable installer (2006-2014) I was always amazed at how many people "couldn't tell" the difference from analog fuzzy SD and digital crisp HD when it was plain as day to me.

[@DANKKrish]

@@parad0xheart i wonder if those people have phantom visual snow on their clean digital signal for the first week too or something.

[@Radi0he4d1]

Wait till you have people comparing 60 and 120+ hz monitors, that's a riot

[@tankmchavocproductions6907]

Refer these people to an eye doctor, that’s insane.

[@rich1051414]

I remember my mother using the composite cable instead of component cables , because it was only one cable and 'she couldn't tell the difference'. How...

[@tbuk8350]

​@@Radi0he4d1I know people who can't tell the difference and I know some people who immediately can, and can never go back (like me).

[@dingdongbells3314]

Frankly if this format had caught on, I'm absolutely certain Hollywood would have an absolute aneurysm at the thought of consumers being able to record "move theater quality high definition copies" of movies (At least, for the time considering that DVD wasn't even available yet)

[@LaskyLabs]

The Music and Movie industry do the exact same thing every time something cool starts to develop. >:/ So many cool pieces of tech were absolutely smashed to pieces by those industries, it's genuinely amazing the iPod and iTunes could even exist back when they first became things.

[@nickp1370]

You know, that is a dang good point, I could even imagine that the movie or TV industry freaked out when this technology was created, and somehow destroyed it or caused it to be canceled/shelved. Different companies and Industries have done that for years, causing a lot of innovation to be delayed or outright forgotten. 🤔 Interesting thought... lol

[@button-puncher]

That's probably also why it didn't succeed. Like how the industry villanized DAT.

[@LaskyLabs]

​@@button-puncherNEVER FORGET DAT AND DCC FUCK RIAA

[@genderender]

its pretty much why D-VHS saw any use. pretty similar quality to this, but all players had HDMI w/ HDCP support. getting content off of component is fairly trivial to anyone looking to pirate, but early on HDCP was pretty fool-proof

[@fitnesswithsteve]

I love the way you framed the shot of you and your friend where you were out of focus in the background.

[@simarriott524]

This was shot brilliantly 👍

[@tituslafrombois1164]

Professional documentary level cinematography.

[@JoeJ94611]

How many KZbin video makers photograph themselves out of focus in the background? I’ve watched 1000s of videos, but I have never seen that done.

[@edgarhofmann7308]

It was a joy to see this Sony KV-36XBR800 again! I paid a small fortune in 2007, when we didnt have HDTV broadcast in Brazil. It had every possible connection at the time, and even a Memory Stick slot hidden behind the front panel door. I built a computer with component video outputs and a fast HDD to play HD files. As a bonus your video also shows the first Logitech hand scanner I had in 1991. Thanks for this wonderful time travel!!

[@softchassis]

The physical aspect of analog recording on tape is something that makes sense but also feels like arcane impossible magic and adding in something like additional physical travel time for the purpose of syncing signals with a physically existing delay line wire is like, it's ingenious but also *how did anyone even think of it*

[@brhfl2812]

I'm surprised something along the lines of bucket brigade delay wasn't optimized and implemented instead... physical delay lines feel absolutely wild in an application that otherwise exudes futuristic wonder.

[@HamousIceCreamTruck]

Delay lines are fascinating. Ive seen them on graphics card PCBs and ive seen them as buckets of cable used to artificially limit stock trading, and they never stop being fascinating

[@button-puncher]

LOL! Crazy was stuff was done to make things work in the NTSC days. I visited an edit house and the had an Abekas DDR (digital disk recorder), BLEEDING edge at the time. In order to sync live video to the delay imposed by the DDR they had a spool of cable in the floor. LOL! IIRC, 6" of cable was about one microsecond of delay.

[@gblargg]

@@brhfl2812 A lot of resolution would be needed for a bucket-brigade delay line. From the video it seems it's encoding a whole frame. The sampling rate for the chroma is 4x the color carrier, for NTSC that would be over 14 MHz. It would basically need memory to store the field at 4x the usual resolution.

[@georgef551]

Those bands you saw on the horses to the right side is called "Ringing". It is a product of analog signals when going from high to low contrast. Your setup just captured an analog artifact that's been around for decades.

[@PaulFisher]

and the metaphor for it is like a bell ringing-you take a signal and immediately jerk it over to another value, it’s going to have some “inertia” before it settles down into where you want it. (this is a dramatic oversimplification but still)

[@georgef551]

@@PaulFisher Great way to put it.

[@SleepingCocoon]

@@PaulFisher ah, not unlike a kind of resonance caused by filters/converters! that makes total sense

[@video99couk]

The U-matic tape format was infamous for this effect.

[@nickwallette6201]

That's what it looks like to me, too. It's a little tough to say from the example with the horse, but it _looks_ like the after-image is only present in the horizontal space to the right of the object. This might just be because the scene is panning to the right, and so the horse and the fence are moving left, relatively. But, it certainly looks like the analog signal is having trouble settling after the sharp contrast change. If it had been on the Y axis as well, then it would look more like motion compensation processing artifacts.

[@Stoney3K]

There's probably one singular reason this format did not catch on: It allowed consumers to capture uncompressed HD broadcasts without any copy protection, and allowed them to fast-forward across commercial breaks. Obviously movie studios and TV networks would not like that to happen. DVD/BluRay didn't allow that, and the deck recorded off component. With the uptake of HDMI and the push of studios to 'plug the analog hole' just to prevent consumers from capturing (and sharing) any protected media.

[@eDoc2020]

That's more of a Western thing. AFAIK Japan had different attitudes which would not hinder recording in the same way; that's part of why MiniDisc was more popular there. Also the same was true of standard definition video tape. Any VCR could record any* broadcast TV. It wasn't until later that Macrovision was invented and much later until devices were actually _required_ to respect it. I'm sure if WVHS started to catch on a similar scheme would be created. *Signals with Macrovision do not comply with the FCC standard for broadcast TV so could not be broadcasted. However non-broadcast sources such as prerecorded videotape and possibly cable/satellite TV don't have this requirement.

[@Astolfo2001]

Governments, Hollywood, and the RIAA can all suck it.

[@ciinoxgaming]

I own a thomson dvd player that can record from antena and composite source onto a dvd or the internal hard drive. I always thought it was common

[@whatr0]

eh, I doubt it's solely that, I think it's down to mainly how late the US got HD at all. there were plenty of opportunities for us to move to HD sooner but it was just kind of a clusterfuck.

[@ptyps]

Your friend is amazing for letting you use his TV and for being in the video. He did a great job.

[@ivanofna]

yessss! the w vhs episode that neither techmoan nor technology connections hasn't delivered!

[@jaymzx0]

I bet Alec is over there shaking his fist. "That was going to be my video!".

[@lucasrem1870]

why you need them? kzbin.info/www/bejne/oJrYYX-GmrGEhqc

[@ivanofna]

@@lucasrem1870Mostly because of a longstanding interest particularly in the Japanese W VHS system, and its early adoption quirks

[@ThriftyAV]

You mentioned Techmoan. I would also suggest the channel Oddity Archive for detailed descriptions of dead formats, but I don't believe he has featured W-VHS! Very detailed and interesting demonstration of a rare, interesting video format, with integrated explanation of how component video is recorded. Nice job, and I learned some stuff in the last 40 minutes!

[@NoNoseProduction]

Oddity archive is so niche. Doesn't get enough love.

[@robertolsen6797]

I'd also mention technology connections, man do I love his stuff...

[@EvertGuzman]

@@NoNoseProduction I’ve been following him for about 10 years now, I feel ya.

[@dc9662]

I'm another OA fan! It's an excellent channel that's got a treasure trove of good episodes. Anyone that enjoys this channel, and is unfamiliar with The Oddity Archive should check it out.

[@marsilies]

Oddity Archive briefly covered W-VHS in his 4 part "History of VHS" series. it's at the 1:18:24 mark on this video: kzbin.info/www/bejne/b3TUiYGdZtCdibc

[@LonSeidman]

I had a huge Panasonic HDTV CRT.. I think it weighed close to 200 pounds !

[@maxheadrom3088]

I have one - it's not huge but it's 16:9 and supports 1080i only. I use it to play guitar hero with no lag. Analog TV and analog signal packaging is a very interesting subject. DSPs have opened a new door, though: our cell phones all transmit on a band of frequency (not a single frequency carrier) and devices are separated using "normal components". Normal components are a set of signals that when convolved with each other result in zero - only convolving with itself results in a signal. This was done to avoid the desturctive interference common with FM. Even if part of the carrier is lost the signal can be restored.

[@evanhunke1676]

wasn't its max output like 720i lol?

[@my3dviews]

@@evanhunke1676 1080i or 720p.

[@12me91]

" bet you've never seen a crt with an hdmi input " I'm sitting 3 and 2/3 feet from one watching you on one actually

[@AcornElectron]

Yeah I have a couple, convenient for swapping and no one is picking it up and walking off.

[@f.k.b.16]

2 of 5412 viewers have!

[@kaitlyn__L]

Wow! I applaud your dedication in keeping it (or luck in finding it?)

[@BigOlSmellyFlashlight]

literal cathode ray dude

[@TVperson1]

Yeah, and my LG has a HDMI and a Digital Tuner

[@draggonhedd]

Its so odd to me that the Sony footage still looks 80s as hell even though its high resolution, and its the color space and vidicron tube ghosting. Super neat.

[@Controllerhead]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/nIWXnXeLYrZ_i7s NY in HD: 1993. This one always gets me, so awesome, yet somehow feels wrong and unsettling.

[@BT-ex7ko]

@@Controllerhead I was just about to go searching for this video after watching this. You saved me some time!

[@kreuner11]

I don't see the tube ghosting

[@EFIShell]

No, it's Saticon (HDC-100, HDC-300)

[@motheroats]

This was so interesting. I didn’t even know these things existed, but I think this video was absolutely necessary. The Sony TV- I’m here for it. 10/10

[@just4commentsable]

Your buddy's house is really nice. Something about the way its captured on the old camera ... It just works. Let him know he's got a nice house

[@tommytomthms5]

I'm sure he knows.

[@kelownatechkid]

@@tommytomthms5 It's good to hear nice compliments from people you respect, even if it confirms what you already thought..

[@Evansmustard]

aw YES. Just woke up past noon on a Saturday. Layin on the couch with a cold leftover pizza, and BAM new 40 minute Cathode Ray Dude vid. Its the little moments in life.

[@pointedspider]

Why are u sleeping so late?

[@kelownatechkid]

@@pointedspider Why aren't you?

[@pointedspider]

@@kelownatechkid I have a business to operate!

[@hdvs]

Nice video, thanks. I've both the first unit made by JVC, the SR-W320U and the last top model, the SR-W7U since about 20 years. They perform very similar, maybe the older unit having some slightly better quality. Problem with these consumer recorders was the compression, to make the HDTV signal fit the lower bandwidth of the modified VHS tape format, and digital noise optimization (Hadamard compression) which introduced artifacts on moving images, similar to those produced by standard noise reducers. If you are interested in analog HDTV recording, also some professional/broadcast existed, although limited to 20 MHz bandwidth, but without any kind of compression. One of them is the Sony HDV-1000 for the Japanese standard and the European model, the BTS BCH-1000, working with 1250/50 video. Both them used 1" tape on open reels and quality was similar. Here you can find some videos of this last rare machine in operation: kzbin.info/www/bejne/qqO9o5idjKeGesk kzbin.info/www/bejne/iHy1h2SHaNhlmrM kzbin.info/www/bejne/oIDbpYKqlpuYq80 kzbin.info/www/bejne/lYnCo4egptimms0

[@AnonymousFreakYT]

That WEGA TV… Man, I've been hunting for one of those locally for *YEARS* to be my retro gaming display. Can take anything from an Atari 2600 up to a modern system. And yes, it can do more than just 480p, it can also do 720p. All ATSC-compatible TVs have to accept 480i, 480p, 720p, and 1080i. (And if you pause at 11:06 you can even see that the component video jacks specifically say they support those four resolutions.) And in my research, all the Sony 1080i capable CRTs do support 720p in full 60 Hz progressive. (Since the technology was already perfected on computer display CRTs.) And, uh… If your friend ever decides to part with that TV, I am local to Portland, and would happily take it off Grant's hands...

[@timotheatae]

Something about Legend of Korra on a VCR is nostalgic. The irony is I only watched it for the first time this year. Something about how cartoons look on a CRT just can't be replicated nowadays.

[@jamescampbell8482]

The MISE format had a unique form of interlacing that was more than 2 fields (if I am getting that right.) so it naturally has an afterimage trailing artifact. Its just the way the format encodes HD.

[@Δημήτρης-θ7θ]

This. The "after image trailing effect" and the vague checkerboard pattern happens because MUSE is "dot interlaced". Basically, the image is divided into 2x2 blocks and each field fills one pixel of the block (so it takes 4 fields for a full image, unlike regular interlaced with takes only 2 fields). This means that the resolution of each field is 960x562 and not 1920x562. This also means that in order to decode the analog image, you had to digitize first. BTW the European HD-MAC format used a similar scheme (not that anyone here in Europe actually saw HD-MAC in action, but whatever, it existed...).

[@TinLeadHammer]

HDV was not steamrolled by DVD and Blu-Ray. It was, and for some users, still is a very successful format, that allowed to record 720p, 1080i and even 1080p on ubiquitous MiniDV tape as early as 2004. Lots of TV shows are shot on HDV, and amateurs just loved the Canon HV20 and its successors.

[@whophd]

You’re looking at 3D DNR. I also have a champagne JVC S-VHS deck and I have to turn off this temporal noise reduction to get rid of the trails. Some digitisers also have their own, such as the one recommended by TechConnetify / Technology Connections (Ocean Matrix - cannot be turned off).

[@freeculture]

Yes, it also looks like temporal noise reduction artifacts to me, sometimes called "3d" for adding time (previous frames) to x and y.

[@ReelyInteresting]

Hey CRD, it's super awesome to see you featuring my uploads in your videos! That Great America footage was actually sourced from a factory-recorded W-VHS tape which was then captured from a Japanese W-VHS deck. As you might imagine, I'm quite enthusiastic about the subject and I've found quite a bit on the W-VHS platform over the years and thought I'd share some interesting facts! This one is out there already but another possible reason it's called "W" VHS is due to the "double" in "double U," representing the 2 parallel video tracks recorded to tape. Speaking of which, the 2-track system is actually really neato. Each track is split into an effective resolution of 525 lines representing each field of 1135 video (1050 effective lines/2 fields per frame = 525)...and 525 lines happens to be NTSC resolution. (Good move, Sony & SMPTE, good move) As a result, on top of standard VHS/S-VHS playback/record, these decks also record fabulous standard definition video in component form, like Betacam! (A function of which I'm surprised you didn't feature!) Now you may be saying, "Hol up, friendo! What about that second 525 line track? Does it go to waste?" Of course not! It's either removed to double recording time or it's used for storing a second SD video stream, meant for 3D video! JVC/Victor was a strong proponent of 3D as evidenced by the 3D support on their VHD videodisc system. Also, 1035i was a 60fps standard, not 59.94fps, like the (analog) 1080i standard is. Most capture units are tolerant of the frame rate difference, but I'm not sure if the ol' W-VHS decks are tolerant of it. I wonder if that may be causing some of the ghosting issues you're seeing. I have not tried recording on my deck. Oh yes, W-VHS is a sweet little fragment of A/V history that is underappreciated, and I'm super glad you made a video about it. P.S. Check your emails!

[@lutello3012]

I thought the W meant wide-band.

[@CathodeRayDude]

I sent you an email about a number of these things - one nit I want to pick here though is that it seems that each individual recorded pair of tracks is still only half the total resolution. I didn't get into this as deep as I wanted in the video, because it requires a lot of domain knowledge and I didn't want to muddy the waters for the general audience, but as far as I can tell, WVHS is *double-interlaced.* Each recorded pair of tracks contains one field of the HD picture (516 lines effective), but the Y signal is interlaced a SECOND time before being recorded, so the Y portion of each track only stores 258 effective lines. So the Y for a single frame is spread across *four* signals total. I will say this manual is confusing in many places so it's not impossible that I've misunderstood it - this part seems pretty clear, but if you have other technical docs from JVC that disagree, maybe we should send some snips back and forth in email and compare notes. In re the scan rate issue - that's very interesting and I do wonder if it's partially responsible. There are so many problems with this setup, but man, it is *incredibly* difficult to find the true original equipment for this stuff.

[@Controllerhead]

3D 480p video on a cassette?! Whoa! Fascinating.

[@ReelyInteresting]

​@@CathodeRayDude Thanks for the reply! That's a really good question. All my literature is in Japanese and I'm using Google Translate here but it looks like you could be correct...or could not. It looks like the 1035i frame is buffered and then split in half into the NTSC-like 525i frames. Then, each field in each 525i frame is split by its odd and even interlaced fields which is then written in parallel on the tape. Finally, the other "NTSC-like 525i" half of the picture is written to the tape the next time the heads fly around. The question is whether the first split is in the physical middle of the screen (imagine drawing a line horizontally across the center of the screen) or if the first field is considered 1/2 of the image and then that is split into (false) even and odd fields making a true double interlace. By referring to each image as "NTSC-like" I guess it's implying the former since it would be an interlaced NTSC-like half of the image. ...my hurt brains. And yeah, it'll be hard to inject a true 1035i signal and see if it's actually the format...or just bad caps! Besides a Hi-Vision LD decoder and fancy Hi-Vision LD player that will set you back a few grand, they did make a couple 1035i test signal generators...

[@ReelyInteresting]

​@@lutello3012 Yes, in official international literature. In the Japanese HR-W1 manual, the introduction paragraph on W-VHS doubles up (heh) on the "double" emphasis, that HDTV has twice the information as NTSC & the tape can store twice the amount of data using two tracks. Even the logo has a split "W," likely representing the "two tracks" and the two recording tracks were, generally, a major focus point in technical literature. This is also emphasized by the Japanese pronunciation which sounds more like "double VHS."

[@Kevin-jb2pv]

That HD CRT is the most impressive to me. I've always wanted one. I love that they don't need backlighting and I still think their color is better.

[@AmauryJacquot]

what you experience on the horse is ringing, it's a consequence of analog filters when going from bright to dark or reverse. the time division multiplex thing is what 4:2:2 is about. for each Y sample, you have 2 samples of U and 2 samples of V. as how it's done, each line is digitized in a buffer, and 1/2 the samples are dropped for the chroma data then data for the line is recorded to the tape, only adding one line delay between the input and the tape recording. the "emphasis" they're talking about is a form of analog filtering (sort of like the RIAA preamp on vinyl)

[@gblargg]

23:07 Do some single-stepping and you can see it's not mere spatial ringing as it doesn't occur until the white horse starts moving to the left on the frame. As you step one frame at a time, you can clearly see the number of rings increase once per frame. It looks to be some kind of temporal processing that's incorporating many previous frames. > the "emphasis" they're talking about is a form of analog filtering Emphasize (increase) the level of some frequencies before recording, then reduce them at playback (to reverse the effect), because the emphasized version on tape allows better preservation of some features of the signal.

[@checksum00]

The analog/digital pedantic level of this video was off the chart.

[@Kalvinjj]

And it's exactly why we're watching it

[@Humorless_Wokescold]

Me: "Eh. Not as big as I thought it'd be." Him: "It weighs a 150 lbs." Me: o_O

[@CathodeRayDude]

yeah the DENSITY of widescreen CRTs is absurd. hell, high res CRTs in general - if you ever owned a flat tube 21" monitor, they were lethally heavy

[@BensOnTheRadio]

I think some of the biggest ones nearly crested 300 pounds.

[@random832]

The largest CRT ever made by some accounts was 43 inches and 440 pounds.

[@devourerthegoop2887]

@@random832 what's the model number for it? I thought CRT TVs never went over 32"

[@random832]

@@devourerthegoop2887 I think the one I was reading about was a Sony PVM, the PVM-4300, which cost $40,000, obviously not for the consumer market. I just found a newspaper article saying only three had been sold so far at the time. The other 'largest' one i could find references for online is the KV-40XBR800, which is 40" and weighs 325 lb.

[@jackmcslay]

It's quite a shame the format didn't catch on. Even at 1080i it's completely acceptable to watch today and not feel like you're just watching an old format as a gimmick, this format could very well have become the modern video equivalent of vynil records and getting new releases today.

[@wutzerface77]

To say that this video is “fantastic” or “wonderfully executed” is a MASSIVE understatement. HOLY SHIT i admire the effort you put into this (and all your other videos) and i hope you realize us laymen can appreciate it

[@CathodeRayDude]

i am trying my best. thank you for appreciating!

[@coryhammer9566]

I think DVR/Tivo with the combination of DVD is what actually killed VHS. Higher quality achieved with different products for different purposes. Until DVR matured, VHS still had purpose and stuck around.

[@supercattelephone]

those "trails" you are seeing look like an effect from the muse hi vision format that this uses, it was a weird form of interlacing they needed to use to make an analog OTA signal not use so much bandwidth. That's just my thought on it though.

My thoughts as well. It's probably using the MUSE encoding inside, it's just this deck has the encoder/decoder built-in, not like earlier models where the MUSE decoder is a separate box (like in Techmoan's Hi-Vision LD video, you can also see that box has a W-VHS input). MUSE uses some form of motion vector encoding, just like our modern video codecs do, but in analog domain and probably a lot more simpler in terms of complexity. I guess it works on fields rather on frames, and these checkmark ghosting artifacts are what it produces where it fails to do a transparent encoding with the bandwidth constraints of the tape in place. In motion it probably looks okay, similarly how digital video can get away with some blocky image in high motion scenes.

[@sunspot42]

It doesn’t use MUSE - that’s why it needed a converter - but it does something similar to MUSE to reduce the bandwidth.

[@rsuryase]

Hope you are lucky enough to get a hold of a SONY HDVS VTR and do a video on it.

[@MrMegaManFan]

I greatly appreciate the shoutout to Techmoan. It's appropriate given that watching his content was what ultimately led me to yours!

[@my3dprintedlife]

My father still has a similar CRT, I need to check that thing out. RIP Sewing with Nancy.

[@childoferna]

Nancy Zieman was a fantastic sewing educator. I still have her books and quite a few of her branded tools.

[@my3dprintedlife]

@@childoferna She really was amazing.

[@gxc90]

I remember in the mid 90's seeing TDK and other tape manufactures making blank W-VHS tapes for the format. I think Philips had one as well, If I recall, seeing on line, (though extremely rare).

[@jakethebard]

I would imagine that the advent of things like TiVo and DVR also had a hand in people moving away from VHS home recording. I remember seeing advertisements for them right around the same time my family got our first DVD player

[@fridje]

I'd love to see a video about why HD was so belated

[@trashyraccoon2615]

I feel like many industries didn’t want to pay to upgrade all their video infrastructure to analog HD, only to have to do it again when everything went digital. Just a guess

[@JaredConnell]

I think it was a chicken and egg situation. Consumers didn't want to buy HDTVs without any content to watch, but content creators and distributors didn't want to make any HD content or broadcast in HD since nobody had the hardware to view it. And it was also at the time where flat panels were replacing CRTs so people didn't want buy a new CRT but plasma and LCD TV's were very expensive so many people just waited for prices to drop significantly to jump on the HD bandwagon.

[@Zastrutzki]

The world would look more or less the same, because we're all streaming now anyway, no matter what came before.

[@drboom2]

11:30 Funny you mention this, I played through all of The Last of Us Part 2 on my WEGA 30XS955. Absolutely stunning experience, latency isn't particularly bad in my opinion.

[@AFluffyMobius]

Have a 30XS955 myself too. I had to move out of state so its sitting in my parents house, but i would be using it today for sure if i was still there. Can't beat the black levels on them.

[@xWood4000]

@@AFluffyMobius I mean you can beat the black levels, but yeah not with LCD for now

[@chunye215]

Can you try to record on a normal VHS to see how bad it will go? There's a good chance the detection happens in a mechanical way, some notch or hole on the WVHS that tells the machine. Crude method would be to open the cassette and swap the tape...

[@Space_Reptile]

Techmoan doing a HD VMD video and now CRT dude making analog HD on the same day? this saturday is blessed w/ content

[@ziginox]

YO WHAT THE HECK I HAVE THAT EXACT TELEVISION I saved it from the e-waste where I use to work. Couldn't let it go. I also use it in my bedroom. It's pretty stunning when feeding almost anything into it, especially the PlayStation 2 over component or Super Nintendo on s-video. It's also a 100Hz set, so the whine that normal CRTs give me a headache with is absent! No NES Zapper compatibility, though. Don't forget about John Carmack's famous Sony 2048x1152 monitor in 1995! Great video as always, I love how your explanations always start out so simple, and then end up taking a deep dive into market trends and consumer feelings in times contemporary to when these things were released. Also, tell your friend he has a wonderful home, loved the front porch and the rounded arches between rooms.

[@kelownatechkid]

Fantastic video Gravis. Love it. The time-related artifacting is also seen in newer techniques like TAA and DLSS.

[@glonch]

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again- He is the US Techmoan…. Well done video! Excellent job.

[@honestguy7764]

We, europeans need someone like techmoan to talk about our own european limitations, benefits and quirks of the pal/secam domain. We ares saturated of 110v ntsc stuff (even whe we loved to import us stuff ans use bulky step down transformers!

[@BensOnTheRadio]

It makes me really happy to see the exact TV I have in my living room featured in a video about a format I’ve been curious about for a while. Excellent work! I use that TV for all analog video since it seems to make it all look great. Especially letterboxed LaserDisc.

[@HamousIceCreamTruck]

Not to take away from the main topic, but i would severely watch VHS rips of your videos. Also the glitch art this thing produces is quite beautiful.

[@jefffan171]

This is a tremendous video. I remember this player in the UK in the late 90's under is DVHS guise. But this player feels like Walt Disney's Treasure Planet being an "animated movie" despite being 70% CGI and only animated when needed

[@concr3t3]

You might be one of many 'legacy tech' youtubers, but the way you explain how things work puts pretty much all of them to shame. Can't wait to see what you've got cookin' for us next!

[@snap_oversteer]

Great video, there's not much info on the W-VHS, especially here on KZbin... until now :D

[@CathodeRayDude]

Footnotes: This video will not be what some people want it to be - a perfect, precise, methodical analysis of WVHS technology. This is because I am a sloppy, imprecise person, hopeless when it comes to rigorous finding of fact. I developed this narrative based on my own opinions and emotional responses to this technology, and there is no point nitpicking me because I was deliberately vague for the sake of self-expression and entertainment. I expect to get comments about my interpretation of the analog-ness of this technology. I am fully aware that some VCRs have TBCs, and that they too process the image through a DSP, store it in a framebuffer and regenerate the analog signal - but that technique only appeared in high end professional decks and some very late consumer ones. For the bulk of its lifespan, VHS video never touched a computer. There is a massive leap from that, to a technology that could never have been viewed *without* a computer, and that thinks and breathes in digital terms. If you read the signal specs in JVC's documentation, it spends much of its time talking about samples and clocks, very digital concepts. If I'd had time, I wanted to go into how MUSE does the same, and even refers to the components of the image as "pixels." I haven't read deeply about how hi-vision LD works, but unless *that* technology happens to be extremely and undeniably analog, then it's evident to me that HD video has simply never been analog in spirit; it can't be separated from computers and digital processing. I also know that the test footage I used was by many measures not ideal. It's been transcoded and converted half a dozen times, which means it doesn't prove much. And sure, I could have put up some test cards and, I don't know, some kind of modern reference footage, but I don't really care about the objective quality of the medium. I chose this footage for specific reasons - the first two videos I picked because they were intended to demonstrate technology just like this, and I had always wanted to see them doing what they were meant to do. The others I picked because they're video you might have recorded onto this tape if you had the chance; VHS was all about recording TV or dubbing from other media, and many peoples entire collection was second-generation copies, or worse. The theoretical maximum quality of commercially recorded video doesn't interest me nearly as much as what it would look like to watch a copy of a movie dubbed from a friends bluray, and in retrospect, if I'd thought about it sooner, I would have tried to figure out how to record some live broadcast HDTV so we could see what the proverbial taped baseball game would look like. Finally, I just want to reiterate that IRL, looking at the CRT itself (or a modern TV through a scaler), this all looks about ten times better than the recording. It's nearly impossible to record a TV screen accurately; I urge you to take my word for it rather than going off what you see in the video. I love WVHS, and I did my best to split the time in this video between exultant expressions of how much it pleases me, and the facts and data I could muster without beginning to blurt out things I couldn't back up. Please take it in that spirit.

[@JustJaidenism]

okay that's cool man

[@zxcvb_bvcxz]

This is one of your best, if not your best videos. Even your animations are next-level.

[@jakthebomb]

I had a Samsung HDTV CRT which had HDMI ports on it

[@roxics]

I felt like a kid in a candy store when this video popped up today. Thank you for covering this format! I've wanted to know more about it for a while. There is so little information out there about it. What a missed opportunity format. Would have been great if it had taken off and if we had gotten some reasonably priced camcorders that shot on it in 1035i.

[@Jakoliath]

I got giddy when you said "Pentium III" and up popped a picture of the case of my first computer. Rocked that thing up until the end of 2009.

[@kaitlyn__L]

Loving “temporarily embarrassed digital signal”; it’s true - if they could’ve done D-VHS with DVD decoding tech a few years earlier they wouldn’t have attempted this. And yeah, I was one of those people with a VCR next to a DVD player in 2007. Recording digital TV (another box) and even sometimes bootlegging friends’ DVDs (even when the disc said copy protected, and that deck was a fairly new one, but hey).

[@eDoc2020]

2007? I believe I _still_ have a VCR connected to the living room TV.

[@kaitlyn__L]

@@eDoc2020 mine broke when I moved, and now my TV lacks SCART :( Also 2007 was when I’d finally saved up enough for a DVD player! I think I regularly used the VCR until 2010 or 11?

[@eDoc2020]

@@kaitlyn__L I've never had a TV with SCART for obvious reasons but until 2010 we didn't have _any_ video inputs (except for the RF input) on a primary TV. Since DVD can't record (at least not economically) the VCR was still used to record TV. That only got phased out when we started recording on a used TiVo and after we got forced off analog cable digital On Demand started to reduce the need for recording.

[@kaitlyn__L]

@@eDoc2020 yeah, for me it was just that I moved away from broadcast TV entirely and I had ripped my DVDs and stuff.

[@elijahvincent985]

After years of searching for the perfect TV combining analog TV with modern HD compatibility on the useless Google, I have finally found the particular TV that I have sorely longed for. I know what's on my eventual shopping cart for eBay or a thrift store! Shame on the search engines that cruelly blocked me of this holy grail of TV technology. Can we have more of these made, Sony? I'm also angry at those who prevented these technological masterpieces from never getting the proper attention they deserved!

[@tituslafrombois1164]

Seeing analog video technology pushed to its absolute limits - to the point where it's on so many digital life support systems it almost can't be called analog anymore - is amazing. The people who pioneered and established the methodology of analog video at its beginning truly couldn't have fathomed it being implemented to this extreme, and it's clear that it was never designed to be pushed this far. But they did it anyways, the madmen. They spit in the faces of our interlaced overlords and proclaimed "Let them have HD," and were punished for their sins by low sales figures and nonexistent adoption. Something something American Gods reference. Great video as always!

[@kathrynradonich3982]

I platinumed ffxv on ps4 on the 32” version of this tv I picked up at a goodwill. The tv was amazing was sad to have to get rid of it.

[@Bluith]

like a video format DCC, mechanically compatiable with a previous format but requires a hybrid device to take advantage of the new format. With the added problems of a lack of content and prohibitively expensive displays at the time.

[@freeculture]

Or Superdisk which allowed traditional floppies. No one remembers those lost formats. (the 3 1/2" floppy factor that "won" against several others was Sony's).

[@video99couk]

13:55 Digital-S was also known as D9. I did a couple of videos about a machine recently: kzbin.info/www/bejne/pHzRfpiBeZJnhrM kzbin.info/www/bejne/nJ7MmnaIbNqEe5I But I didn't know much about W-VHS so thanks for the enlightenment on that!

[@matthewf1979]

You do this better than Techmoan! The story telling is phenomenal, yet again! I went through the majority of your back catalogue over the past few weeks and didn’t skip through a second of it.

[@Techmoan]

CRD has an excellent channel, this is a great video and we know and support one another. There's more than enough hours in a week to watch all the videos you enjoy on KZbin. Don't fall into the binary trap or believing one channel has to fail for another to succeed. However if you have to pick just one - subscribe to CRD over my channel he needs your support to grow. Also support him on Patreon. I've done it, you should too.

[@robertsandoval6725]

One thing you didn't mention was the requirement to cripple any digital recorder coming into the US so that it could only play not record. that law was passed to last 4 yrs because of all the pac pressure company's were pushing. Due to all the money that was dumped into CD-type recording R and D. It gave CDs the foothold to knock tape out

[@powerjbn9283]

Id really love to hear about that comedy of errors you were talking about with HDTV - I know that I can probably find out about the history elsewhere, I just would be really interested in that framing.

[@TheAmazingMoose-Man]

just found this channel, not gonna lie, I am loving the vibe of the channel!

[@marktubeie07]

Fantastic video and a beautiful machine. I agree with your conclusion. The closest example I can think of is Digital Compact Cassette, backwards compatible but played one off there first digital audio consumer formats - and yes, there was DAT but that was pro-sumer. Keep you the vids, I'm sub'd!

[@fretlessfender]

Nice analogy... DCC is still outhere though...

[@marktubeie07]

@@fretlessfender Indeed it's is, which is great too see!

[@GilBatesLovesyou]

I'm sure you've heard of the "analog loophole" which imo is why these formats were never allowed to take off. You have to combine it too, with public ignorance of HDTV formats and hooking stuff up. Even 3-4 years ago I still met people who had cable boxes hooked to their HDTV with RCA cables and/or coax and not HDMI completely ignorant it would look 1000x better hooked via HDMI. Besides the complexity of hooking up stuff via component for a lot of people, the fact it was analog (and to my eyes still looked good) means you can't do any effective DRM controls on it, which big companies just don't want. :/ Even now with removing headphone jacks from phones, it's the same thing, imo.

[@snoopdoggthecertifiedg6777]

My man, you have one of the absolute best smaller channels I’ve seen on KZbin

[@mr.electronx9036]

It supported up to 50GB Data on a single DVHS...imagine...1080i in the 90s on VHS This is better than DVD and we should skip DVDs and go from DVHS to BluRays instead... I have the same JVC but only in S-VHS Edition because D-VHS was extremly rare on the European Market I love to watch stuff like that THX Man

[@Di3mondDud3]

Honestly, I still buy dvds for being cheap and easy to use on anything. I can stream in HD if I want it, but I just care about blu ray less than I did back in 2008.

[@Astolfo2001]

I didn't even get a working Blu-Ray player of my very own until sometime circa 2018-2019. And I didn't even get an external Blu-Ray drive until 2021. I still buy DVDs but I also buy Blu-Rays as well. I very very rarely buy any UHD Blu-Rays and I don't have a drive to rip them to my computer on though. The only movies I currently have on UHD Blu-Ray as of writing are Kingsman 1 and 2. I am now recently getting into VHS as I just recently found a working Sony SLV-775HF VCR from 1996 and a few VHS tapes in our basement. I now want to get some more VHS tapes (both commercially pre-recorded ones and blank ones to record onto).

[@Di3mondDud3]

@@Astolfo2001 i had blu ray in 2007 when i got the ps3. It was great then to see new movies not horribly downsampled. But now? Eh its fine

[@djhaloeight]

My Dad is 2 for 2 on picking formats that lost. We had a Betamax in the early/mid 80s, and he was also an early adopter of HD-DVD. I guess you could say 3 for 3 if you count Super Audio CD, but I don’t know if that’s considered a dead format yet. 😅 We also had a 40” Sony Wega CRT, with matching stand. You are NOT kidding about being crushed by these things. When we moved it out of the house after we got a flat panel, we used these stupid strap things that go over your shoulders. I essentially got trapped going up stairs with the weight of the TV, and I felt something in my spine give. I ended up developing extremely painful sciatic pain/numbness in my right leg. Turns out I herniated my L5-S1 disc. Had to have a microdiscectomy, luckily that went well and I’ve been pain free since. 😳

[@Kylefassbinderful]

Video8 and especially Hi8 were very impressive technologies for something sold in the consumer space. Especially in terms of audio.

[@Valery0p5]

5:49 "but that (1080i) is how broadcast HD works even now" Me, watching this video in 4K60fps on my phone: 🤡 And most TV stations are even in SD! And they are planning to phase it out *next year* ... Maybe. 🤡🤡🤡

[@Dedubya-]

Thanks, that was really interesting, in Europe in the early 90's broadcasters were messing about with hybrid analogue MAC broadcasts (DMac in the UK and D2Mac in Europe) which included an HDMac version too at around 1250 lines, which test transmissions were around and looked fairly good on those early CRT widescreens... I wonder if this product was hoping to cash in on those new systems which never really took over from analogue TV and then digital took us in other directions. Any chance you can undress this beauty and let us look inside?

[@honestguy7764]

My parents used to hace a Metz crt tv that was pal plus a mac compatible although I never was able to watch either of them in the mid 90s in Spain

[@Dedubya-]

@@honestguy7764 Ah yes the UK had one channel occasionally broadcasting in Pal+ (Channel 4) but it never gained any real support.

[@der.Schtefan]

I had a think. TCI seems to work by reducing the temporal resolution of the chroma signals. Usually you limit bandwidth with most systems by reducing spatial resolution, but they chose to also use the chroma information for adjacent frames (fields), arguing that chroma doesn't change that much from one frame to the next. Correctly predicting that this will cause extreme ghosting of moving objects, they generate the inverse of the expected error and add that to the signal. This is what they call adding "emphasis". The term is taken from how Dolby Noise reduction works on audio tape, where the signal is amplified above the tape hiss noise floor by compressing the dynamic range. But how much exactly they compress what dynamic range, and if that also happens for spatial resolution, is unclear.

[@jackkraken3888]

I love how utterly fascinating this video is and yet utterly useless it is for someone like me who will never be able to buy or us WVHS in any capacity.

[@MattOGormanSmith]

HD needed digital to thrive. Without frame buffers and scaling you needed 100% custom equipment all along the delivery chain, which was not compatible with the standard system. With digital you can transmit a mix of of streams which can be decoded by both a HDTV set or an old SDTV (widescreen or 4:3) with a set top box. There is also the bandwidth problem which prevented HDTV broadcasts (everywhere but Japan apparently) for a niche audience.

[@ChaunceyGardener]

This video has a lot of information time compressed in 40 minutes.

[@DanielLopez-up6os]

ONn Yahoo Auctions Japan someone is selling W-VHS Blank tapes 8 Dollars a Piece. Also Dont Forget that Europe had RGB over Scart at the same times the US had only Component, sadly only pro systems recorder the RGB, but atleast it was nice on Consoles, crisp RGB from games consoles. on Yahoo Auctions Japan someone is selling W-VHS tapes 8 Dollars a Pice.

[@filipbarski6990]

I heard somewhere that DVHS and WVHS tapes are exactly the same so this may be a cheaper media alternative

[@surrodox]

Last time I read WVHS is a derivative of D9 tape, itself's VHS derivative DVHS is just SVHS per techmoan video about it

[@TVperson1]

I'm afraid not, WVHS uses a different tape formulation more like DigitalS/ D9 tapes . Like the other guy says, DVHS is more like SVHS.

[@johneymute]

If you had this HD vcr and HD TV back in 1995, you were 15 years ahead of the time, But i think the main reason why it failed because it was just waay too expensive.

[@AllonKirtchik]

Speaking of obscure ‘90s analog formats, are you by any chance interested in APS? I have an original 1996 Canon IXY in working condition if you ever decide!

[@davidchristian9272]

I remember seeing some of this at SIGGRAPH in 1995 as well as when visiting a friend in Japan circa 1997. Alas, the USA lost out as usual.

[@taragwendolyn]

So interestingly, I still have a working LG 42LB5D from early 2003. Until earlier this year, it was my daily use TV - 3 HDMI, Component, VGA for the high definition inputs, along with s-video & composite with the best comb filter I've ever seen. Even has an ATSC tuner in it for modern OTA broadcast. I can't get rid of it lol... I refuse to throw it out because it still works, but nobody wants an 18-year old tv that weighs almost 80lbs, even if it is 42" 1080p60. I'd offer to send it to you, but I feel like shipping would be prohibitive and it probably isn't that interesting since it's feature comparable to something you could buy new today :(

[@maniatore2006]

Yes i saw it in the series King of Queens :D "HDTV" and it was a CRT :D Thank you for that Great Video.

[@10p6]

Nice. I think they could have done better though, and also recorded the video on the inside of the tape too. :-)

[@LaskyLabs]

I kinda wish D-VHS had taken off. Not to say I don't like BluRay, it's just that if it had taken off it would have brought HD to the masses much sooner. Then when BluRay and HD-DVD came out people would then start buying movies on the format with more features and higher picture quality, while keeping their D-VHS decks for recording and whatnot. If that had happened, there would be a lot more HD archives of old TV and news events, as DVRs that recorded in HD took a while to show up. Annoyingly so...

[@LaskyLabs]

Going back to this with a year more info, it makes sense why it never happened though. Movie companies could not _stand_ the idea of people at home being able to have HD recordings of TV sans DRM.

[@matthewcook7097]

Home TV recording was popular in the US at the end of the 90s - using Tivo.

[@MancaveEffects]

For what i know the WVHS decks had multiple video heads, one for each function (playback, record, vhs, svhs and wvhs) so they dont interact with certain components or sections of the system. Wvhs used muse analog compression technology. This explains the halo effects you have when playing back HD video. Due to the higher bandwidth, muse needed to lower the resolution when lot of movemnent is seen in the shot (a camera pan for ex.). The resolution can reduce down to 50% of the total resolution recorded. There is a video called "the history of hdtv" here on Yt that adds some minor infos to that theme. However, i really like your videos! They are super interesting and nicely done! Keep it up!

[@betamax1815]

W-VHS video doesn't actually involve MUSE compression in any way. That applied only to Hi-Vision Laserdiscs and TV broadcasts. Everything in old HD tech is not MUSE as much as people like to think that way.

[@phantom2012]

Another form of delay was the crystal delay unit, a signal bounced around inside a crystal block, they were surprisingly common back then.

[@sunspot42]

It’s insane how long it took HD to really reach the broader market, especially in North America. I saw some huge (for the time - probably 40”) widescreen rear projection HD sets demonstrated at CES in Las Vegas in January of 1986. They were showing footage of Chartres Cathedral and it was stunning. Film-like resolution but the color was super-saturated. I’d never seen anything like it. It looked more lifelike than film due to the higher frame rate. I think the sets were NEC. I don’t know how they were playing the video - I assume some professional early HD video format, probably off 1” tape. Anyhow, it felt like this would be coming to the consumer market by the early ‘90s at the latest. Little did we know…

[@KnapfordMaster98]

20:32 makemkv + handbrake is the easiest way to rip blu-ray, I've found. I use the 'production max' preset in handbrake and just make sure nothing is set to variable or anything dumb. Probably not the best results, but good enough for most applications.

[@romangiertych5198]

MakeMKV is enough to get an untouched copy of the BluRay. Handbrake's not really required, it only encodes it (with not great presets, though probably good enough for most). For a demo like here where he wouldn't need to store the file after the video's done, using the untouched remux is better.

[@KnapfordMaster98]

Very true, but I was thinking for the purposes video editing. I don’t know of any editing software that likes to take MKV files. I usually keep my rips as MKV and then convert them when I need them for a video.

[@L0j1k]

OH MAN Sewing With Nancy has a HUGE memory load in my family LOL!!! Classic and awesome to see you with a tape.

[@pokepress]

Maybe the dealer version of the model would have simultaneous HD and SD output so they could show the difference in person.

[@outsidethewaxbox]

I’ve known about WVHS for years but it’s great to finally see it in action! As an aside, in my previous life working in CE retail, I had plenty of experience lifting those Sony WEGA sets. The KV-40XBR900s were the heaviest at a little more than 300 pounds, the thickness of the screen required to withstand the CRT pressure in such a size is what made it so heavy. But there’s still nothing that came close to them in picture quality. My favorite was the KD-34XBR1 with a separate tuner/receiver.

[@lutello3012]

Can you do a direct capture of the machine struggling and upload a lossless version? I want to make some sort of video artifact music video sometime.

[@CathodeRayDude]

I'll see what I can do!

[@Cowclops]

I remember selling those KV-HS420s when I worked for a crappy and now defunct electronics chain in 2004. No, not circuit city. No, not tweeter. Anybody ever hear of "Rex?" I worked in one in a dying mall. Sometimes the roof leaked on the TVs. That was an interesting time to sell gear like this because the biggest tvs were plasma, the LCDs were had were expensive for their size (Think 32" LCD for $1500 when you could get a 42" plasma for the same), but we also carried SD and HD CRT rear projection TVs, a few LCD rear projection TVs, and cheap small directive tubes too. It was a real sampler for display tech.