MZ rants about VHS versus DVD...

[capncnut]

VHS phuckin' rules, man.

[DVW5150]

The first time I watched a vhs cassette, I saw Jaws. As I was watching it, I was enthralled as the Sony Top loading machine whizzed and whined its way through the tape. There is something not just nastalgic about VHS, more a bit of your past life. So yes, I do miss vhs. I have around 300 vhs, with 3 movies on each.You could dub all 3 Mad Max films on to one.I dubbed them without credits, so it would go from the end of Mad Max where he is driving in the rain,you see the road ahead & cut to "..My Life fades..." to Road Warrior (or MM2)... I made tapes like Full Metal Jacket,Hamberger Hill, Platoon, on one tape. Video editing was fun too. Thats how I got the video editing bug . I would edit a video w/ 2 vcrs, and sync a song to it.That was back in '88. The first DVD I rented was Pulp Fiction, when it was over, I was ,"OK that was a great movie, gotta rewin- um , no I dont.Just put back in the box." Below is the last video I edited on VHS.Its on my YT channel : (Note the grainy destruction of clarity from copying from vhs to my old hard drive, and you can see the tracking ...) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0_J-s-9OsY Anywho... Great writing there MZ.

[DeadJonas190]

I agree with your blog. One thing that I have noticed about horror movies on VHS compared to DVDs is that the VHS grainyness adds depth to the creatures in the movie. DVD is so crisp and clear that you can tell when something is CGI or a guy in a rubber suit... it just looks fake on DVD. The grainyness of a VHS didnt have such crisp edges, it added a depth to the picture that just isnt' acheived in DVDs. I guess that is just part of the "soul" of a vhs tape that you mentioned.

[Skippy911sc]

This is starting to sound like an video version of an audiophiles debate over cd vs. LP...The grain gives it more depth? This is great I love the old days of VHS and LD but I would not want to return to it...I like DVDs and sure the FX are not as believable on DVD than in the theater but so what!

[MinionZombie]

This is starting to sound like an video version of an audiophiles debate over cd vs. LP...The grain gives it more depth? This is great I love the old days of VHS and LD but I would not want to return to it...I like DVDs and sure the FX are not as believable on DVD than in the theater but so what! Don't get me wrong, I'm a whore for DVD, but it just doesn't have the soul that VHS had...and it's the wider culture surrounding the formats also.

[capncnut]

At the end of the day, these machines have been in our living rooms and bedrooms for many years now. It's hard to let go sometimes. I still have one set up in the living room for sentimental reasons and I know I should move on. Then again, I have a few old movies on VHS that are still not widely available on DVD yet, some concerts too. The boxes were phat and phunky and much more pleasing to hold, you really felt you had yer bucks worth. As much as DVD's are nice and crispy, they have no character. Also, I agree with MZ on the whole 'unskippable ad' business that comes with most releases, especially rentals. Some even force you to watch the trailers too and once it even took me ten minutes just to get onto the main menu. What a load of bollox! Maybe I'll remove the VCR in another year...

[MinionZombie]

Most trailer reels you should be able to skip past surely. What I really hate is at the end of the credits and those pages of warnings - in about a million languages - come up and you can rarely skip to the menu from them, at best you have to fast forward. I bought the DVD for "Shatter Dead", and while not a mainstream released, goddamn the menus were F*CKING ANNOYING. It'd just be a massively long clip (like 3 bloody minutes) before the options came up EVERY TIME you selected something! At best you had to fast forward, how bloody stupid is that?! You know, some people don't have time to wade through that when they could be watching two dead people f*ck each other with the aid of a handgun!

[SRP76]

I prefer VHS tapes simply due to their durability. I have lost count of how many DVDs I have that have absolutely microscopic freakin' scratches, and it hangs the disc up, and sends it to skipping. Ruined movie, and it doesn't even have anything visible-to-the-naked-eye wrong with it. It drives me crazy. At least a tape has to get flat-out eaten for it to screw up.

[Danny]

I prefer VHS tapes simply due to their durability. I have lost count of how many DVDs I have that have absolutely microscopic freakin' scratches, and it hangs the disc up, and sends it to skipping. Ruined movie, and it doesn't even have anything visible-to-the-naked-eye wrong with it. It drives me crazy. At least a tape has to get flat-out eaten for it to screw up. Plus, when your little and fighting with your brother, -great projectiles.

[bassman]

I prefer VHS tapes simply due to their durability. I have lost count of how many DVDs I have that have absolutely microscopic freakin' scratches, and it hangs the disc up, and sends it to skipping. Ruined movie, and it doesn't even have anything visible-to-the-naked-eye wrong with it. It drives me crazy. At least a tape has to get flat-out eaten for it to screw up. What kind of dvd players do you have? I have some cheaper ones that do that, but if I use one of my higher, name brand models they will read through the deepest scratch and keep on truckin....

[MinionZombie]

What kind of dvd players do you have? I have some cheaper ones that do that, but if I use one of my higher, name brand models they will read through the deepest scratch and keep on truckin.... Are there discs you can get for DVD players, kinda like a DVD version of a VCR head cleaner to clean the lens or something jiggy? I was wondering, I got the definitive editions of Alien, Aliens and Alien 3 and they all had a glitch on them somewhere on the movie discs (features discs all fine), but at most a mere scratch...meanwhile I've played other DVDs with far bigger scratches and they've been fine...so I duno about that, maybe just those Alien discs? Some of the glitches were the sort where they just came up no matter what (Alien 3, very last shot of Aliens) and were the sort where it happens, but you wind back and play it again and nothing happens...I duno, weirdness. So yeah, are there DVD versions of VCR head cleaners? Do they do anything, what do they do?

[Craig]

Our DVD player doesn't record DVDs (I think) so if we want anything recorded it's still VHS all the way up in here. We still have a lot of tapes with movies on as well, so our VHS players get fairly frequent use, obviously not as much as they used to, though.

[MinionZombie]

Whenever I record something it's always to VHS still. My folks used to use VHS, but then got Sky+ so they just use that disc recorder hard-drive thing that's in the Sky box itself. DVD-R recording is just silly, it's too fiddly and not easy enough I say, it'll never take off and hasn't taken off. VCRs are simple to use, whack a tape in, time your thing or press the big red button and boom - done. Likewise the hard-drive recorder is really easy to use. Select the programme, press the red button, it's recorded, go into a menu and watch. SIMPLE. Hard-drive recorders will eventually squeeze out VCRs as the mainstream recording device, but DVD-R just won't...too fiddly a technology.