The VHS Revival Culture

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by paulisdead, Oct 9, 2012.

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  1. murphywmm

    murphywmm Senior Member

    I'm surprised that VHS is making a "comeback". It's not like vinyl which has a superiority in sound quality - it's very inferior quality-wise to DVD and BR. Personally, I have no desire to watch movies in pan-and-scan format again. The only time I would want to watch a VHS tape is perhaps for older movies (like 1940's and 1930's) that still haven't made it to DVD or BR.
     
  2. DreadPikathulhu

    DreadPikathulhu Senior Member

    Location:
    Seattle
    The only comeback it seems to be making is among those that see the walls of used VHS tapes in thrift stores for $1 each and figure it's a cheap way to catch up on pre-2000 movies..

    There has always been a collector community that looks for obscure movies that are otherwise unavailable, but there aren't that many of them.
     
  3. bluejeanbaby

    bluejeanbaby Forum Resident

    Location:
    NW Indiana
    My thoughts exactly....soooo many VHS tapes floating around and forgotten. My sons have amassed a collection of tapes that their friends and/or parents of have merely given them in the last 10 years or so, just to be rid of them. Yet what they had was a dvd player, so my one son finally got hold of a VHS player in a thrift shop that was in working order.
     
  4. lugnut2099

    lugnut2099 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Missouri
    While we're picking on old video formats, why do you guys think VCD never took off in America the way it did in Asian markets (and elsewhere to lesser degrees)? The format launched early enough in the US that piracy wouldn't have been a huge concern since hardly anyone had a CD burner (I remember seeing them turn up in stores for the first time around 1992-93, if I recall). The resolution wasn't much of an improvement over VHS as far as I remember, but the digital picture/sound made it sharper and, of course, not subject to the wear-and-tear of tape. They were cheaper than Laserdiscs and obviously much smaller, and for a minute I thought they might take over VHS, leaving LD for the "videophile" crowd, if only for their compact size and low price (ie, one of those early VCDs I remember seeing was The Silence of the Lambs for $25 when I think the VHS edition was still rental-priced).

    True, almost all movies were split across two discs, but then again, didn't most LDs require flipping too? (Unless you had one of those fancy auto-flip players.) It's just weird to me that the format was such a huge success in some countries, to the point where some legit releases still come out to this day, but never caught on here at all.
     
  5. progrocker71

    progrocker71 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Los Angeles
    No nostalgia for me. Everything was Pan & Scan, crap video quality, clunky media, rewinding...pass! You can keep 'em.
     
  6. clhboa

    clhboa Forum Resident

    That's kind of where I'm at. I've been going back and catching up on movies I missed over the years. A buck for a sealed copy of a classic isn't too bad a deal. Believe it or not, until recent years, I had never seen Jaws, Rocky or The Godfather (and I'm 48 years old). Found all of these cheap and played catch up.
     
  7. DreadPikathulhu

    DreadPikathulhu Senior Member

    Location:
    Seattle
    I remember being excited about the idea of VCD, but I never saw any for sale at retail. I don't think Suncoast ever carried them and that was the big retail chain in the early to mid 90s.

    I did pick up a few after I got my DVD player in the fall of 1997 and found the artifacting to be awful. I thought VHS had better picture quality!
     
  8. lugnut2099

    lugnut2099 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Missouri
    Oddly, the place I first saw them was at Babbage's, a now-defunct video game/computer software chain, probably because PCs and the Philips CD-i and Panasonic 3DO systems could play them. I'm wanting to say there was a tiny selection at the Suncoast here, but it would have only been for a very brief time. The artifacing was definitely a problem, but I thought they looked better than VHS myself (and yeah, 99% of the ones I had weren't legit, but...)
     
  9. SonOfAlerik

    SonOfAlerik Forum Resident

    Location:
    Westland, MI USA
    I remember seeing some VCDs for sale at Best Buy.
     
  10. Pinknik

    Pinknik Senior Member

    The only examples I saw personally looked worse than any VHS I'd seen.

    P.S. The video resolution of the format was half that of VHS and MPEG-1 is turrible, just turrible.
     
    Last edited: Aug 29, 2014
    izgoblin likes this.
  11. DreadPikathulhu

    DreadPikathulhu Senior Member

    Location:
    Seattle
    I'd also tie VCDs failure to the fact that they required either a dedicated player (which I've never seen) or a failed game system to play. They might have been more successful if they'd added VCD playback to standard CD players.
     
  12. Pinknik

    Pinknik Senior Member

    I think some DVD players could play them, but by that point, why bother? At work we had a VCD recorder briefly that could also make CDs. I think we got it before our first DVD recorder, but mostly made CDs on it.
     
  13. Mark Nelson

    Mark Nelson Forum Resident

    Location:
    United States
    I used to pick up VCDs of Hong Kong movies in Boston's Chinatown in the late 90s/early 00s, as they were a cheap alternative to DVDs, for movies
    I was blind buying and would only probably watch once. They generally looked fine on my 27" TV, played via my DVD player. Usually if I watched
    any I really liked, I'd upgrade to the DVD later.

    I've been going through a massive pile of ex-rental VHS tapes I got earlier in the year, when a local video superstore decided to jettison their tape holdings
    to free up space. Grabbed about 400 fairly obscure titles. I've probably watched 20-30 so far, and am surprised to find the majority are not pan-and-scan, but
    full frame ("open matte") transfers. My co-hort who joined me in this escapade watches them on his HD set, and says most zoom to fit rather well. I'm watching these
    on my 27" Sony from the late 90s, and they look fine. A few darker transfers here and there, but completely watchable and a cheap way to satisfy decades-long curiosities
    about a lot of these titles.
     
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  14. paulisdead

    paulisdead fast and bulbous Thread Starter

    I think for the Gen Y's - it's the experience of something they only have a fuzzy memory of. Vinyl had the same appeal for me when I was 15 (I'm 35 years old). Most people I've met with the VHS bug seem to be in their early/mid 20's.

    The video below shows a VHS collector talking about counterfeit VHS big boxes. It's funny to see the parallels to vinyl collecting culture.

     
  15. paulisdead

    paulisdead fast and bulbous Thread Starter

    [​IMG]

    A limited (only 25 copies!!!) edition VHS re-issue released in September 2014.
     
  16. Trashman

    Trashman Forum Resident

    Location:
    Wisconsin
    For me, VHS is of interest just because I taped so many programs in the 80s, 90s, and early 00s...and they still survive in boxes in my home. I recently finished going through the 80s and early 90s tapes and found a lot of great material I had forgotten about. I digitized what I wanted to save, since I know it's unlikely I'll ever go through the tapes again (though I still can't allow myself to toss the tapes in the trash). For me, it was little news stories I taped or between-program clips and promos that were of greatest interest. (Most of the programs themselves that I wanted to save I now own on DVD...except for documentaries and certain specials.) Even station IDs and nightly sign-offs are interesting to watch after all of this time. Despite not having watched something in 30 years, it's fascinating how all it takes is a few seconds of footage to unlock a bunch of memories in your head.

    So I guess I like VHS tapes as they are a nice time capsule...at least good for a few decades. In comparison, we use our DVRs today to temporarily hold the material we want to watch, but it eventually gets wiped when we're done watching the program, when we need the memory storage space, when the DVR gets replaced (or dies), or when we drop or change our cable or satellite services. Granted a lot of interesting stuff gets "archived" on YouTube...but it doesn't have the same longevity of a VHS tape, since files are constantly being deleted as accounts go away. I do my best to download anything that I think I may want to re-visit in 5, 10, or 20 years.

    I would never dream of using VHS for viewing movies or TV programs these days. But I'm sure glad I saved stuff from years ago...since it is a nice trip down memory lane.
     
  17. AVTechMan

    AVTechMan Forum Resident

    Location:
    Texas, USA
    VHS tapes....yeah they have their heyday, and there's still some material on them that aren't available on any other format. For instance in my collection as a kid I used to like watching the 'Fun Learning' tape series which was primarily for kids. One of my favorite videos I loved watching was "Johnny and the Giant" which was on one of the FL tapes. A rare tape to find, I managed to find a replacement on VHS 2 years ago.

    Other old rare tapes I remember were the old RCA VHS tapes that my parents gotten when they had the Sylvania VCR which was one of the first VCR's that was around $1,500 in the late 70's, was a top mechanical loader and only recorded SP and LP. Some of those old tapes my mom had recorded her exercise shows 'The 20-Minute Workout" and other obsucure stuff. Back then I learned those tapes ran about $30 each, which was very expensive for its time. I still have some of the blue-colored transparent VHS tapes that I will hold onto.

    The only other thing I am torn on is my collection of VHS tapes of the original LIS series I obtained from then Columbia House Video when I was a member of their 'club' and at that time the LIS series was only available on VHS. Tapes ran me $25 each and had collected those over a 5 year period until I had them all. That collection alone ran me almost $1,000 for all of the LIS episodes. What I liked was that there were some production notes that were on the backside of each tape case.

    Now I know the entire LIS series is on DVD now (and has been for a few years), but I really hate the idea of throwing out all of the official VHS version of that series I spent so much money on. Yes I can transfer them all and be better for it, but mann. :sigh:
     
  18. izgoblin

    izgoblin Forum Resident

    I bought and watched a few old Magnetic Video tapes and aside from their age, they have one thing in common with each other even though I've bought them recently from different sources. On every one of them, my VCR has difficulty with the color. That is, the color kinda fades from black and white to color alternately though there are no other tracking problems to speak of. I can handle VHS quality in certain cases, but these are impossible to watch. This is unfortunate, because it makes me not want to bother picking up a couple of titles that I kinda wanted for my collection. Does anyone know what I mean by the color tracking issue and why on earth it might be specific to Magnetic Video tapes??
     
  19. GuildX700

    GuildX700 Forum Resident

    Location:
    USA
    I have quite a few VHS tapes of old sci fi movies taped off the Sci Fi channel when it first came on cable, I like the Sci Fi channel's opening logos back then. That's when the Sci Fi channel was playing a lot of good stuff.
     
  20. DreadPikathulhu

    DreadPikathulhu Senior Member

    Location:
    Seattle
    It sounds like they may have been partially demagnetized. If I remember correctly, the color signal (the luminance) is on a different part of the tape than the black and white (the chrominance), so it's possible for the color to degrade while the black and white remains. I sure there are those here who know much more than I do.

    Most of the Magnetic Video releases I've seen have held up pretty well. They're built like tanks.
     
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  21. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    Get a different VCR, and I'm sure the problem will be reduced (or at least will change. The MagVideo tapes changed over time depending on which plant did the duplication. In general, they weren't too bad, though they later went to high-speed dubbing, and I was never convinced those looked good. Color per se should not be affected.
     
  22. Michael

    Michael I LOVE WIDE S-T-E-R-E-O!

    LOL! yes, they were truly rough times for home video!
     
  23. DreadPikathulhu

    DreadPikathulhu Senior Member

    Location:
    Seattle
    I've never had a problem with Magnetic Video tapes, though when you get into budget and EP tapes quality goes downhill fast.
     
  24. Michael

    Michael I LOVE WIDE S-T-E-R-E-O!

    I always used the best blanks...
     
  25. Michael

    Michael I LOVE WIDE S-T-E-R-E-O!

    did you get one? and why was this not on DVD?
     
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