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Author Topic: Last VHS manufacturer to cease production Tyler Purcell Expert Film Handler Posts: 180 From: Van Nuys, CA Registered: Dec 2015 posted 07-31-2016 05:39 PM                        Ahh yee ol' VHS machine is finally extinct. Sony kept producing Betamax machines into the early 2000's, which was quite shocking really. Few things to note... standard VHS and S-VHS are both composite formats, with very limited bandwidth, 240 lines and 400 lines respectively. Yet thanks to high-speed duplicators and analog masters, pre-recorded VHS tapes were always garbage. As a filmmaker, I wanted the highest quality image possible and in the 80's/90's that was laserdisc. To this day, I have disks from the mid 80's that look and playback great, far better then any tape from that era. Laserdisc was of course a composite format as well, but the addition of digital audio in the late 80's, dolby digital in the mid 90's and a lower noise floor, meant it was a far better format then even the best consumer tape formats. Unfortunately like all things, laserdisc machines do suffer from "laser sag" which is common in all optical devices. This is when the focusing system of the laser is unable to make perfect/critical focus. Since laserdisc is analog video, there is no correction when things aren't playing back properly. So many laserdisc machines, like VHS machines of the past, tend to stop working as well, which is very unfortunate. The only really good analog video format was Betacam SP. It was 525 lines in the states, but critically, a complete component based signal, which had much more color separation then composite video. Betacam SP also ran at such a high tape speed and used metal particle tapes, noise and tape hits were at an all-time low. It's truly unfortunate Sony couldn't afford to make Betacam a consumer format, but the heads and electronics necessary for it to work even remotely like their high-end consumer machines, was just too much. Sony's failed ED Beta system, which was 500 lines, is a good example of how better quality didn't mean much in the long run. Even Hi-8 was a semi-failure for Sony in the long run. They spent so much money, to be replaced very quickly by DV in the early 90's. The reason vinyl is having such a resurgence is mainly due to consumers wanting something tangible, a physical item they can hold in their hands, which is different then what everyone else has. CD's have come and gone, the only thing left is the oldest audio format of them all. Yes, there are many pro's to vinyl, stuff that old analog video formats can't get near. However, considering the number one consumer electronic item in 2015 was record players, those people are not all audiophiles. On the subject of "revivals", I do think as digital cinema continues it's current path of slow growth and a continuing "digital" look, we will see more and more people choose to work with film. Right now, it's cheaper to shoot low-budget movie on 2 perf 35mm then 4k digital, assuming you're renting equipment. So now there is a great divide between the digital "experimenters" and the people who just want to make movies and deliver a "filmic" experience to those who watch them. So I personally feel film will be the other "analog" resurgence in the near future, to what stopping point, I don't know yet. What I do know is the "retro" and "unique" points of vinyl, are very similar to that of film. Unfortunately, video tape is dead...  |  IP: Logged Scott Norwood Film God Posts: 8146 From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas) Registered: Jun 99 posted 08-01-2016 12:59 PM                        It is interesting that you mention that tape dropouts were low on Beta SP. That was definitely not the case in the mid-1990s, when the standard process for making VHS dubs was to dub a Beta SP master to 1" C-type due to fear of dropouts on the higher-density format. Presumably, the generation loss was not considered to be an issue since the product was VHS. I don't know when and why people stopped doing this (did the SP tape formulations get better over time?), but it was what I was advised to do circa 1995 for a short film project. I still have the 1" videotape, too, though I never had access to a machine to play it. I also have the Beta SP tape on 3M stock, and that plays fine now. I threw away the remaining VHS copies years ago. From what I have been told, the big breakthrough with component video recording was the ability to do tape-to-tape color correction, which could not be done effectively with the composite formats (where color correction could only be done well as part of a film-to-tape transfer).  |  IP: Logged Joe Redifer You need a beating today Posts: 12859 From: Denver, Colorado Registered: May 99 posted 08-01-2016 06:09 PM                        quote: Paul Mayer OTA broadcast NTSC was good for about 300 to 330 vertical lines, or just under 720 pixels That doesn't make any sense. 720 pixels wide should be 720 vertical lines. Not that NTSC used "lines" in the vertical direction. Unless you're in TATE mode. In reality since NTSC could not have all 525 lines on the screen at once, the actual resolution is half that. You can't count two different moments in time and add them up. That's cheating. Only in progressive scan can you count that shit. Seriously it seems to me that most people don't understand that each field is a different moment in time. You can have 60 completely different images per second (or 59.94 if you wanna be precise).  |  IP: Logged Mike Blakesley Film God Posts: 12767 From: Forsyth, Montana Registered: Jun 99 posted 08-01-2016 08:38 PM                        quote: Joe Redifer most people don't understand that each field is a different moment in time Hell, most people haven't got a freakin' clue how it works at all. It's just that big flat thing in the corner they watch shows and movies and stuff on.  |  IP: Logged

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