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Author Topic: Which VHS Player To Buy?  (Read 2330 times)

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Offline SysAdminTopic starter

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Offline XDelusion

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Re: Which VHS Player To Buy?
« Reply #1 on: May 03, 2014, 10:08:49 PM »
Quote from: SysAdmin;763703
http://ask.slashdot.org/story/14/05/03/1811202/ask-slashdot-which-vhs-player-to-buy


I've got and old 4 Head, Dual Deck, studio player, though sadly it has macrovision installed.

To get around that I picked up a Vidicraft IVE-100 integrated video enhacner. They are cheaper than many of the black boxes on Ebay, though sadly only support mono sound.

 Then again when transfering from old VHS', who cares? The quality sucks anyhow. :)
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Offline persia

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Re: Which VHS Player To Buy?
« Reply #2 on: May 03, 2014, 10:23:15 PM »
I think they were fighting over this issue in Amish Mafia.
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Offline Iggy

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Re: Which VHS Player To Buy?
« Reply #3 on: May 04, 2014, 01:23:00 AM »
I have a old 4 head VCR I bought several years ago that has never been used (I'd already moved to DVD), but I threw out every VHS tape I have (they really suck).
Funny, I play rentals in the Bluray player, but I don't buy that format.

Can anybody give me a good reason to keep using older video storage devices?
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Offline Astral

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Re: Which VHS Player To Buy?
« Reply #4 on: May 04, 2014, 08:27:33 AM »
Quote from: Iggy;763709
Can anybody give me a good reason to keep using older video storage devices?


For a truly genuine experience.
 

Offline Lurch

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Re: Which VHS Player To Buy?
« Reply #5 on: May 04, 2014, 08:43:04 AM »
Nothing less than DVD these days, who wants to watch betamax/VHS/SVHS tapes anymore?

We have a few DVD's and a couple of Blu-Ray's. A huge collection of "digital content". HD makes a huge difference over older formats (as expected). The detail and far better sound 7.2 etc is worth it.

SD DVD stuff up scales well, depending on the original content. But watching HD movies is the way to go.

I even watch old stuff that has been released in HD format, which is great as you get a more movie like release as if you are watching it at a theater/cinema. Back in the day when movies were released to tape it was at a lot lower resolution than what you would get going out to the theater/cinema to watch it.

The end of this year/start of next year proves to be a very exciting time for movie buffs with the 4k and 8k standard becoming more mainstream.
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Offline Astral

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Re: Which VHS Player To Buy?
« Reply #6 on: May 04, 2014, 09:25:09 AM »
Quote from: Lurch;763723
who wants to watch betamax/VHS/SVHS tapes anymore?


Who wants to play games at 32 colours, at 640 x 512 resolution, with 4 channel stereo sound, running at 7mhz, with a 1 button joystick, from a slow old floppy disk drive? ;)
 

Offline AAACHIPSET

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Re: Which VHS Player To Buy?
« Reply #7 on: May 04, 2014, 12:40:51 PM »
Quote from: Lurch;763723
Nothing less than DVD these days, who wants to watch betamax/VHS/SVHS tapes anymore?

ive  got  a cassette deck  connected  to my  dvd hd/player burner  ..can record all my cassetes  to dvd if i want  or just play them through the dvd using the  mad multi everything amp i got  ..and the vhs/dvd player runs through the 2nd  channel  so i guess i could record a cassette  on the dvd while playing a vhs on the other machine  an play ps3 games on the other tv channel ..only  thing not connected is my turntable  bought when i was 20s  yrs  old  approx  30 yrs ago ..sadly the belt has  disintergrated ..
why watch vhs  ..for the memories i guess ..why have an amiga1200 ..for the memories  ..its takes you to a better time..
it really was  more fun then .
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Offline Ral-Clan

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Re: Which VHS Player To Buy?
« Reply #8 on: May 04, 2014, 02:30:12 PM »
I still keep one VHS deck for transferring old VHS tapes to DVD (connected to DVD recording deck).

There are a lot of really neat sci-fi (and other genre) B-movies that are out of print and will never get a release on later formats. Also, if you're a fan of classic Doctor Who or other British 1960s/70s sci-fi shows, well, those were largely filmed/mastered by the BBC on standard definition video equipment, so later blu-ray/DVD releases of these can't improve much on the standard definition image quality of the commercial VHS tapes sold in the 1980s/90s. Therefore, it's worthwhile to buy used copies of these shows on VHS for very little money as opposed to buying them on DVD/Blu-ray (which is quite expensive if you want to buy dozens of episodes).

Also, I've used the VHS deck to transfer old family home videos from VHS, and done this for friends too...so for me it's useful to keep one around for archival preservation/digitization.

Another fun reason to keep a VHS deck is to use as a "time machine".  There are people out there who roam the garage-sales (boot sales) and pick up box-loads of old VHS tapes recorded off the air by people at home in the 1970s/80s/90s.  They then scour these for old TV-shows, news shows, commercials, etc. that have never been archived anywhere else.  Sometimes, even the original content producer didn't keep a copy.  For local news shows / public-access channel shows / etc. sometimes the off-the-air copy is the only surviving one.  Archive.org and YouTube are full of rescued TV content salvaged from old garage-sale VHS tapes.

Just from an entertainment perspective, I was surprised when watching an old VHS movie how the slight blurriness, VHS picture quality and occasional dropouts actually had me feeling nostalgic!  I enjoyed those artifacts as much as I enjoy the warm sounding light pop and crackle of an old record.

And lastly - while eye-poking, pore-counting Hi-Def sharpness is nice and all - in the end it's about the quality of the content, not how many hairs you can count on the actors' heads.  I'd rather watch a good movie on VHS than a poor movie in razor sharp Hi-Def.
« Last Edit: May 04, 2014, 02:44:06 PM by ral-clan »
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Offline commodorejohn

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Re: Which VHS Player To Buy?
« Reply #9 on: May 04, 2014, 02:55:45 PM »
Quote from: Iggy;763709
Can anybody give me a good reason to keep using older video storage devices?
Sure - for watching any of the content that's never been released on DVD. There's plenty of content that even the el-cheapo "six films on one disc at a ridiculously low bitrate" companies haven't put out there (find me a non-VHS copy of Invasion from Inner Earth, wouldja? Or Bobobobs? The Littl' Bits?) Or simply because VHS is a super-cheap way to get legal copies of movies now that everybody's dumping theirs in thrift stores...

Also, as much as VHS suffers from low quality, DVD isn't that good either. It doesn't progressively degrade over time the way VHS does, but it does inflict craptastic MPEG-2 compression on the picture, and it just gets worse the more footage you try to squeeze onto one disc. (Really, Laserdisc is the way to go.)
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Offline Jeff

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Re: Which VHS Player To Buy?
« Reply #10 on: May 04, 2014, 03:14:03 PM »
I still keep a pair of Sony SLV-R5UCs, a pair of SL-HF750s, and some of the older Panasonic SVHS units. I always wanted an old commercial VHS/SVHS machine but I really don't want to take the chance on buying an old piece of crap and getting stuck with shipping.  I can also do 8mm, Hi8, and several other old formats to DV or MPEG2 as well. Don't get me started on old audio formats now. How many of us still have an old RS-1700 kicking around? How about the old Adat XT still in the basement?  Time to run those babies again... All that stuff lives right next to my Amigas!
« Last Edit: May 04, 2014, 03:20:36 PM by Jeff »
 

Offline zipper

Re: Which VHS Player To Buy?
« Reply #11 on: May 04, 2014, 03:54:08 PM »
Bought a DVD/VHS combo probably 5 years ago for copying - so far no VHS has been copied...
 

Offline Flipflop

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Re: Which VHS Player To Buy?
« Reply #12 on: May 04, 2014, 04:44:38 PM »
I have an almost new (means used only about 20x!) Panasonic NV-HS950 with TBC here,
and about 100 Original PAL VHS (mostly in German only, used with a different machine) and
about 20 Original Amiga-Videotapes (see AmigaFuture ASD). Worldwide shipping would be
possible if you are interested... :-)
 

Offline Iggy

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Re: Which VHS Player To Buy?
« Reply #13 on: May 04, 2014, 05:34:49 PM »
And...I have a friend with a Super Betamax.
Much improved picture over standard Betamax or VHS, but I still wouldn't want to use it.

I used to copy audio over to a HiFi Stereo VHS unit for longer playback, then I got a multi DVD changer (that I primarily used for CDs) and stopped using that.

And yes, there are a lot of old releases on VHS that aren't available in other formats, but the playback is still pretty shabby and copying those isn't going to improve quality.

Personally, I really dig the old TV shows that were shot on film (like the original Star Trek) since higher quality releases are merely a matter of remastering.

If I could decrypt everything I own, I'd just store it on a network drive.
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Offline persia

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Re: Which VHS Player To Buy?
« Reply #14 on: May 04, 2014, 07:23:35 PM »
I want one of these to go with it!!

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