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Post by Arthur Gordon Scratch on Jan 5, 2016 16:44:46 GMT -5
My first VHS player was a 50 lb. monster from Panasonic in 1979. The stop/play/record/forward and rewind buttons were like piano keys. It was a huge clunker but lasted 10 years I have no nostalgic feelings for the VHS format. DVD picture and sound quality win out in a landslide. Bulky videocassettes took up way too much room. Waiting 10 minutes to fast forward or rewind a film was a pain. Scanning a picture forwards or backwards would wear out the recording heads and cause problems down the road. Tracking adjustments to keep the picture steady was a horror. Videotape jamming in the machine, creasing or completely breaking....Thank god we moved on But nostalgia has nothing to do with quality, has it? Nostalgia is a romantic feeling by nature. First time I saw many movies was on those VHS I had to track down. It was a product of the 80ies, and the 80ies really delivered on dodgy picturesleeve artwork, especially in the VHS world. Also, most foreign movies were dubbed, and a lot of those dubbings are great in their aproximativeness, especialy for B-movies, ninja/kung fu movies or even some big comedies. Plus yes, I have nostalgia for all those weird pseudo 3D animated logos that many of the publishing houses had at the begining of the tape, and as I told, those often awkward adertising section at the begining, for booze or whatever product that you would never care in a million year for before watching a movie  |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 5, 2016 16:50:52 GMT -5
I still have a VCR in a storage bin, not sure if it works--don't have the heart to throw it out! We had all kinds of VHS movies which became yardsale items. I remember taping movies off HBO, Showime, and Cinemax and watching the tapes until they warped or broke, haha! I remember the local video store had a punch card. Once you rented 10 movies, you got a free rental!
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Post by Pharozonk on Jan 5, 2016 18:01:30 GMT -5
I know DVD's were most space effective and streaming services like Netflix and Hulu are more convenient, but VHS and video stores always had a more "visceral" experience to them than any formats that followed. There was just something exciting and almost dangerous about perusing the shelves of the video store and being seduced by gorgeous box art that often was way better than anything in the actual movie. You never know what you were going to find, whether it be hot garbage or a lost gem of cinema.  |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 5, 2016 18:19:13 GMT -5
DVDs have better quality, period, as long as they are not scratched. I don't really want to go back to VHS. It's just something I grew up on, so using it is a bit easier for me.
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Post by Ish Kabbible on Jan 5, 2016 19:01:45 GMT -5
Still nostalgic for VHS? Remember at first that they were able to hold only 2 hours of programming on 1 tape. So manufacturers either released long films on double cassettes (double the waste of space) or sped up the speed of the movie so it could fit on a single tape. Warner's 1st Superman film was sped up and its ending credits were edited to fit a single tape
Plus-no foreign language options or closed captioning, pan and scan versions instead of wide screen, and no bonus features, trailers, commentary etc.
I could get nostalgic for vinyl vs CDs but videotape? I worked at a video store in Manhattan way way back. Before Hollywood studios finally allowed their films be made in that format. I'm talking about 1978 and 1979. Retail prices for videos were $100 and the only choices were X rated movies or public domain releases put out by Nostalgia Media and a few other companies- Things like Laurel and Hardy or other stuff from the 1930s in horrible quality. $100 a shot. When Warners finally became the first studio to release recent fare, retail price was $69 and up. Even much later very few titles were priced to sell.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 5, 2016 19:23:21 GMT -5
I still have a VCR hooked up in the ComicRoom (to be fair, it's a VHS/DVD combo), and one in the bedroom TV (under the BluRay player).
I still have about 150 VHS tapes, the vast majority of them Music related, or Bootleg Music stuff (ie: things never released on DVD).
but I do have some "classic" things I keep on VHS -- such as the Disney films, my special editions of "Demons" and the orange plastic tape of "Halloween"
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Post by Icctrombone on Jan 5, 2016 20:04:47 GMT -5
Man, you guys are all old.  I used to love my Betamax. The quality was sharper than in VHS, but it got phased out because the other tapes sold more. |
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Post by Arthur Gordon Scratch on Jan 5, 2016 20:33:35 GMT -5
Still nostalgic for VHS? Remember at first that they were able to hold only 2 hours of programming on 1 tape. So manufacturers either released long films on double cassettes (double the waste of space) or sped up the speed of the movie so it could fit on a single tape. Warner's 1st Superman film was sped up and its ending credits were edited to fit a single tape Plus-no foreign language options or closed captioning, pan and scan versions instead of wide screen, and no bonus features, trailers, commentary etc. I could get nostalgic for vinyl vs CDs but videotape? I worked at a video store in Manhattan way way back. Before Hollywood studios finally allowed their films be made in that format. I'm talking about 1978 and 1979. Retail prices for videos were $100 and the only choices were X rated movies or public domain releases put out by Nostalgia Media and a few other companies- Things like Laurel and Hardy or other stuff from the 1930s in horrible quality. $100 a shot. When Warners finally became the first studio to release recent fare, retail price was $69 and up. Even much later very few titles were priced to sell. Yes, they were atrociously expensive, but... it was all about rentals! I rented thousands of VHS, got free catalogues at the videoclub telling us about news, and I only bought hundreds of VHS second hand when you could get those for less then 5$ (even if I payed serious money for some obscure stuff). I'm sorry but VHS had very specific artwork that I'm nostalgic of. I hate all those bland logos in the opening credits of current movies And the jackets also were quite unique      So many movies that were solely made for the VHS market, and I love those movies, especialy when they got some sketchy dubbing! That doesn't really exists anymore, almost everything now is neat looking and fancy. And when you find some horrible sketchy DVD jacket nowadays, it's just some superdiscount shit job. Those crazy jackets and those Ninja movies, they were bestsellers at the time, they were everywhere! It was a unique experience that didn't replace going to the cinema. Nowadays, with the home cinema systems and video projectors, you can download anything at high resolution and never leave your living room to enjoy movies. VHS culture didn't produce that, so yeah, I can feel pretty nostalgic of them |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 5, 2016 20:55:02 GMT -5
I do not have to leave my bed to have a good movie experience.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 6, 2016 13:43:03 GMT -5
In my experience using VHS tapes is fact that they gets worn out too soon and pretty soon it's not watchable anymore and that's why I switched to DVD as soon it's came out. I used to have over 500-1000 VHS tapes and it's pretty taken up 20% of my living room space when I convert that into DVD (a huge expense on my part) it's shrunk my space down to 5% of my living room space.
I prefer DVD's over VHS tapes by a country mile!
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Post by Deleted on Jan 7, 2016 6:01:23 GMT -5
I have no nostalgic feelings for the VHS format. DVD picture and sound quality win out in a landslide. Bulky videocassettes took up way too much room. Waiting 10 minutes to fast forward or rewind a film was a pain. Scanning a picture forwards or backwards would wear out the recording heads and cause problems down the road. Tracking adjustments to keep the picture steady was a horror. Videotape jamming in the machine, creasing or completely breaking....Thank god we moved on Same here - I can understand being nostalgic about the contents, but not the media. Physical media sucks: DVD is bad enough (fragile, enforced unskippable adverts and region coding) but videotape was just a crap technology. |
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Post by Pharozonk on Jan 7, 2016 10:55:35 GMT -5
I have no nostalgic feelings for the VHS format. DVD picture and sound quality win out in a landslide. Bulky videocassettes took up way too much room. Waiting 10 minutes to fast forward or rewind a film was a pain. Scanning a picture forwards or backwards would wear out the recording heads and cause problems down the road. Tracking adjustments to keep the picture steady was a horror. Videotape jamming in the machine, creasing or completely breaking....Thank god we moved on Same here - I can understand being nostalgic about the contents, but not the media. Physical media sucks: DVD is bad enough (fragile, enforced unskippable adverts and region coding) but videotape was just a crap technology. I disagree that physical media sucks. There's no experience in owning digital media. You can't hold it or feel it. There's no visual or olfactory experience either. I can have Abbey Road as an MP3 file on my laptop, but I can't hold the record or look at the iconic album artwork like I could with a vinyl record or CD. It's just feels so empty and I say that as someone who listens to music almost exclusively digitally. |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 7, 2016 11:06:08 GMT -5
Being of a certain age, I kind of agree about the tactile and visual appeal of LPs, but I never had the same feeling for CDs - they were just too small. But, the convenience of digital just totally out-weighs that - having sold all my vinyl (and thrown away all my VHS tapes) and gone totally digital, I'm pretty much over the physical appeal.
For video, everything about the experience is just better with no media - no delay at the start, no physical media failures, no forced adverts, no storage space, instant availability, metadata searching, links to databases about the item, access anywhere - it's just no contest.
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Post by Ish Kabbible on Jan 7, 2016 11:07:32 GMT -5
Same here - I can understand being nostalgic about the contents, but not the media. Physical media sucks: DVD is bad enough (fragile, enforced unskippable adverts and region coding) but videotape was just a crap technology. I disagree that physical media sucks. There's no experience in owning digital media. You can't hold it or feel it. There's no visual or olfactory experience either. I can have Abbey Road as an MP3 file on my laptop, but I can't hold the record or look at the iconic album artwork like I could with a vinyl record or CD. It's just feels so empty and I say that as someone who listens to music almost exclusively digitally. Very silly. You can't hold a movie in a movie theater either- and I don't need to. The only advantage physical media used to have was the ability to utilize it any time you wanted it. But you can do that now with digital as well. Your missing out on great movie theater experiences since there is nothing to grab- maybe that's why people bring their dates/partners with them to snuggle. |
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Post by Arthur Gordon Scratch on Jan 7, 2016 11:16:02 GMT -5
Music and movies are different beasts as it is unlikely you'll watch your favorite movies as many times as ou'll listen to your favorite tunes, but yeah : physical media are totems, reminders of their presence in your own pantheon, visual interfaces in your living environement that they are here available for your enjoyement, while hard-drive files have to be fetched up, they don't contribute to your environement. As a creative person, those totems are very important.
And I find it quite ironic to find on a comicbook forum people complaining about how physical media sucks. Have all of you gone digital this past holiday?
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