The Old vs. The New

[Limewater]

VHS tapes are pretty shelf-stable. Playing them wears them out a heck of a lot more than having them sit, as long as they're in a good environment.

This doesn't affect me, but another huge plus for VHS that I'm aware of is for people with small children. Apparently, they're a lot less likely to ruin a VHS tape than a DVD, and less likely to break a VCR than a DVD player.

[D.D.D.]

VHS dislikes: not great video quality and REWINDING! I hate rewinding and that all of the VCRs in the family eventually lost the ability to rewind the tape.
VHS likes: 6 hours EP (I even found some 8 hour tapes too), ease of recording deck to deck, and that if I got a crappy movie all I needed to do was put tape over the hole and voila, new blank tape.

DVD dislikes: only 2 hours, and that some movie companies do really crappy compression or encoding on their movies.
DVD likes: same size as CD, nice picture quality, easy to do editing on PC, many more movies available in wide screen, and no rewinding.


And regarding durability, DVDs can be scratched but at least many scratched DVDs can be salvaged by copying them/re-burning them. Tapes are pretty much SOL when the tape has been ripped out by your younger sibling.

[Betamax001]

The only thing about VHS tapes that I really don't like is the obviously degradation, but also how most of the tapes you will come across are pan and scan, not widescreen. That is one better thing about modern formats, they are mostly in their correct aspect ratios. But there many neat things that never made the jump off tape. Very very niche stuff, but hey, that's what we all like then isn't it

I'm really surprised at people not liking blu ray as much. It may look as good as 1080i HDTV broadcasts, but with Blu Ray it doesn't have commercial breaks or logos on the corner or even ads on the bottom of the screen, and what not. Also I've noticed that some HDTV broadcasts are not in their correct aspect ratio. For example I was watching Empire Strikes Back on Spike HD, and it was in 16:9 1.85:1 ratio instead of it's original 2.20:1, which is better if they cropped it even more to the 1.33:1 4:3 size.

I'm not sure if it's the DVDs I have tried playing on my Blu Ray or the TV, or the upcoverting involved, but most of my DVDs look pretty bad. It's watchable, unless it's a non anamorphic letterboxed widescreen transfer. Then it looks terrible and the screen size is just all off. Sadly most anime I have looks pretty bad upcoverted. And most of the stuff I like are not popular to warrant a Blu Ray release (Lupin III, Case Closed) so basically i'm stuck with an inferior product unless some company decides to release the Lupin Blu Rays over to America, which is pretty unlikely.

[RCBH928]

VHS likes: 6 hours EP (I even found some 8 hour tapes too), ease of recording deck to deck, and that if I got a crappy movie all I needed to do was put tape over the hole and voila, new blank tape.

Now that Bluray is out , can't we have something longer than 6 hours on a single disc, at dvd quality?

[AppleQueso]

I'm not sure if it's the DVDs I have tried playing on my Blu Ray or the TV, or the upcoverting involved, but most of my DVDs look pretty bad. It's watchable, unless it's a non anamorphic letterboxed widescreen transfer. Then it looks terrible and the screen size is just all off. Sadly most anime I have looks pretty bad upcoverted. And most of the stuff I like are not popular to warrant a Blu Ray release (Lupin III, Case Closed) so basically i'm stuck with an inferior product unless some company decides to release the Lupin Blu Rays over to America, which is pretty unlikely.

I'ts the up-converting for sure. You'd be surprised at how great some upconverters can make a DVD look.

[flamepanther]

As much as I dislike Sony as a console manufacturer, the PS3 does an excellent job upconverting most anime DVDs. Exceptions would be discs that are non-anamorphic widescreen, or interlaced rather than progressive scan.

[AppleQueso]

non anamorphic widescreen makes me incredibly sad

ps3 sucks for those so much, no zoom option

[flamepanther]

non anamorphic widescreen makes me incredibly sad

ps3 sucks for those so much, no zoom option

What's worse is when you need subtitles. Then, even if the TV has a zoom feature, you're screwed 'cause they get chopped off. I loved my Betterman DVD set until I upgraded to HD

[AppleQueso]

I sorta wonder if it might be worth it to just invest in a good standalone upconverter.

[BoringSupreez]

I love VHS. I don't even have a good reason for it, I just like them. I still have more VHS tapes than DVDs. I still buy tapes, if the choice is paying $1 for a movie on VHS at Salvation Army, or paying $15 for the same movie on DVD at Walmart, I'll buy the tape. And a strange fact about my library: for some reason, they still have a large collection of tapes, and they aren't even bad movies. They've got stuff like Mad Max and The Terminator, which for some reason they never bought on DVD. No other library system I've been to recently has any tapes, just them.