The memories of VHS

[lordofduct]

betamax vs vhs = blu-ray vs hd-dvd?

well we know the loser in both, but everyone almost swears betamax was the better technology. So which is the better technology, bluray or hd-dvd?

Blu Ray is better. There's only a few differences, but the biggest one (in my mind) is BD holds more data. And from what I read, Betamax was a better format compared to VHS, but it still lost the format war. The reasons, I forget, but I'm sure you can google it.

better technology isn't a good word to probably use though. What makes a technology better doesn't always have to do with the quality of the product it creates.

For instance:
2 machines are built to create furniture.

One is carving high quality oak into forms and screw all the hard wood pieces together to make a beautiful high quality kitchen table. It produces 1 kitchen table a day and the cost of the table is 4000 dollars on the market.

The other is pressing low quality ply wood and forms, it uses glue and screws to hold the table together, and the result is a lower quality faux hard wood table. It looks like the beautiful hard wood table, but weighs half the weight and is broken much more easily. Though replacement parts are available. It produces 100 tables a day and they sell for 100 dollars on the market.

Which machine is better? The first makes a better product, but the product is in low quantity and high cost. It can't be purchased by as many people and is reserved for the elite who have the money to afford it. Who's machine do you think is going to "win" perse.


So take Betamax and VHS.

Betamax, higher visual/audio quality. But the tape costs more and only holds about an hour of video.
VHS, lower quality but tolerable quality. Tape is cheaper and holds over 2 hours, the user can also reduce the video quality further and fit 4/6/or 8 hours on the cassette! (beta was also capable of this, but Sony opted to remove the option because they didn't want low quality video to be recorded to "their" media... they even got in a fight with the movie industry over this!)

Which is better? One has better quality, but the other is more usable. The prime market for the video cassette was the home movie business. At the time films were averaging about 2 hours in length. Customers were happier not having to get up and swap out the cassette half way through the movie. Also when they wanted to record a TV show, they could fit 4 episodes per cassette instead of two. AND they had the option to record that news broadcast or episode of funniest home videos where the video quality isn't all the important and jam up to 16 episodes onto a cassette!

Or fit an entires day of family fun onto a cassette with the home video recorder.

So again... what makes a better technology? Quality or usability?


So continue on to the current battle... one of which already lost the "HD-DVD".

HD-DVD, Blu-ray, DVD (yes DVD is in this war)

HD-DVD has a lower storage capacity then BD. But it still has plenty enough room to store an entire movie plus several goodies. And still has space to spare. What's the difference between putting 1 oz of water into a shot coffee mug or a big gulp. You have more space, but it's still just 1 oz. of water!

HD-DVD sticks to a standard. Formed by the same guys who wrote the DVD standard. This made it backwards compatible with DVD. BD is a proprietary standard all its own and doesn't conform to any "open" standard on the market. It is not backwards compatible meaning that BD players have a higher manufacturing cost so as to add both DVD and BD playback capabilities to the device. Further increasing wear and tear on the machine.

I'm not gonna go into all the technical difference between the two... or how their quality is better then DVD. We know they are tons better then DVD and BD already washed HD-DVD away.

so DVD...

DVD is of a lower quality video, less interactive menu system and a lot more. We all know this. BUT, it is a staple in the market only winning out VHS about 8 years ago. It is a fresh and new medium that many people still haven't fully adopted too and are still in the process of converting their library over. They are still the staple in video rental stores, and online rental stores. They are readily available to burn disks with and store up to just shy of 10 gigs. You can get a burner for 20 bucks!

Again reducing video quality increases the storage space further and still as long as it conforms to the MPEG-2/DVD/S-VCD standard, or in a lot of cases the MPEG-1 VCD standard it will be playable. Temember the guys behind DVD worked to make it backwards compatible with S-VCD, and because S-VCD is backwards compatible with VCD... most DVD-players will play back VCD standards.

It is also CHEAPER... remember that is one of the driving forces as a technology.

So which is a better technology? I think it is obvious... DVD is. The video quality is good, the price is good, its usability is good. It conforms to an open standard, and I don't think people are ready to convert their library over again when they aren't done converting their old library over. BD is WAY to premature, Sony is just blasting out the door on the seat of their pants with this HD hub-bub... a standard most people don't even KNOW what it means... and using peoples blind confusion to rake in a ton of dough selling high capacity disks filled with mediocre material.

You do know that nearly all HD-DVD disk and BD disk doesn't even utilize the video capacity of the disk at all... they don't even attempt to actual match the supposed "standard" of the disks quality settings. What the hell!?

Another tid-bit of information about HD-DVD losing. They had 2 things against them despite the fact the movie industry preferred them, they did because it followed an open standard. BUT the biggest publisher in the movie industry at this time is Sony who produces tons of films and has contracts to sell the video AS DVD... a format they still have zero plans to drop in the next DECADE (so says their CEOs... google it, I'm too lazy). Nearly all blockbusters were exclusive to BD and DVD and wouldn't ever be put on HD-DVD. Hence the main reason it won a war of the cripples... come on, beating HD-DVD doesn't matter... they can't topple DVD any time soon, so really who cares?

[lordofduct]

The way I see it is that Sony has a wonderful R&D team. But like any R&D team, not all ideas are perfect or great. There are usually a lot of doozies.

But Sony in all their genius for design and breaking new ground... they also have this deep seeded urge to throw every technological discovery into the open market with out ever stopping to ask themselves if the market really needs this fuckin' hoozit right now. But like all new technologies they are expensive to make, so also they cut corners to reduce production costs but also require it to stick to "strict quality requirements". But in quality requirements, they don't mean quality of build, they mean quality of the resulting process. In the end you get a device that for the first few months produce really good stuff but breaks really easy and will probably die off the face of the earth in a couple years. Further more they are huge proponents of "closed" or "proprietary" standards. Meaning now we have a poorly built, new technology with zero guarantee of market life, that is on a closed standard the Sony protects like rabid pitbulls guarding a bone.

[xraydash]

My parents bought this beast back in the day (random, borrowed pic):

I'm not sure the exact year but it couldn't have been later than 1980. It was super, super expensive at the time- $800!!! We were the first person I knew who owned one. My elementary school bought the same model shortly after we did, which armed me with some nice bragging rights. In my most jaded voice, "Oh, a vcr? Yeah, we've got the same one. What... you don't have one?!?"

I remember it being a huge deal to rent movies in those early years. As my wife and I have explained to our kids, back in the olden days you basically saw a movie when it came to the theater and that was it. Maybe, if you were lucky, years later it would play on the networks. My kids love The Wizard of Oz and can play the dvd at any time, but I remember it being a major event when they'd play it once a year on TV!

[RCBH928]

lordofduct
great input, lots of explanation ,
yet I think people will move to HD bluray because the american government wants it to be so! I hear by 2009 all channels are supposed to run in HD quality, forcing people to buy HD TV's in a way, and hence accept only HD quality material.

xraydash
I don't recall movies not being on video, i always lived in an era where the movie will be out on video sooner or later, but I do recall when TV shows were impossible to buy. Your only chance is to catch them on TV or record them via VHS. Even re-runs were not available .
Unlike episodes like "Lost" where you can watch online, download illegally, buy them on DVD, or catch reruns on TV.

Sure you didn't get a lot of chance to watch tv shows back then, but boy was it much more worth it when the show starts and everyone is sticking his eyes on the TV making sure they don't miss a second out of it, because its impossible to get a chance to watch it again. Unless you had VHS recorded

[lordofduct]

lordofduct
great input, lots of explanation ,
yet I think people will move to HD bluray because the american government wants it to be so! I hear by 2009 all channels are supposed to run in HD quality, forcing people to buy HD TV's in a way, and hence accept only HD quality material.

Yet a common misperception of what HD is...

first off, take a look at how far we are from this "hd" swap over, february 09'. It's not a "HD" change over though. It's a way the FCC wants to clear out an old license on a large bandwidth range. NTSC standard television consumes LARGE quantities of radio air space, digital video can consume a far smaller amount of it and in the same swoop increase the viewing quality...

if one can say that; a down side is with analog a bad signal means a bad picture, in digital a bad signal means NO picture. I remember where I grew up in Connecticut only about 25 minutes from the capital of Hartford watching FOX on rabbit ears was excrutiating... I feel for the masses who will now be stuck with the "blue screen - no picture" screen.

But that's getting way to far away from my point.

This isn't an "HD" switch over, it is a digital change over. All free-to-air television stations must now be aired in digital format. This does NOT alter your cable television which is NOT over the air... they are merely go digital upon their own accord. And "single-user-licensed" satellite has always been digital. We can all notice though that despite all these digital change overs, hardly any of it is truly in what so many assume is this hype word "HD". Most all of this digital content is displayed at 480i, and in some cases 480p... of which the latter is DVD quality. And the prior is merely NTSC standard transferred digitally. There are a handful of "HD" content, but again most only at 720p. 1080p programming isn't that frequent, I've seen it mostly as Discovery channel specials and big football games. That's about it.

The over the air content on the other hand... what the government is pushing for. Falls into an even more stricken category. Keep in mind, bandwidth gap is a commodity and the larger your signal the more it costs. But to be a network station (NBC, CBS, FOX... etc) you have to by law supply a free-to-air broadcast at your own cost. Hence why you ever notice the less staple stations seem to always have poorer signal (i.e. FOX looks like crap) is because they have to foot the bill for transferring the signal, so they opt for the smaller bandwidth frequencies at a fraction of the cost. Do you think they are gonna opt for the wide bandwidth 1080p costs when they can free-to-air it for a fraction of the price!?

Then tack on the government funded transmodulator stamps. To get the digital free-to-air stations out the door finally after years of delay is all because people AREN'T buying digital ready televisions. And a large percentage of "HDTV"s sold aren't even digital ready still requiring a box. So the government is giving rebates out for the boxes to get the SDTV and none digital ready HDTVs up to par for the change over. Again by law... we the people passed the law back in the 50's that network TV HAS to be readily available to users at no cost (way to go socialism... heh).

So why are these free-to-air networks going to put out 1080p? When the majority of their watchers are too cheap to buy cable let alone by a digital ready HDTV!? It's not gonna be all that HDie!

The demand is not there. It's inflated market propaganda to force people over to digital so that the market can gain from the extra flow of money, and the government can save money by reducing the cost of bandwidth regulation and open up a massive range of radio frequencies to license out for other use again increasing more income off of said licenses for the FCC.

Then we come over to the digital cable and satellite side. The service most paid subscribers opt for. Digital media providers of course see this as a great money maker... they are a business after all. The same businesses who already pitch a fit about the freedoms we are alotted on the internet and fight to restrict our bandwidths and to force advertisement rights into their hands so as to make more profit off of us.

They also supply our television at exhorbitant subscription costs (hence why I do NOT pay for cable and opt to just not watch the garbage). The way they send the signal also has bandwidths. There is a reason they are working hard to get everyone off of the "basic" plug in and watch cable and over to digital cable.

A) digital cable again is lower bandwidth... this allows cable providers to supply higher resolution image, interactivity, and take on more channels to supply as part of their packages (i.e. note some towns have M2, MTVs counterpart, but other towns don't. Or some towns have Nickelodean but not NickTv).

B) digital cable requires a receiver and is digitally encrypted. Making it more difficult for people to "steal" cable, and further more increasing revenues through multiple "box" rentals to feed cable to different rooms. Even digital ready televisions require a "CABLE-CARD" with the decryption tag at a 5 dollar a month rental fee!

C) Digital data is similar to a network serving each customer ala carte. Analog cable is a constant wave stream that doesn't stop, the cable has a constant flow of all 80 or so stations cruising through it. Digital removes this... a user basically has a specified bandwidth on the cable for themselves and a station is served to them ala carte across the stream. Hence a slight pause as you change stations, the pause is made minimal because the station is in wait mode ready to be picked up. Where as on-demand material requires a hand shake and access of a library to set up the media and then streamed.

Due in part to C this means all digital stations, if "HD" is available for it to the cable provider, can be served in multiple ranges of resolutions and quality with out taking up more space in the bandwidth que because they only send to you what you want. But they can charge higher subscription costs for the "HD" counterpart then the "SD" alternative. As they ALREADY do.

Again meaning subscribers will probably opt for the lower resolution image... mainly because all digital boxes supply an analog output which MOST users still utilize because HD digital packages START at 100 dollars a month (after you include the base charge... here it is 60 dollars base charge, 50 dollars for cheapest HD package, 15 dollar a month HD receiver rental fee making 125 dollars BEFORE taxes). Most people don't want to pay all that much.

Though of course this digital change over will allow the cable companies to reduce service fees because their cost decreased. But how much do you think they'll drop it!? We're talking about companies that allowed the roots of businesses like Adelphia to grow and then the head CEO and son filtched millions of dollars from the company just to build multiple golf courses in their fuckin' yards!!!




so in the end my point is... though we change over to HD, it is going to be well over a decade before most users go out and spend the 1000 dollars on the TV, 100+ dollars a month for the subscription, and all that just to get HD content. Most users are happy with SD, and the SD isn't going anywhere... it's just going digital. NOT HD!

I didn't say BD was bad. I just said it was premature. Just like laserdisc was premature. In a decade or so everyone will have replaced their SD sets and by then only HD sets will be available in stores requiring that they buy HD because they have no choice... And by then DVDs will have been around for 20 years (like VHS) and an upgrade will be considered a great thing market wide. In the mean time BD and all other tagged "HD" garbage is riding on the propaganda created by the digital change over and the misnomer of calling it the "HD" change over, when it is not.

[Majors]

I just got a over-the-air (OTA) HD box and went through some the above. With my ghetto antenna I get all 5 major networks, PBS and some random independent, all in 720p or 1080i. I went with the HD box that is not coupon eligible, but Dolby and HD is worth it. Best part of the digital switch over is now no more static/snow. I've got no love for the cable company and watch a limited amount of TV so a OTA box was prefect for me.

Most of the "virtual channels" run 480i and it looks like ass on my CRT.

My biggest surprise is that a lot of shows are still lo-def even though broadcasted in 1080i. Andy Griffith Show was never created in digital nor widescreen. Digital for the older stuff makes it look bad. Most of the daytime stuff is still 4:3 and upscanned like the soaps and game shows. Even most of the local news is still 4:3, at leat for my area.

[lordofduct]

OH, I didn't know that. So the coupons only cover Standard Definition OTA boxes!?

Heh, more proof it isn't an "HD" switch over, it's a digital switch over.

How is your signal? Do you use a roof antennae? Or do you use a small rabbit ear style antennae? All the OTA digital experience I've tested around with use large antennae in the attic or on the roof. Something a lot of people can't do, i.e. apartment dwellers.

Another thing I've wondered is with the cable companies, they have plans as well to strip out the basic analogue cable and go pure digital as well (on their own accord, not the feb 09' change over). But what about people like myself... see I'm like you Majors, I don't watch enough TV to warrant purchasing cable, BUT I have it. It is included in my HOA fee for everybody who lives in my community. I wonder what exactly will occur when they switch over. I know this is mostly in the hands of the HOA and not the cable company, but there are a lot of us HOA people out here.

[Ziggy]

To what you said about a high definition movie being able to fit on an HD DVD and BD... But the discs aren't used for just movies. One things for sure, video games take can take full advantage of this. More space on the disc means for more data of the game, HUGE maps or levels or just a longer game in general.

Or how about using BD's to back up files on a computer? The larger space would definitely come in handy here. 50GB on a dual layer BD, that can back up the average persons typical music, video, picture, ect files.

And I don't look at it being a HD DVD vs Blu Ray vs DVD war. The war between HD DVD and Blu Ray is different then the war between Blu Ray and DVD. Its like Beta vs VHS and then VHS vs DVD.

[lordofduct]

To what you said about a high definition movie being able to fit on an HD DVD and BD... But the discs aren't used for just movies. One things for sure, video games take can take full advantage of this. More space on the disc means for more data of the game, HUGE maps or levels or just a longer game in general.

Or how about using BD's to back up files on a computer? The larger space would definitely come in handy here. 50GB on a dual layer BD, that can back up the average persons typical music, video, picture, ect files.

And I don't look at it being a HD DVD vs Blu Ray vs DVD war. The war between HD DVD and Blu Ray is different then the war between Blu Ray and DVD. Its like Beta vs VHS and then VHS vs DVD.

I was debating the standard on a movie side. Nor did I say BD was bad... it is premature. Though I have to say on all 3 counts it still doesn't seem viable IMO.

count 3, all three are part of the war unlike your beta/vhs/dvd mount. DVD wasn't around during the beta/vhs war, and beta wasn't around during the DVD/vhs war... and that was hardly a war, that was a progression (the vhs to dvd part). With BD and HD-DVD on the market trying to absorb a share in the film distribution, you have a war. You have 3 guys, all viable storage mediums, and all 3 have supporters who want them to win or stay. When DVD came along, we were ready as a market to get rid of our VHS tapes en mass. We aren't ready to toss away our DVDs for the next best thing. It thusly is part of the war.

With the influx of larger HDDs on our PCs, larger back up media might sound welcoming. True, but most people who have used back up medias will tell you write once disks are horrible for it, and RW disks are even worse with compatability and lifetime issues. Even DVD-R dual layers have tons of problems for people. You backing up your photo collection is not a market, that's just an extra bonus that a technology can offer... but the market won't sell enough of them to make it a logical choice. Especially when most consumer level people don't bother backing up their stuff.

On the game front that is a swayed debate in my book. As I am content with none "blockbuster" titles. As a game designer at heart I don't like multi-million dollar dev costs, so my opinion on this front is WAY to bias for me to logically put forward an argument.


In the end though my debate isn't about the capabilities of Blu-Ray. The medium has its merits. My debate originally was what makes a technology valid and good. Quality is not the only component of a capable technology. A capable technology must also be user friendly, readily accessible, and affordable on the open market with multiple uses. BD is hardly ready to supply on all fronts with its high cost, low demand, horribly slow read speeds, and arrogant decission to try and thwart the movie viewing experience so shortly after DVD was released on the market.

and if you want to wonder about the read speed of BD... just take a look at the "load" screens of MGS4. Personally I'd rather swap a disk then wait 20 minutes every "episode" to "install" the textures and audio onto the hard drive because the BD player is to slow to stream all that content during game play.

Just look on the forums here, how often do you see people saying "wooo, go HD, the quality is awesome", then the same person posts another thread asking if they "should" go out and even bother laying out the cash on a HDTV and what they should like for in getting it, and what the downsides when it comes to legacy material... etc. Retro gamers aren't the only people concerned about legacy material. The big problem is like say when my parents got HDTVs and then my having to explain to them why their old home movies look like shit, and why they can use this media anymore, and all these stipulations they didn't expect. THEN they turn on the TV and swap over to the ONLY HD content that day, a football game, and they turn and say "What the hell! You said the picture was gonna be better... I hardly notice a difference!"

Hey, I didn't tell you to buy it dad!

I mean what is it with us... why do we think we have to run out and buy every new gadget with out even knowing what the hell it is, or if we really need it. We all want iPhones! Why? My sister made fun of my phone last night at her house, "What the hell is that thing!? Oh my god!" Well my phone fits in my pocket, it calls people, it cost me 20 dollars, and if it breaks I can fix or replace it at a fraction of the cost of your phone. Let alone do you use the internet on your phone? Do you even READ email? You only drive a mile a day to work, do you really need mapquest? Or "tv" on the go. Or how about trying to dial a phone number while in traffic... can you do that with out almost killing everyone in your vicinity.

Who told us we need this garbage? And why do we listen? Mom and Dad buy a new computer every 2 years just so they continue reading chain letters and look at porn. I can do that on an ancient PC from pre Win95 days.

Its similar to my opinion of these name brand clothing and purses. Why are you willing to opt to pay 100 times the price to get the same job done at only a minimal increase in aesthetic look? When I worked in an office there was this girl who bought a new Louie Vaton (sp?) purse like every 3 or 4 months. Then one day I hear her complaining about her electric bill. I look at her, pull out my wallet and say to her:

"I will never own a device to carry my money that costs more then the amount of money I carry in it!"

I repeat again, premature.

[RCBH928]

you are very right about what you say, about people buying stuff they don't need, specially that later on it still serves its purpose and for a cheaper price.
But what to do, thats how people work , and thats how you get a job. You work in Nokia, you keep a job by releasing the next 12MB pixel camera, and so on. Everyone buys.

But at sometimes, you do need to pamper yourself specially if something out there you like. For example, I really would like the PS3 once it released, so get it for $600.