The Old vs. The New

[BurningDoom]

Like so many of you guys, I am a collector, and not just of games. I also collect music, movies, and other things.

When I was a kid, having old stuff like records and 8-tracks was vintage, it was cool. Nowadays, it seems, that it's just the opposite. If someone sees that you're (god forbid) listening to a cassette player, they look down their nose at your from their Ipods and MP3 players. I go buy VHS's as well; the other day my work was asking about movies for our clients (I worked with the disabled) for a party day. I offered up Ghostbusters and Willow. The other employees liked the idea and was excited about it. I showed up, with VHSs in hand and they got annoyed, like it was some big hassle to pop and tape into a VCR (we had a VCR/DVD combo system).

Whenever I show my friends some old Cartridge based games or even Saturn and Dreamcast games they laugh. Then they tell me just go Virtual Console on Wii. Why would I want to be limited to just a small fraction of the games available on a system?

Now that said, I do own CD players, DVD players, XBox 360, and Wii. But just because I have those things, why does that mean I have to abandon the old? I have a large collection of tapes, VHSs, and old games that I invested a lot of money into that I don't want to just get rid of. And why is it bad that I use them?

Am I crazy? Am I alone here?

[Jerkface Killah]

Unfortunately, It sounds like you are just surrounded by the wrong people. I love being able to say, "yeah, I've got the Sega tower of power, it's a genesis, Sega CD and 32X combined", and having someone reply, "whoa, that sounds intense!" You just need some like minded people around, like us! I do have to say though, I like the ease of use of emulators even though I've got a closet full of retro games.

[ChuChu Flamingo]

VHS is a pretty crappy format, but it still has a certain appeal to me. Laser disc is just awesome for the case jacket artwork.

To me, what is cool about Laser Disc/VHS is that sometimes they have special features that never made it to DVD. For example, I have Dragonball Z World's Strongest VHS tape. The cool thing about this is that it has the Pioneer VA's and not the funimation ones.

In any case, people do just shun and think you're crazy. All the old stuff makes me appreciate the things we take for granted today even more.

[Josh]

The unfortunate part, is one day I had taken a CD player to my High School, I was a Freshman at the time. My friend, who was also a freshman, looked at me like I had a screw loose.

Hell, back in elementary school, five years ago when I was in the 5th Grade we had a party day for some reason, can't remember. This one girl brought in a portable DVD player to watch movies. So what do I bring in? A VideoNow. Yeah. Needless to say I got a few weird looks.

But I can understand why, some people just don't get what's so good about the older technology. I guess they think it's not "cool". Well it's not supposed to be. It's supposed to be "niche". But hey, whatever.

[chupon]

Lose your friends and start hanging out here more. Seriously though - do what makes you happy. VHS is cool - not my choice but still I've got all my old VHS tapes and I'll even pop some of them in every once and a while.

Last time I popped a VHS in my Panasonic 4 head VHS player the picture on the movie looked like shit when it started. Everyone started booing and talking trash about VHS. Then my favorite thing about my VHS player kicked in - Auto Tracking! The machine made this sweet noise and the lines cleared up automatically in like 3 seconds and then everyone just shut up. Silence..... Then someone was like, "Ahh - What just happened? Did you do that?"

After I explained it everyone thought it was super cool.

(Blue-Ray is still the best media format right now though)

[BurningDoom]

VHS is a pretty crappy format, but it still has a certain appeal to me. Laser disc is just awesome for the case jacket artwork.

To me, what is cool about Laser Disc/VHS is that sometimes they have special features that never made it to DVD. For example, I have Dragonball Z World's Strongest VHS tape. The cool thing about this is that it has the Pioneer VA's and not the funimation ones.

In any case, people do just shun and think you're crazy. All the old stuff makes me appreciate the things we take for granted today even more.

The only additional features that made DVDs so much better than VHS, IMO, are the special features (which personally I rarely pay attention to anyways), and the ability to skip straight to certain scenes in the movies; the skipping to scenes is dang nifty.

However, DVDs are damaged a lot easier than VHSs, and VHSs are waaaaayyyyy cheaper. As for the picture quality difference, I just don't see a big difference between VHS and DVD.

That said, I still won't buy a VHS for more than a $1 a piece, unless it's something rare like an old anime or wrestling PPV that was never released on DVD.

[Jrecee]

The difference between vhs and dvd is huge if you have an HDTV. Anamorphic dvds are great. And also, most vhs movies got the full screen treatment, with no choice of the real version.

[MrPopo]

The only additional features that made DVDs so much better than VHS, IMO, are the special features (which personally I rarely pay attention to anyways), and the ability to skip straight to certain scenes in the movies; the skipping to scenes is dang nifty.

Even better than scene skip was no rewinding. That alone made DVDs automatically better.

VHSs are waaaaayyyyy cheaper.

That's an unfair comparison. You're comparing the deprecated format with the current one.

[Hobie-wan]

That's an unfair comparison. You're comparing the deprecated format with the current one.

Indeed. VHS movies were $100+ at first.

[ChuChu Flamingo]

The difference between vhs and dvd is huge if you have an HDTV. Anamorphic dvds are great. And also, most vhs movies got the full screen treatment, with no choice of the real version.

The great thing about DVD is not only is it higher resolution than VHS, but supports higher quality connections (S-video/Component and some HDMI). The difference is not that huge if you are using composite for both. When using Component/HDMI coupled with a upscaler, the movies clarity can be increased to almost HD quality. Granted this depends on how good the source aka DVD is.