Any advantages you find in VHS quality?

Max Field · January 31, 2016

Wasn't exactly sure where something like this goes but I went with general.

So with audio, vinyl has been having a resurgence because of its lossless sound quality in contrast to MP3. While not technically superior, Super 8mm has found its place due to various elements that give it a distinctive "look"

To you, does VHS tape quality (shooting or viewing) have any elements that makes it stand out in a positive way from DVD or Blu Ray? Whether it be coloration of the sound, color tones, anything?

Love to hear your thoughts, thanks.

Tyler Purcell · January 31, 2016

HA! Probably not VHS... lowest quality "analog" video I'd ever use is Betacam SP. At least you have separate color channels.

Tho, I was never a fan of VHS. I was more of a betamax, Hi8 guy... turned Betacam SP/Digibeta. :)

Some of those three tube cameras are very cool looking though. I'd plug one of those into a portable 3/4" SP recorder, that would make an interesting combo! I did a whole documentary series on one as a kid, looked pretty cool actually.

Wiliam Cardoza · January 31, 2016

I like the tones, it does have it's own kind of look. This is cell phone video recorded off of a flat screen: An improvised horror scenario LOL https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gp63G6UGr5A

Just last week I watched "Last Tango in Paris" and I have "Dune" - looks great: You get to hear the sound of the tape heads whirling, and I have one of those small portable T.V.'s with a built in player ~ less temptation to change the channel i.u.k.w.i.m.

Freya Black · January 31, 2016

Harmony Korine liked it enough for Trash Humpers:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvyvZK2kDoM

JD Hartman · January 31, 2016

Don't think you'd ever see a VHS movie release with any extra content or features.

David Mullen ASC · January 31, 2016

If you're fond of interlaced-scan video and a lot of color smearing...

Kenny N Suleimanagich · January 31, 2016

I recently saw this, which was shot on Red and then put through a VHS stage before being rotoscoped.

Satsuki Murashige · January 31, 2016

Love that music video Kenny, it certainly is evocative of a particular time period. Interesting how they used it as a filter, another tool that reduces information where that data would be distracting.

John E Clark · February 1, 2016

Wasn't exactly sure where something like this goes but I went with general.

So with audio, vinyl has been having a resurgence because of its lossless sound quality in contrast to MP3. While not technically superior, Super 8mm has found its place due to various elements that give it a distinctive "look"

VHS stands to Visual Fidelity as a windup wax cylinder Edison phonograph stands to 1950's High Fi...

Film film is the 'analog' capture method of best fidelity... In the case of Analog TV signal recording, there were filters put into place which limited the bandwidth of the signal to conform to NTSC, PAL, or SECAM signal levels. Even with 'specialty' analog video processing, such as direct to 'disk' analog recording, for early forms 'instant' playback, all signals were 'munched'.

In any case, Analog TV was 'sampled' with scan lines, even if during the horizontal scan the signal was 'analog', and there were 480 (or so) active scan lines for NTSC, and slightly more for PAL (I never worked with any form of PAL...)...

And then there was the temporal sampling and the interlacing of two fields, which introduce additional artifacts beyond that produced by the frame rate, 30/29.97 in NTSC Monochrome and COLOR respectively...

Patrick Cooper · February 2, 2016

Don't think you'd ever see a VHS movie release with any extra content or features.

I had the VHS tape of Dante's Peak which had some very interesting bonus content that was shown after the main feature - basically a bts doco. Ive also got a TB snowboarding tape which has a little surfing film that plays after the main film finishes.

John E Clark · February 2, 2016

I had the VHS tape of Dante's Peak which had some very interesting bonus content that was shown after the main feature - basically a bts doco. Ive also got a TB snowboarding tape which has a little surfing film that plays after the main film finishes.

I think some VHS releases did have 'extras'. Also, within a few years 'letter' box versions became available for most films as well... but in that era, it was the 'laser' disk aficiondo who got such bonus features...

There was also Video CD or VCD or was it CD-video... in any case it was MPEG-1 video... And there was an item called CD-i for 'CD Interactive' using an operating system called OS9, not to be confused with the Apple Mac OS-9...

Brian Drysdale · February 2, 2016

While not pure VHS, consumer tube cameras from that period have been used to shoot video, but recording using current equipment.

J. Winfield Heckert · February 5, 2016

The only thing I could think of is content. I have a box of VHS titles that aren't available on DVD or aren't worth buying again so I've kept them.

aesthetically I was never fond of the picture it produced. I liked laserdiscs however at this point both tapes and discs from that age are degrading. It had a watchable first generation picture on the 19-27 inch TVs of the time period but DVD blew it out of the water.

I think super8 was a better home movie format, VHS let you record way too long with no great way to edit it down which is why we have 18+ hours of family vacations and family gatherings that I better start copying to digital soon now that I think of it

George Ebersole · February 6, 2016

HA! Probably not VHS... lowest quality "analog" video I'd ever use is Betacam SP. At least you have separate color channels.

Tho, I was never a fan of VHS. I was more of a betamax, Hi8 guy... turned Betacam SP/Digibeta. :)

Some of those three tube cameras are very cool looking though. I'd plug one of those into a portable 3/4" SP recorder, that would make an interesting combo! I did a whole documentary series on one as a kid, looked pretty cool actually.

Same here. I bought a Hi8 kit to hire out as an inexpensive second unit package, and it worked for a lot of production companies.

That verse VHS cameras, and where they were available at rental houses, I can't think of a package that rented as often as the Hi8 kits when they became available.

And like the other guy said, the only VHS tapes I've held onto are titles that aren't available on disc yet. In fact, when VHS first came out with single and dual head recorder/players, the image was really bad. There was noise around color edges, and a ton of bleed. Betamax didn't suffer that (though it lost in the format wars), and Betacam won out professionally.