Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Who still uses VCRs?
- Thread starter MatthewLTL
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
i was gonna say copy protection, but even VHS tapes take such..... abit allot easier to get round.
My VHS player is sitting up gathering dust in my cupboard.... The PSU blew, and thats when i went digital :0
U do know VHS tapes decay due repetitive playback.... how do u handle this when the sound starts going and the picture gets all fuzzy ?
I'm bettin' the VHS will give out before u do
My VHS player is sitting up gathering dust in my cupboard.... The PSU blew, and thats when i went digital :0
U do know VHS tapes decay due repetitive playback.... how do u handle this when the sound starts going and the picture gets all fuzzy ?
I'm bettin' the VHS will give out before u do
I used a VHS ripper to turn a tape copy of Speed into a digital file.
however i still use the optical drive in my iMac and installed a bluray drive into my PC when i was building it because there's many people i have to burn blurays for
however i still use the optical drive in my iMac and installed a bluray drive into my PC when i was building it because there's many people i have to burn blurays for
Yes, you are a user of 'ancient technology'. All communications used to and still do go by word of mouth.
And not all older technology is ancient or useless. I recall how during Hurricane Sandy how all cell phones were pretty much useless, but landlines helped keep everyone in touch with relatives.
BL.
Sometimes newer technology displaces older technology because of convenience and cost of implementation, and not necessarily because the end results are any better. Ignoring the other functions of smart phones, ultimately we give up sound quality and reliability in the interest of convenience and portability. For most folks(including me) that is trade off we're willing to make most of the time. At the same time, though, when you actually use a good land line connection, you realize that they pretty well have a perfect amount of sidetone(the amount of transmitter noise you hear through the receiver) and a virtual absence of echo. On the other hand, I've found that sidetone on cell phones(both everything from the old Nokias to my iPhone 6) varies from non-existent to obnoxious(neither of which is desirable) and echoes are common when reception is low.
On the other hand, VHS is a technology that is in pretty much every way inferior to modern equivalents. The media is expensive, bulky, relatively fragile, and more difficult to reproduce than DVDs while also giving inferior video quality. Watching the occasional VHS movie-like when I watched Gone With the Wind last weekend-remind me of just how bad it is relative to newer technologies. Streaming services(whether PPV, Netflix, or the like) typical are even better. Most newer DVD players have features like memory and high speed fast forward to get around some of their earlier problems like not being able to stop a movie and pick up at the same point later.
DVR technology likewise is an inherently better technology than recording on VHS, although unfortunately in its most common form it's limited by the cable companies in terms of storage capacity and ability to switch recordings between devices. When I had Dish, I was able to "create my own" DVR by putting a USB hard drive of whatever size I wanted(and however many I wanted) on the set top box although I had to pay extra for the ability to do that. Unfortunately also, when I discontinued Dish my ability to even access the recorded stuff was gone.
Granted when it comes to quality of the content, newer technology does beat technology like VHS. However, could someone answer me this:
How much space would 8 hours of VHS content take on a HDD? or a DVD? how about 10 hours?
I ask, because I have an 8-hour tape and a 10-hour tape of music videos I personally recorded that I'd love to have converted. But if I'm looking at 2 - 3 or more DVDs, I'm looking at multiple objects to maintain, plus splitting the content, all to keep the same thing I have on one tape.
BL.
I still have an old RCA VHS player that talks to you! It says so right on the front of it too. My sister-in-law gave it to me as a gift one year for the bedroom television I did not have. I don't recall ever using it. I might have. I have maybe 30 tapes left over from those days when I did have a different player downstairs in the living room connected to a huge tube television. Remember moving those bad boys? Although fairly heavy the worst of it was how awkward they were to get your arms around and get a good hold of.
There are a few old tapes I've been meaning to watch but I can't bring myself to bother hooking the thing up. The bookcase unit they are stored in I plan to use for PS4 games coming up. When that happens I'll probably cart the VHS player and tapes collection over to a neighbor who is always running yard sales and let them make a few bucks. I hate wasting anything somebody might get some use out of.
I never did buy much in the way of DVDs which turns out to be just as well but my PS2 and my iMac with Superdrive connected can play those. I need to rip them and have been too lazy to bother to learn how to use handbrake which I think is for that. I installed Handbrake 4 years ago for that purpose as I recall and never did anything about it. I really should do that as I have some good DVDs I haven't even watched yet.
There are a few old tapes I've been meaning to watch but I can't bring myself to bother hooking the thing up. The bookcase unit they are stored in I plan to use for PS4 games coming up. When that happens I'll probably cart the VHS player and tapes collection over to a neighbor who is always running yard sales and let them make a few bucks. I hate wasting anything somebody might get some use out of.
I never did buy much in the way of DVDs which turns out to be just as well but my PS2 and my iMac with Superdrive connected can play those. I need to rip them and have been too lazy to bother to learn how to use handbrake which I think is for that. I installed Handbrake 4 years ago for that purpose as I recall and never did anything about it. I really should do that as I have some good DVDs I haven't even watched yet.
I can understand that, and there's no real quality advantage in translating your analog tapes to digital. The biggest advantage is in archiving, because with an analog magnetic medium the magnetic field loses strength over time and the signal to noise ratio decreases. Digital media generally hold their fidelity as long as the individual bits are still easily readable above the noise.
Granted, standard dye based CD-Rs and DVD-Rs aren't that great as archival media. I have some from the turn of the century when CD-Rs first became relatively available, and they are starting to get difficult to read. I have a few where the foil backing is starting to delaminate from the plastic. About a year ago, I bought a new-in-box Sonnet G4 upgrade made in about 2006 or so and the(necessary) included software was on a CD-R that was badly delaminating. I actually ended up putting it in another computer, imaging it, and burning another copy as I didn't want to lose it. I was glad of that a little later when a friend bought an identical upgrade without the media and I was able to just send him the image. Gold CD-Rs and DVD-Rs are pricey but are archival.
All of that aside, and getting back to your question-I suspect that with the quality they likely have, you could get away with relatively small file sizes. I'm far from an expert, though.
BTW, with regard to my Gone With the Wind example-the(legal) VHS I had was bad enough that I went out and bought a Blu-Ray copy of it. The original was shot on three-strip 35mm Technicolor so the quality has the potential to be there. The Blue-Ray does a good job of it and also, mercifully, keeps it in 4:3 rather than stretching it to widescreen as seems to be popular these days on older 4:3 stuff.
