I'm in the process of transferring the ones I really care about to VHS and SVHS. So far I've transferred about 40 titles with another 40 or so to go. Others I don't really care about I've ripped to a hard drive.

The reasons:

1. Menus. I hate menus. Aesthetically (No I don't care how "clever" some DVD authorer's menu is, I care about the creator of the content only..) and practically. It's one of the reasons I love LDs. I feel like I own the content if I can straight up press play and just watch it. Any tweaking should only be with my hardware, not with the software. I feel like I'm being used if I have to "set up" the movie and wait for a distributors crappy CGI logo animation to finish before I can watch the movie I apparently own.

2. Packaging. 99% of sleeve art on DVDs suck. They mostly look cheap and stupid on a shelf. I'd rather just use a label maker to print a plain title onto the side of a tape.

3. Resale value. Apparently a lot of the DVDs I own are listed on ebay for hundreds of dollars. Not sure if they're selling but I sold a couple of HK DVDs I bought for $10 a piece the other day for over $200. Hong Kong Legendary Collection titles, $10 a piece like 3 years back off YesAsia.com. At this rate selling the DVDs I'm dubbing to tape will pay for all my blank VHS/SVHS media and buy me another SVHS deck. However, I would still do this project if every DVD I owned was worth $0.10c.

4. Preference for analogue video. I prefer a softer picture on a big CRT. It's the most relaxing way for me to watch movies. Sharpness and detail are harsh on my eyes as well as since I only really watch old content, it was never envisaged by the creator to be watched at home above LD resolution. The exception is digital sound, I love uncompressed 2ch digital sound and what can be done with it and what DACs I can feed it through. I am keeping my music DVDs with PCM audio because I don't possess one of the few SVHS decks that could record PCM along with a picture.

Anyway, I guess what I'm doing is the reverse of "digitisation" where people pay places to transfer their old tapes to DVD. But it seems totally logical to me for my uses.

Is anyone else here thinking in reverse like me with the same kind of project or a planned one?

f**k no.

This can't be forper, he was a Laserdisc and DVD diehard, he was so into HK films that he insisted on watching them on
R3 DVDs rather than the newer releases.

I remember when he was talking about a couple films that I ended up buying, I think it was City War and Made In Hong Kong.
Thx again forper wherever you are for those recommendations.

Okay from which asylum did you escape ?

I never liked DVD either, but transferring them to VHS is a bit too hardcore for me.
I'd just rip them to harddisk most likely.

My eye doctor prescribed me with glasses a few years ago but I am not wearing them because I prefer to see softer and more analog world.

haha.

So could you tell me why you like or bother with LD at all or are in this forum? After all, you can get most LD content in much higher resolution formats now. Shouldn't you be over at Blu-Ray.com? Thanks.

Who says I am not there?

No, not at all. And, I cannot understand any part of the mindset of "I like A, therefore I -have to- or -I am proud to- dislike and/or disparage B (that is a competitor to or alternative to A)". I behaved like that when VHS and Beta were competing for customers. But, --I was nineteen years old--. Since then, I have matured.

We have or had two teams in each of two big sports leagues in this area, and it was so silly when I heard people cheer at a game when "the other nearby/home team in the same league" had a losing score announced.

There are things to like, and to dislike, about -every- home video format. Why stir up and amplify differences just for something to do? What does it accomplish?

A collection of movies in a format I enjoy instead of one I don't enjoy.

I wonder if you're the kind of person that never has any preference for anything and always lets other decide what you like? The perfect customer? The perfect husband/boyfriend? However, strangely, you do seem to have a preference against people who have preferences in video media, like me. You want me to think like you, which is very interesting.

I on the other hand came here and asked an honest question if anyone felt the same, I never demanded anyone feel the way I do. Feel free to say you don't have any problem with DVDs, but don't then tell me I'm wrong for my preference and then on top of that tell me you're "above it all" and "more mature." LOL

I mean, those are the kinds of replies you're going to get when you post a thread title that might as well say "Would anyone like to get into a fight about this topic?"

I used to copy dvds, and in that process, I copied only the move to another dvd, so without the menu etc.
But now I only care about owning the original media.

Here's two guys trying to watch Avenging Force (1985). Guy A prefers DVD, Guy B prefers a VHS dub made from the DVD.

Guy A puts his disc in and closes the tray. He gets to his first menu, that of the player. He initialises the disc and after it loads must select the language for the disc from another menu. This title has a list of about 20 European languages. Then he's forced to watch an Australian government warning video telling him that piracy is a crime and asking him if he wouldn't steal a car why would he steal this DVD. He didn't steal the DVD, it's a retail copy he paid in full for from a retail, not a rental store, and he owns it. Perplexed, he eventually gets to the DVD software menu that is populated by what the authorer thought would be an obvious icon system. He sees a picture of a book and clicks on it. It turns out to be scene selection. Eventually he figures out the icons, choses his audio and figures out the play button. Thumb tired and stress levels up, he finally settles in for the movie. A movie that could completely fail and be unplayable half way through if there's any damage to the disc.

Guy B puts his tape in and presses play. The iconic Carolco logo comes up straight away. Guy B settles into his chair and smiles. "I'm glad I'm not Guy A" he thinks..

Hell yeah... these forced "Government warning" stuff and not beeing able to skip trailers (depending on the disc) was a pain in the...
I remember doing the same as you did with ripping all that stuff off my "backup copies".

That is actually one of the things I love most about LD.
Change the language? Click!
Oh I want to see that again? Click or turn!

You could technically make arguably lossless copies on D-VHS tapes. Frankly, ripping them and using Plex or similar is probably the most efficient and least expensive. If you are watching them on a 19” CRT TV, I guess VHS will do fine like you said.

I Made an S-VHS Recording of an Anime on DVD once... but mostly only for the sheer novelty of it... and to see how well S-VHS home recording could perform; drawing off a high-quality source;

Are you liking your own posts or do you have a friend now?

Both of those guys sound like dpis**ts, btw.

If you want to make super crap copies of things, go ahead. Don’t try to raise an army for it though. Nobody is on board. This is an LD forum. LD was NEVER about anything other that delivering the highest quality video possible. It was the 4K BR of its day. Nobody here hates quality so this thread is yet another example of you versus the world.

I hate DVD menus and FBI warnings as much as anyone. I generally just avoid DVD because of this and go for LD or BR. However, as has been mentioned…copying a DVD without the menus is a rather trivial thing. It takes less time than a real time recording onto VHS and you lose none of the quality. It’s also cheaper to buy a blank DVD than a tape.

I like the DVD format and I bought my first DVD back in 1998. I still have this DVD to this day - Basic Instinct (Germany audio only, unfortunately). I recently played
it and it worked fine.

Since I didn't really know Laserdisc seeing a DVD for the first time was a revelation. It was a huge step forward compared to VHS video.

I don't mind the menus at all. At least back in the 2000s they were making an effort to create nice menus unlike today.

I still have a big DVD collection and well mastered DVDs look way better on my 4K OLED than laserdiscs upscaled to 1080p using my
Retrotink 5x. My Apollo 13 DVD looks incredible for example. And the sound is fine, too. So I really don't understand the hate towards
DVDs. It is a very good format that served its purpose. They look and sound good.

Since I dumped pretty much ALL of my VHS collection after DVD came out, recording a DVD to VHS wouldn't make a whole lot of sense to me.

Hell, I have an S-VHS VCR and I wouldn't record a DVD to that.