Hello romppainen.
I am not sure what you mean about the 'tough luck' but I do heartily agree that Beta was hands-down better than VHS (thanks for the screenshots).
On the aspect ratio issue cropped films were one of the reasons I chose Laserdisc over one of the magnetic tape formats back in the day (as all the LDs I bought were OAR).
(Man this makes me feel very OLD all of a sudden...)
Anyone remember ED (Extended Definition) Beta? (Yes I feel really old now...)
Stay well.

I agree. I only own a few VHS tapes, mostly of content not available on other formats. They look terrible when played on an HDTV.

I was referring to part with "ALL the films that were not filmed 4:3 were cropped (pan & scan)" as this is not the case, you've just happened to find all the worst releases.

Beta indeed had plenty of advantages over VHS and as a format it spawned some of the most amazing consumer level video recorders ever, and from collector's aspect one rather nice factor is that nowadays, due to their lesser popularity, most of old beta tapes tend to be less worn than their counterparts offering still very good and error free picture quality - not that there wouldn't be VHS's with good playback too - which is rather amazing for magnetic tapes sometimes manufactured over 30 years ago. Of course there's plenty of other affecting elements like tape stocks, lots of releases from 90's were prerecorded on much lousier (read: cheaper) tapes than ones used in early days so they haven't lasted time well - not speaking of last batches from 2000's which are mostly p*ss poor: My original copy of Hannibal snapped right after first watch...!

I sell around 75 VHS tapes per month, a lot of which are not on DVD. I watch some as well, I have over 1,000 in my store. They look a whole lot better on my old Sony WEGA 24" than they do on my new LG 55" LCD.

I still collect / buy various VHS tapes like old music videos such as 90's Earache compilations (most of them have never been released on DVD), heavy metal shows and even some of my favourite movies I'd like to watch on VHS again. Just found this nice Terminator set a few days ago for a single buck. Includes both movies as uncut versions, a documentary and a book. All housed in a big black box including a nice holographic picture on front! Looks good as new too...

VHS was my main format as I grew up so it will always have a special place in my heart even though I no longer own any. Even when VHS ruled I only ever owned somewhere around 30 pre-recorded tapes, most of mine were recordable "watch and wipe" tapes.

I second that I stopped buying VHS around early 1993 I might rent the odd VHS tape for a few years until around 1999 when I brought DVD while still rarely might buy Laserdisc brand new but was soon to be finished off sigh. I still brought some second-hand Laserdisc from a shop nearby in town.

I still have a few pre-recoded VHS tape films but the Ferguson videostar Nicam Hi-Fi deck has worn video head drum and needs spare part new head which I guess would be hard to come by or cheap S/H Hi-Fi stereo VCR as I'd like to view some films to compare colour balance issues with Laserdisc to DVD HD-DVD and bluray.

Well you should have kept the CRT for back-up! HDTV are total pants they can't cater for all video mediums so you need to have one around so that you can at least watch it clearly rather than on murky HDTV. I find some HDTV look milky with colour skin tone looks like Dracula has been sucking on the HDTV draining it of true colour depth.

Newer HDTV have gotten a bit better. My Sony Bravia looks okay with Laserdisc not perfect It looks rough on the edges but at least the colour doesn't look washed out and milky like on friends 5 to 6 year Samsung 42" LCD.

PLUS! The lagging image refresh is another one of my pet hates about HDTV sets with Laserdisc or I guess with VHS itv would be a lot worse? On my friends the lagging is so bad I can't watch it on TV broadcasts. Put a Bluray HD up on it and it springs into action with no issues.


Oh yeah aren't there or wasn't there before CRT HDTV sets I guess maybe 720i/p or 1080i? How do they fair with VHS DVD and Laserdisc vs early LCD Plasma and latest models HD TV sets today?

Yep, a lot of the later Sony WEGA 4:3 sets are HD-Ready and will accept 1080i and 720p sources. Won't display those resolutions, but the picture will be scaled to the set's resolution.

Those do pretty well for VHS, at least they do on on 40" WEGA, but I also use a Mitsubishi S-VHS VCR. So that helps.

There's a documentary coming out about VHS and how it started the home video revolution . . .

Rewind This!

Looks pretty interesting with interviews with Charles Band, Lloyd Kaufman among others.

I still have VHS, but I think it looks better on a CRT versus an LCD set. The machines I have are JVC SVHS and DVHS machines. Also have one Panasonic SVHS machine. I always have liked the older JVC's (remind me of my childhood -- love those red and blue VU meters!) but my favorite machine for me for playback would be my JVC HR S6900U. I also like the 8000U and the 10000U (can't wait to get that working). Anybody ever have an SVHS camcorder?

I see them pop up on Craigslist from time to time. Never bought one though, as I have a D8 Camcorder.

The best consumer S-VHS ever made is JVC's. HRS-9800u, which has the 4Mb Digi-Pure system as well as the amazing Dynamic Drum that tilts the head drum as needed to precisely align the heads with each track for optimum tracking. It's ONLY drawback is it doesn't have the cool Video Over Sound feature that the HRS-10000u has - that feature allows you to record a VHS Hi-Fi stereo soundtrack and then do an insert video dub edit over the sound without erasing the Hi-Fi sound. No other VCR, Beta or VHS, offered that kind of feature - for video dubbing you were always limited to keeping the low fidelity linear audio track since the Hi-Fi audio was under the video, deeper in the tape and overdubbing video automatically erased the Hi-Fi audio. It's a shame the JVC didn't keep that feature on later decks.

The 9800's Digi-Pure circuitry really helps improve the picture - it uses Faroudja's chroma and luma bandwidth expansion as well as a temporal-based luma/chroma noise reduction, image Stabalizer and has a superb 3D Motion Adaptive Comb Filter that, when combined with the other features, makes the image look like it has much wider bandwidth and no NTSC artifacts.

The Hi-Fi audio is excellent and uses a special de-glitching circuit to improve the Hi-Fi sound, but to make it even better, I always use a stand alone DBX Type II Noise Reduction encoder/decoder to record and playback the audio on my tapes. The DBX compresses the audio by 2:1 and also applies spectral alteration so the high frequencies don't cause distortion or breakthrough like VHS Hi-Fi is known for - when decoded, any Hi-Fi audio mistracking is masked as is head switching noise - the DBX makes the Hi-Fi audio emerge from a background of silky black silence.

JVC did an amazing job engineering the 9800 - and its retail price when new back in 2001, was only $300 or so, which made it an incredible value. Oh, another benefit - it doesn't use any belts - its all direct drive gears and has been very reliable for me.

I'm a big fan of the Panasonic AG-1980P deck. It works wonders with old high-generation bootleg VHSs.

Redirect its s-video output into the Panasonic DMR-ES10's passthrough to correct line-jitter and you're golden!

Man, I hated VHS so much. I eventually learned that it wasn't the worst format ever, that would be CED, but it's nothing I enjoyed owning. A necessary evil, I guess.

I agree. CED is definitely worse than VHS.

I guess no one actually checked out the trailer to the doc that I linked to (the reason why this thread was bumped in the first place)?

I plan to check it out soon!

I never liked VHS much back in the day due to having problems with getting tapes to work aka "tracking" ,I realise now this was due to using cheap players and pausing and rewinding/fast forwarding too much.

Today I am more nostalgic for the format and do enjoy watching VHS tapes,I'd like to collect VHS but they take up a lot of room which is something I'm trying to avoid these days,in the uk we have charity shops and they always have stacks of tapes for maximum 50p each it's very tempting to bring a stack home which I have done in recent times but like I say you end up with VHS tapes everywhere that suck up all the room!

I wish someone would have explained it to us back then that LD is for playing movies, VCRs are just for recording TV when you aren't home to catch something that is on. I've bought dirt cheap VHS tapes before just because it was available and cheap, not because I preferred them. Edward McKay has some VHS ANIME tapes for as cheap as 20 cents each.