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MaximRecoil's Replies
"It's Ike they want to approach it as though each cast camber how/may meet each chance long or term."
Say what?
It looked more like William Fichtner to me - https://i.imgur.com/qaY6g6Y.png
<blockquote>What should be a new name for Hollywood?
I like Tinseltown.</blockquote>
Tinseltown is already a name for Hollywood, and a very old one at that.
"Maybe everything looked awesome back in the day and we've just been fed a lie that newer is better."
Newer home video formats have drastically higher resolution than VHS, but for the type of TVs that most people had during VHS's heyday, DVD is as good as it gets because it has more than enough resolution to max out the picture quality potential of an SD CRT TV. So to record a VHS tape that looks almost the same as a DVD on an SD CRT TV over composite or RF is incredible.
Two of my VCRs are hooked up, refurbished by me (new capacitors in the power supplies, head cleaning, and lubrication of the gears), and ready to go: A JVC HR-D566U (made in 1985) in my living room connected to a 32" CRT TV and a General Electric VG-7720 (manufactured by Panasonic in 1988) connected to a 19" CRT TV in my bedroom.
I'm most nostalgic about the setup in my bedroom because I've had both the VCR and the TV since they were new in 1988 (we got them both for Christmas 1988 when I was almost 14), so I especially like using that setup; I like the sounds that that particular VCR makes, I like the specific look of its picture when displayed on that particular TV that it's always been paired with, and I like using its huge remote control that I have muscle memory for dating back to when I was a kid.
Another thing I like about VCRs as opposed to DVD/BD players or digital file players is the 100% consistent and predictable fast-forward and rewind search functions. It always works the same no matter what tape you're playing, whereas with digital players, it usually goes by key frames in the digital files, and the spacing of key frames can and does vary drastically from file to file. So you can have cases where you pressed rewind for just a split second and you've gone back a couple/few minutes in the video when you only wanted to go back, say, 10 seconds.
"Double sided DVDs/flipper discs are not dual layer DVDs, that's why you have to flip them."
You don't know what you're talking about. A double-sided DVD can be single-layer or dual-layer:
DVD-5 = Single-side, single-layer
DVD-10 = Double-side, single-layer
DVD-9 = Single-side, dual-layer
DVD-18 = Double-side, dual-layer
https://amifw.com/difference-dvd-5-dvd-9-dvd-10-dvd-18-blu-ray-dvds/
What are you talking about? Henry Hill worked for the Lucchese crime family:
<blockquote>The Lucchese crime family (pronounced [lukˈkeːze; -eːse]) is an Italian-American <b>Mafia</b> crime family and one of the "Five Families" that dominate organized crime activities in New York City, within the nationwide criminal phenomenon known as the American <b>Mafia</b>.</blockquote>
Henry Hill wasn't a "made man" in the mafia but the guy he worked under, "Paulie," was:
<blockquote>Paul Vario (July 10, 1914 – May 3, 1988) was an American mobster and made man in the Lucchese crime family. Vario was a caporegime and had his own crew of mobsters in Brooklyn, New York.
He was portrayed as Paul Cicero by Paul Sorvino in the Martin Scorsese film Goodfellas.</blockquote>
Billy Batts was another "made man" in the mafia (Gambino crime family):
<blockquote>William "Billy Batts" Bentvena (January 19, 1921 – June 11, 1970), also known as William Devino,[1] was an Italian-American mobster with the Gambino crime family who was a longtime friend of John Gotti in the 1960s.</blockquote>
Of course "these guys" were in the mafia, and Goodfellas was very obviously a mafia movie.
I'm not much of a fan of the western genre, but True Grit (1969; I hated the 2010 version), Unforgiven, Young Guns, Young Guns II, and Quigley Down Under are among my all-time favorite movies. I can't pick just one as my favorite, and I can't think of any other westerns that I care about at all.
I'm not a fan of any of the main genres that Rocky (1976) falls into (sports, drama, romance), but it's one of my favorite movies.
Musical - The Wizard of Oz (1939) (and that's the only one I like at all)
I've never been to an ophthalmologist, only to optometrists, namely the one from my hometown that I first went to in 1985 and some chains, like LensCrafters and America's Best Contacts & Eyeglasses.
I don't think the machine he used today measured the shape of my eyes, but it did quickly determine how much correction my vision needed. I looked into it without my glasses and it showed a picture of a hot air balloon above a road, which started out as an indiscernible blur and then came into focus, then it showed a string of characters like on an eye chart which was in perfect focus for my eyes.
In the past, all of the optometrists I've been too had to do that manually with the device that they flip lenses on and ask you which looks clearer. He used that gizmo today too, but he didn't really need to, since the magic machine had already gotten it dead on.
720 vertical alternating black and white lines
"They tell me I look like Merle Haggard, and sound a lot like David Allan Coe."
David Allan Coe - Longhaired Redneck
"Well, I've heard my name a few times in your phone book. And I've seen it on signs where I've played. But the only time I know, I'll hear 'David Allan Coe,' is when Jesus has his final judgment day."
David Allan Coe - You Never Even Called Me By My Name
Beta was the butt of jokes on Married with Children too:
https://youtu.be/J99ciuhZVwg
Both Betamax and VHS VCRs were huge in their early days, and they were top-loaders with piano-style keys. This was the first standalone Betamax VCR:
https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/XsoAAOSw4y1lyrot/s-l1200.webp
The first VHS VCR released in the US looked like this:
https://cdna.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/007/664/376/large/james-clark-1.jpg?1507698135
It was branded RCA but it was made by Matsushita (Panasonic).
I don't remember when I first saw a VCR, but I saw those RCA SelectaVision things (CED) before I ever saw a VCR, because they had them at school in the early 1980s. They play movies from what looks similar to a vinyl record (not to be confused with LaserDisc, which also used 12" diameter discs, but was an optical disc format and had much better picture quality), and you can't record onto them.
"The "open" vs "closed" issue reminds me of Microsoft (open) vs Apple (closed)."
Same here.
I don't remember ever seeing Betamax rentals, but I never went into a video rental store until about 1985 or 1986 (when I was 10 or 11), which was the first time Dad rented a VCR. By that time Betamax was on life support and was a frequent butt of jokes.
We didn't get our own VCR until Christmas 1988, at which point I started going to the video rental store a lot.
I find VHS more interesting, since in most cases it's better. The only Sony "Beta" product I find really interesting is Betacam, since it was the de facto standard format used for TV broadcasting throughout most of the 1980s (which is the decade I grew up in). I didn't know it at the time, but nearly everything I watched on TV when I was a kid originated from a Betacam master tape playing at the TV station.
Betacam blows both VHS and Betamax out of the water, but no content was ever commercially released for it. LaserDisc beats it in terms of picture quality though, and in the case of LaserDiscs with digital audio tracks (which were 44.1 KHz, 16-bit, uncompressed LPCM, i.e., CD-quality), sound quality as well.
Yeah, the idea that CRT TVs were "blurry" or "fuzzy" is a myth. Some of them could be that way due to factors like the focus pot on the flyback transformer being out of adjustment, failing components on the chassis, poor reception, low-quality video source (such as a cheap VCR with dirty heads and/or a cheap or well-worn tape and/or a tape recorded at less than the fastest [highest quality] recording speed, which a lot of people did because that's how you get 6 hours of recording time out of those "6-hour" T120 tapes), poor quality cable and/or poor connection between the cable and jacks, and so on.
For example, someone in another thread said, in reference to VHS:
<blockquote>We were also watching on the old tube tvs and it was all we had so we accepted it. I recall in the late 2000’s this guy I knew was watching a DVD on an old tube tv and he was complaining as he didn’t see what the big deal was all about.</blockquote>
There's a big difference between DVD and typical VHS on an "old tube TV" even when using the lowest quality connection (RF, which is the connection I used with that 12" B&W TV since it has no other option), so either something was wrong with the guy he knew's setup or something was wrong with his eyesight (or maybe both).
"Okay, you're looking for the highest quality ever?"
Yes, but specifically from VHS.
"Did you know that there are HD VHS tapes?"
Yes, but that's not VHS. It's a digital video format (MPEG-2), and for digital video I just use DVDs and Blu-rays (and video files ripped from them). There's also W-VHS which is an HD analog video format, recorded in component video (YPbPr) form like Betacam, but unlike Betacam, it's digitally processed before being output.
S-VHS is also not VHS, though it's much closer to VHS than W-VHS and D-VHS. It's essentially VHS with increased luma bandwidth, giving it a luma resolution on par with LaserDisc, but it suffers from having the same poor chroma resolution that VHS has.
"These both have an option to have coaxial output instead of RCA which further improves quality."
I don't know what you mean by that. RCA <i>is</i> coaxial. S-VHS has S-Video output (AKA: Y/C) and D-VHS has "component" (YPbPr) outputs which use 3 RCA cables for video (they usually have S-video output too, but component is better).
"Coaxial" just refers to a type of cable/connector which has a center conductor surrounded by an outer shield. It doesn't refer to a specific type of input/output signal. RF, composite, and component inputs/outputs all use coaxial cables even though they carry different types of signals. Coaxial cables intended for use with RF inputs/outputs typically have F-type connectors and ones intended for composite and component inputs/outputs typically have RCA connectors.
As far as SD media goes, I prefer DVD to VHS, since a DVD can max out the quality potential of a ~15 KHz CRT, and a VHS tape can't. Even the cheapest CRTs can be capable of surprisingly good picture quality if they're still working properly.
For example, this is a picture I took of the screen of a cheap 12" B&W TV made in 1984 (same as this one, but not as beat up - https://i.imgur.com/NAHjLN9.jpg), the kind that sold for around $60 new and could be found at yard sales for about $5, even in the 1980s when they were still fairly new:
https://i.imgur.com/4QbGKmY.png
That's from an episode of The Twilight Zone. The source is a DVD-quality file playing from a flash drive on my Blu-ray player, outputting over composite to an RF modulator, which in turn is sending an RF signal over 75-ohm coaxial cable to a 75-to-300 ohm balun connected to the 300-ohm twin-lead antenna screw terminals on the back of the TV (which is the TV's only input).
Sometimes I play VHS tapes for the sake of nostalgia, but I usually prefer to have the best quality that my CRT TVs can deliver.
Yeah, Japan's first HDTV broadcasting standard actually dates back to the early 1980s:
<blockquote>Original HD specifications date back to the early 1980s, when Japan developed the HighVision 1125-line TV standard (also called MUSE) that ran at 30 frames per second (frame/s or fps). Japan presented their standard at an international meeting of television engineers in Algiers in 1981 and Japan's NHK presented its analog HDTV system at Swiss conference in 1983.</blockquote>
I like plain old 4:3 480i (AKA: ~15 KHz) CRT TVs for watching my favorite TV shows (all of which are decades old) and playing classic video games (e.g., Atari 2600, NES, SNES) on though, because that's how they were originally meant to be seen and that's what looks right to me.
All of my arcade machines have their original, or an equivalent of their original, ~15 KHz RGB CRT monitors. Like classic video game consoles, my arcade machines (which range from the early '80s to early '90s) don't output 480i, but rather, ~240p. 480i and 240p are both ~15 KHz, so a ~15 KHz CRT doesn't "care" either way; it will happily sync to either one. I believe that the first video game console that was 480i by default was the Sega Dreamcast, but it also had a 240p mode as well as a 480p (~31 KHz, AKA: "VGA") mode.
For Hollywood movies I use a 1080p DLP projector along with Blu-ray or other forms of high-bitrate 1080p video files, because, again, a projector is how those were originally meant to be seen, and that's what looks right to me.
So I have no use for HD CRTs, except in the form of computer monitors like the one I'm using right now.
"Do you still watch a lot of VHS?"
No, hardly ever.
"also do you have a digitital converter box for your crt TV's so you can watch broadcast tv?"
Yes, but I don't watch much broadcast TV either. The last time I watched a TV broadcast was a couple of months ago. I mostly use my CRT TVs to watch my favorite TV shows (all of which are decades old and 4:3 aspect ratio) on DVD (I don't watch them directly from my DVDs, but rather, I rip the DVDs to a USB flash drive and watch them from that through either my BD player or my WD TV media player), and for classic video game consoles (mostly Atari 2600, NES, and SNES).
HDTVs existed in the early 1990s in Japan, along with an HD home video format (a 1035i version of LaserDisc):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaserDisc#MUSE_LD
The 1994 Winter Olympics were broadcast in HD by NHK in Japan, for example:
https://youtu.be/63flkf3S1bE
The first HDTVs on the market in the US, along with the first US HDTV broadcasts, were in 1998:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-definition_television_in_the_United_States#Proposals_and_introduction
And here's an example of a 1080i CRT TV, like my friend in Montana has:
https://youtu.be/MXBaqYSHjsY