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Tapeheads and the Quiet Return of VHS
Hugh Pickens writes "Joshua Phillips writes that something was lost when videos went from magnetic tape and plastic, to plastic discs, and now to digital streams as browsing aisles is no more and the once-great video shops slowly board up their windows across the country. Future generations may know little of the days when buying a movie meant you owned it even if the Internet went down and when getting a movie meant you had to scour aisles of boxes in search of one whose cover art called back a story that echoed your interests. Josh Johnson, one of the filmmakers behind the upcoming documentary 'Rewind This!' hopes to tell the story of how and why home video came about, and how it changed our culture giving B movies and films that didn't make the silver screen their own chance to shine. 'Essentially, the rental market expanded, because of voracious consumer demand, into non-blockbuster, off-Hollywood video content which would never have had a theatrical life otherwise,' says Palmer. While researching the documentary Palmer found something interesting: there is a resurgence taking place of people going back to VHS because a massive number of films are 'trapped on VHS' with 30 and 40 percent of films released on VHS never to be seen again on any other format. 'Most of the true VHS fanatics are children of the 1980s,' says Palmer. 'Whether they are motivated by a sense of nostalgia or prefer the format for the grainy aesthetic qualities of magnetic tape or some other reason entirely unknown, each tapehead is unique like a snowflake.'"
Courtesy of the Onion:
Blockbuster Offers Glimpse Of Movie Renting Past
Wannabes. The religious hipster cool kids have been getting their media via STONE TABLET for several millenniums now.
There's a spot in User Info for World of Warcraft account names? Really?
"Red Dwarf: Back to Earth (Part Two) (#9.2)" (2009)
Dave Lister: What are these things?
Kryten: They're Digital Versatile Discs, sir. DVDs for short. They were very popular in the early part of the 21st century before they died out and were replaced with what we use now.
Dave Lister: Oh, you mean videos?
Kryten: Precisely. Back then no one knew that the human race were utterly incapable of putting the DVDs back in their cases. Case in point: over 2 trillion went missing in just over 20 years. Videos are just too big to lose.
Don't. There's not really any other point in tapes and vhs than nostalgia, but vinyl is in many ways superior to newer formats. Vinyl and mp3 are actually the only two formats anyone needs. Vinyl for home listening as it has superior sound quality, cover art you can actually see and lasts forever if handled properly, but on the flipside, is a pain in the ass to take away with you. Mp3 for traveling as it has no weight and you can easily listen to it anywhere, but has bad sound quality and no cover art whatsoever. What CD does better than mp3, vinyl does even better, and what CD does better than vinyl, mp3 does even better.
Don't let the MPAA hear you say that. They'll throw you in jail.
What kinda high tech idiot watches LDs for analog video? You aren't going to get the real analog feel unless you are watching on CED. Laser discs just lack the tonal color, man. Besides, Laser Discs used PCM "digital" audio! That's not real analog, now is it!