Just saw on TV news that people are still watching VHS movies. Then found this article. Is this you?
God no.DVDs 640x480 is bad enough. I like to be able to actually see what I’m watching.
Thus isn’t an attack on analog, but vhs is legit a terrible analog quality
Agreed, I don’t get this at all. Usually you can find some benefit to the analog format or luddite tech that makes it worth the hassle beyond pure personal nostalgia:
Vinyl sounds lovely in a certain way, and a pristine record on an excellent setup can even exceed digital quality.
Fountain pens require no pressure, are customizable in half a dozen ways, and can be quite nice objects in their own right.
Film can be similar to vinyl in having the potential for excellent quality, and generations of filmmakers hand crafted their works for the medium.
VHS looks bad, sounds bad, inspired no one & moved the art of filmmaking nowhere, deteriorates rapidly, has to be rewound, and has no efficient means of skipping to certain scenes. It’s awful, and I was deliriously happy to replace cassettes with DVDs. I guess the engineering around getting magnetic reel-to-reel tape into a somewhat user-friendly and cost-effective cassette is kinda cool… until it’s not.
Not really, but a few years ago I was going through an old box of VHS home movies for my wife and turning them into MP4s. Amongst the tapes I found a box set of Star Wars IV, V, & VI. The original trilogy before Lucas fucked them up. Naturally I ripped a copy of those as a back up. Sadly they were pan-and-scan but they were actually in good shape!
I have a copy of The End, the high-budget Birdhouse skate video from 1998. It’s all white and still in the original sleeve. Just can’t part with it at all because of how cool it is.
I keep a copy of Carpenter’s The Fog on VHS.
Frankly it looks badass for that movie since the whole thing is more or less a ghost story told around a campfire where your imagination could run wild.
The SD res combined with how analog noise makes things fuzzier and harder to see works really well with the fog hiding the ghosts.
Years ago (like 2003), a friend had a clever setup. He had nostalgic movies from childhood on VHS (like Princess Bride). You know, stuff you wouldn’t care about if you stopped watching. The VHS was in his bedroom. That was the only place to watch those movies. What a great idea when you’re in your twenties and dating.
VHS resolution/picture quality is the pits.
Right now I have an old VCR from the 90s hooked up to a very new Roku box and my old TV from the 80s, so if I feel like watching old movies or TV shows as they were intended, I just stream it on that set. The VCR still plays tapes that I look through sometimes but other than that I don’t feel a huge urge to buy new VHS tapes
There’s only one analog format that has any redeeming qualities, and that’s LaserDisc. VHS is just torturing yourself with poor quality video.
