VHS has more resolution than DVD, it does at this store (1 Viewer)

[Greg_Ritchie]

Hi,
I just had an enlightening experience with the owner of a video store around the corner from my house. I noticed the other day they had started to carry DVDs so I decided to stop in there as it's more convenient than going to Blockbuster. I rented a VHS tape for my wife (chick flick they didn't have on DVD) and a DVD for myself. I asked the owner if the 30 or so DVDs they had on their rack was their whole selection. At this point he began to enlighten me on the DVD myths and how consumers are being unknowingly tricked by the Consumer Electronics Industry. He told me:

1. 90% of VHS tapes look better than the DVD Counterparts because the DVDs can't handle as much resolution with the extras and stuff

2. DVDs aren't a sensible approach for rentals because they don't stand up very well to repeat use

3. He told me DVD would be obsolete very soon and everyone would have Digital VHS. The reason everyone would want DVHS is because it has 5000 lines of resolution compared to 400 on a DVD.

4. He then pointed out that DVDs cost $.10 to make and VHS Tapes cost $2.00 he figures if they can make everyone switch to the inferior medium (DVD) they'll make more money.

I honestly almost laughed at him, Conspiracy Theory came to mind. He then offered to show me LOTR on VHS and DVD and he could show me how much better the VHS looked. I told him most people would disagree with his opinion and he said it was because they had cheap VCRs that needed cleaning.

Hard to believe people this ignorant can stay in business.

Greg

 

[Kevin C Brown]

Most of those are funny. But the one clear (to me) advantage VHS has over DVD is: no MPEG 2 compression artifacts. (You know, where you can see the gradations in color change in a frame.)
'Course, I still replace my VHS tapes with DVDs whenever I can...

 

[bruce townley]

It would have been interesting to ask him how the DVHS would show 5000 lines of resolution on a tv that is limited to 1098

 

[JohnnyG]

But the one clear (to me) advantage VHS has over DVD is: no MPEG 2 compression artifacts.

But that's easy to fix. Just lower the encoding resolution to that of VHS tape and voila...no artifacts!

 

[Stephen Tu]

Don't laugh too hard; claims 2-4 are all at least half true, although one would quibble with the details.

VHS tapes may well survive more rental turns; I've rented quite a few discs that had unplayable sections due to being scratched to hell. Certainly a higher percentage than I've had unplayable VHS. A lot of customers must be seriously abusing the discs. Anti-scratch coating might help here.

D-VHS D-Theater tapes do have much greater resolution, HDTV res, although my hope is that HD-DVD quickly makes this obsolete, since I dislike tape's limitations. But there are only a tiny handful of titles available, and only a few studios supporting this format, so it's not going to obsolete DVD anytime soon. I'm going to skip this format and wait for HD-DVD, which would be backwards compatible.

DVDs are a lot cheaper per unit to replicate than tape (though much higher design costs for all the fancy menus & extras), although this is dwarfed by the strategy of mainly direct sell-through to consumers vs. high-priced VHS rental windows. This might change as studios try to maximize their profits.

 

[Greg Kolinski]

I think I have been in that store ,doesnt he have a section in the back with the"SECRET GOVERNMENT HIDDEN"
device,for sale, that makes ALL cars get 200 MPG! 5000 lines of resolution,LOL I can even count that high