What would it take for YOU to get D-Theater? (1 Viewer)

[Ryan Wright]

But even if there aren't, I'll always take a/v quality over extras - any day of the week. I'll take a bare bones Superbit over a standard SE DVD.

Well, well: We agree on something. Fancy that.

 

[Mike_G]

Whew! Flashbacks of alt.video.laserdisc!
Mike

 

[Dave Anderson]

Quote:

Ex-rental tapes have no right to be in that posting. And if you think that's wrong, then your argument against VHS wear can also be used against DVDs. I've had all too many DVDs show up from Netflix all scratched up. Many of those would either not play or freeze during playback.
I'm willing to bet I can prove your statement regarding VHS not lasting 20 years to be absolutely incorrect. Thinking back to my own experiences as a child growing up on tape and taping lots of programs off TV, I can't honestly say I had ANY tapes that deteriorated or become eaten by the VCR. However, those tapes I did not have in my collection for 20+ years. I'd say 5 years at best. But you can bet there are lots of people in the newsgroups who have had collections that long.
Let me close by saying ONCE AGAIN that D-VHS tapes have a better, more sturdy design (there are several articles which discuss this, all of which I will find and post on this thread) than standard run of the mill VHS tapes. And that basically invalidates anything YOU have stated, since we would theoretically have to wait 20+ years to see what sort of wear occurs on D-VHS tapes.

 

[Jeff_HR]

I will not buy any film title on D-VHS! I might buy a D-VHS vcr to record programs off-the-air so that I would have a nicer recording of them.

 

[Brian-W]

I don't have nearly the disposable income that some seem to on this forum (ehem ehem) and so rather than going "half way" with an HD direct-view or RP set which won't satisfy me, I'm saving and going straight for the front-projection goal.
Big screen projection...here I come!

Works for me.
You go Dave !

 

[george kaplan]

Since you asked.

1. Since the early 80s

2. I used to have quite a few. There are currently 3 remaining.

3. I don't know the exact number, but certainly more than 50%. As a matter of fact it was the third time I was going to have to rebuy Goldfinger due to deterioration (on a state of the art vcr I might add), that I decided to get into laser discs.

4. I never recorded home tapes.

5. Not applicable

6. None. Every single tape that I had that deteriorated happened when I was single. BTW, I take excellent care of my media. I have hundreds of laser discs, and never a single problem. I have many hundreds of dvds and never a problem. I have thousands of cds and never a problem.

7. I currently have replay tv, but back when my collection of movies was on vhs, yes I cleaned my vcrs. I did it every time that was a tracking problem, which was far too often. I went through multiple upgrades to better and better vcrs.

BTW, of my 3 remaining vhs tapes (all store bought in the 1980s, two have degradation problems, but I keep them because the material has not yet been released on dvd. I rarely play them though, because it is so irritating.

 

[Dave Anderson]

Thanks, George. I look forward to compiling all the responses. It should be interesting.

Just remember, as stated earlier: D-VHS is D-VHS, not VHS. They are not the same design and they are not the same tape.

Still, I'm interested to see just how real this tape degredation issue is.

 

[Sean Aaron]

A Free 240v HD Television and a free DVHS deck and free D-Theatre titles; otherwise I'm not interested.

If you're looking for specific replies, perhaps a better thread title or more targeted questions in the leading post would get the desired results.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

Sean,

Are you not interested in HD at all? Your comment about needing a free HD display leads one to that conclusion. If you were interested in HD on its own, and purchased and HD display to take advantage (from sources other than D-VHS), then you'd already have the display and wouldn't need to add it to the freebee list.

 

[Ryan Wright]

And that basically invalidates anything YOU have stated, since we would theoretically have to wait 20+ years to see what sort of wear occurs on D-VHS tapes.

This doesn't change the fact that popular opinion is against tapes. This thread alone is evidence of that. Lastly, even if your informal study shows a large % of VHS tapes lasting 20+ years (I'd be both surprised and humbled), "tapes degrade" has been hammered into all of our heads by companies selling optical devices. Now they're trying to sell us "new and improved" tapes, and for some odd reason the public doesn't want anything to do with it. Can you blame us?

 

[Mike_G]

The findings are irrelevant. I've had tapes go bad on me. Lots of good ones. I have over 1000 CDs and about 600DVDs and NOT ONE has gone bad on me (I've been buying CDs for 17 years).

Hmm...do you think I'd buy tape again?

Mike

 

[Mike Poindexter]

Well, I took the plunge. I found out that every single title for D-Theater is programmed for the D-Box Odyssee motion simulator. As I will be getting mine any day now, I bought a D-Theater. The D-Theater deck came in today, but I have another couple of weeks to wait for the Odyssee.

Oh, and for the person who had the Babylon 5 DVDs, they are programming the first Babylon 5 disc, The Gathering and In The Beginning for the motion simulator for their January update!

$15 dollar titles? Please! Yeah, it would be great, but I am getting most of my titles for under $25, so it is close enough for me.

 

[Charlie Essmeier]

D-VHS is a transitional format, but so is DVD. Laserdisc was here for 20+ years, and DVD was rendered obsolete in only five years by the arrival of D-VHS. In fact, DVD was obsolete the day the first HD sets hit the shelves in 1998. At that point, a mere 18 months after introduction, DVD was rendered NOT GOOD ENOUGH.

Is D-VHS the answer to all problems? No. It's the answer to one problem - how to get prerecorded material on your screen in HD.

In 1997, I decided to pass on DVD and buy a better laserdisc player instead. I decided that since DVD was practically designed to be temporary, I'd just wait it out until something better came along.

I'll probably buy a D-VHS deck in a couple of months, as it presents to the consumer what DVD should have been - a high quality successor to laserdisc.

Oh, and my Beta tapes from 1981 still play just fine.

Charlie

 

[Mike_G]

WHO rendered DVD not good enough? What do you think most of this forum is based on? It's not laserdisc and it's not D-VHS.

D-VHS is also a transitional format. I said in 1997 on alt.video.laserdisc to NEVER underestimate the sexiness of a movie on a 5" disc. Just TODAY my daughters videotape got eaten by my VCR. My S-VHS deck downstairs eats tapes now too, and I paid $1000 for it in 1995 and I hardly ever used it. Problems with DVD players since 1997: ZERO. Number of DVDs eaten by DVD players: ZERO.

If you're skipping DVD, you're missing out on what made LD so great in the first place. Truly. Part of getting a LD was the suppliments, and DVD has scads of them.

No tape. Never again. Not unless it's cheap enough where I can ditch it when HD recording becomes available.

Now that I think about it - how many D-VHS decks have a DirecTV receiver in them? If none, then what's the point?

Mike

 

[Mark_Mac]

Why do you people even post to these topics if you dont even own a HDTV? Get your priorities in-line first, go buy a HDTV then worry about DVHS. If you dont have a HDTV you probably dont even have a progressive scan DVD player. D-VHS is pointless unless you have a HDTV and to really see the difference you need display bigger then 55 inches. Want to see
LoTR in high def. No need for me to buy, I already recorded it.

 

[Damin J Toell]

Why do you people even post to these topics if you dont even own a HDTV?

Do we have to own an HDTV set in order to be allowed to post? I don't recall seeing any such rule posted.

DJ

 

[Mark_Mac]

Damin,

Its just amusing to read people giving opinions on Dvhs when their main display is a 27" ntsc set. DVD is good for direct view analog TV's. The whole thing comes down to size. If your under 55" most will be happy with DVD. Once you go above 55" DVD is very lacking. Right now DVHS is the best for high end home theater, its not intended for people with analog tv's.

 

[Sean Aaron]

Are you not interested in HD at all? Your comment about needing a free HD display leads one to that conclusion. If you were interested in HD on its own, and purchased and HD display to take advantage (from sources other than D-VHS), then you'd already have the display and wouldn't need to add it to the freebee list.

Not in its present state, no. HD has no presence visible in Europe (at least not in the UK).

You can get a few models of progressive scan DVD players, but the monitors don't have the component outputs for them (I would expect any HD display here to continue to use SCART anyway).

Digital tv is quite widespread, but not HD as far as I'm aware. I suspect the strategy is to eliminate analogue signal first and once everyone is using digital, then migrate to a hi-def signal. I'm sure there are others more in the know about the situation than I am, however.

I really don't see the market for hi-def. Widescreen PAL sets are ubiquitous over here, so moving to hi-def is not synonymous with HD over here. You also don't see many people with large tvs (I'm a freak with my huge "American" 80cm tube) because they don't have the interest/space for it. My attitude towards hi-def is like my attitude towards terrestrial digital: when it's the default service and the government includes the access as part of my tv license fee then I'll buy-in (in the case of digital I'm waiting for the set-top box to be part of the deal), but I'm not gung-ho enough to even get a plasma screen right now, let alone 1080p or whatever the standard is going to be for Europe. When my current tv is ready to die in 5-10 years then I'm willing to consider, but it won't change my mind about d-vhs which just seems like a waste of time.

Now if your question was about minidisc, I'd have a different answer for you...

 

[Mark_Mac]

HD has no presence visible in Europe (at least not in the UK).

So why even add anything to this thread?

 

[george kaplan]

Just for the record,

I do own an HDTV (2 actually) and a progressive scan dvd player (3 actually).