So what started you on the AV road to nirvana?

[Spectral Morn]

Cheers Marco I'm sure it'll get even more entertaining as time goes by.. The cave is quite homely thank you


Betamax gave a better picture than VHS simply because from the word go it had more lines on the TV if i remember correctly, the video drum & heads were better quality (looking back at it now). Betamax was Sonys' baby, it was actually JVC that was pushing the VHS format & if i remember correctly it was because they tied in with the film industry & got a load more films put onto pre recorded VHS tapes that killed off the Betamax Betamax machines were still being used professionally though due to the higher picture quality

It wasn't until JVC developed the SVHS (Super VHS) that they surpassed the Betamax system. I can't quite remember the the amount of lines Betamax rendered but VHS was 250 lines, SVHS took that to 400 lines & a vastly better picture


The obvious one, Betamax vs VHS.. If i give it some thought i might think of something else. I don't think that the death of HD-DVD was a bad thing simply because blu ray uses a shorter wavelength laser & therefore can store more information than HD-DVD can on the same CD sized disc.

Unfortunately i get quite envious when i see HD-DVD discs go so cheap on ebay when in reality they can give as good a picture as blu rays do, i'm not about to purchase an HD-DVD player when it's already obsolete

I am pretty sure I am right in saying the following....

(A) JVC sold licences to anyone who wanted to do VHS. Sony wanted to hold onto Beta and thus didn't (sound familiar Mini-Disc etc)

(B) Video industry (including the porn one ) adopted VHS for rental and retail tapes, in the main because there were more VHS machines on the market, VHS gained critical mass and won.

Beta offered better picture (and I think sound) but it was the more gentle way its tape was handled that makes it superior... VHS tape is handled more roughly.

I still use S VHS tapes.


Regards D S D L

[MartinT]

The only downside: Betamax rewind speed was a lot slower than VHS.

[Reid Malenfant]

I am pretty sure I am right in saying the following....

(A) JVC sold licences to anyone who wanted to do VHS. Sony wanted to hold onto Beta and thus didn't (sound familiar Mini-Disc etc)

(B) Video industry (including the porn one ) adopted VHS for rental and retail tapes, in the main because there were more VHS machines on the market, VHS gained critical mass and won.

Beta offered better picture (and I think sound) but it was the more gentle way its tape was handled that makes it superior... VHS tape is handled more roughly.

I still use S VHS tapes.


Regards D S D L

It appears you are probably correct, take a look at the link about the blu () movies on the previous page What you mentioned just about correlates with what i said in all honesty

Yes i still use SVHS tapes to When i get the time though i do intend to transfer material to one of my DVD recorders & onto the hard drive & then to DVD. I just don't watch TV any more so i won't be recording onto that format or the DVD recorders for that matter

[Jac Hawk]

Actually that's not entirely right. It was an Akai VCR with Dolby Pro logic built in and a movie called The Beast. My TV was too small so as the tank rolled into the sound track and then onto the screen and off again it was ridiculous on a 14 inch portable. It planted the seed though.....


Regards D S D L

Great minds and all that, i bought the same Akai VCR, as i remember it had it's own built in amp for the rear channels and in those days there was no centre or sub and it had the mother of all remotes to go with it, anyway that's where i started, btw if any of you has a copy of Jeff Waynes War of the Worlds, try listening to it in 5.1 or higher it is unbelievable

[Reid Malenfant]

<snip> a movie called The Beast.

Damn i could kick myself, apologies for not letting it all sink Neil

The Beast, is this set in afghanistan & involving a Russian tank & crew, one of them kind of defects after he gets tied to a rock & tries to blow the tank up with an RPG along with his new Afghani friends. If i remember right a load of Afghani women kill the tank commander when the remaining crew are attempting to walk back to Russian territory?

Brilliant film, one of my favourites

[Macca]

Way back when I was a student I used to pipe the sound from my girlfriends black & white portable out through the headphone socket and into the hi-fi. Of course it was dismissed at the time as crazy (although the theme tune to 'Brookside' sounded amazing) yet here we are 20 odd years on and AV is a multi-billion dollar industry...

What really got me interested in proper AV sound was watching 'Apocalypse Now' on VHS through an early NICAM video recorder into a QUAD 303 based system with some very large 3 way speakers (I forget the make). Awesome. That would be about 1991.

A couple of weeks later I went to a screening of the same film at the local cinema (still an old-fashioned, single screen place with a balcony and stalls) - the screen was much larger but the print was dirty and the sound was terrible. I had enjoyed the film so much more; yes on a 26'' tv but the sound more than made up for the screen size.

My current AV system is something of a lash-up, but it does the job. I will have to amend my sig to include it now that we have an official AV section

Cheers all!

[Spectral Morn]

Damn i could kick myself, apologies for not letting it all sink Neil

The Beast, is this set in afghanistan & involving a Russian tank & crew, one of them kind of defects after he gets tied to a rock & tries to blow the tank up with an RPG along with his new Afghani friends. If i remember right a load of Afghani women kill the tank commander when the remaining crew are attempting to walk back to Russian territory?

Brilliant film, one of my favourites

That's the one I rented it at the time.


Regards D S D L

[Spectral Morn]

Way back when I was a student I used to pipe the sound from my girlfriends black & white portable out through the headphone socket and into the hi-fi. Of course it was dismissed at the time as crazy (although the theme tune to 'Brookside' sounded amazing) yet here we are 20 odd years on and AV is a multi-billion dollar industry...

What really got me interested in proper AV sound was watching 'Apocalypse Now' on VHS through an early NICAM video recorder into a QUAD 303 based system with some very large 3 way speakers (I forget the make). Awesome. That would be about 1991.

A couple of weeks later I went to a screening of the same film at the local cinema (still an old-fashioned, single screen place with a balcony and stalls) - the screen was much larger but the print was dirty and the sound was terrible. I had enjoyed the film so much more; yes on a 26'' tv but the sound more than made up for the screen size.

My current AV system is something of a lash-up, but it does the job. I will have to amend my sig to include it now that we have an official AV section

Cheers all!

I did try hooking my Akai VCR (still have it, but playback head is knackerd) into the HiFi but it degraded the sound of the system so I unhooked it and moved to a separate part of the mains. However hooking the RCA cables up degraded the sound......go figure. Real shame as it had adjustable record levels and was very good as a tape recorder. Anyone else try taping audio only to VHS tapes ?


Regards D S D L

[Reid Malenfant]

Anyone else try taping audio only to VHS tapes ?

Yep, got probably 75 or more stuffed full with up to 6 hours of music & CD quality to boot

[Spectral Morn]

Nice

Did you find having it hooked up degraded the sound ?

At the time I was using an Audio Innovations Series 500 which has a passive pre not active.


Regards D S D L