sucka4chix
05-11-2007, 05:17 PM
Well the VHS tape is going the way of the 8 track!! So sad.
I know in this digital age analog is not popular, but taken as a whole
video tape was so much better than DVD!
I had billions of movies on tape--- just rent a flick and dub it to tape. And if I got tired of it, I could record over it with something new. And contrary to DVD anti-tape commentary, I had 10 and 15 year old tapes that still had great quality. If a tape messes up you can just cut out the bad part and still watch the rest. DVD has to be compressed to fit a regular DVD and then looks awful, or you have to buy over-priced, getting-hard-to-find dual layer. You can't erase and re-record. If you mess up while recording, the DVD is trashed.When you rent DVDs they're scratched half the time, which means no jackin off because they won't play at all. Everyone says "transfer your stuff to DVD it'll last forever". No it won't. It will inevitably get a minute scratch and be lost forever unless you make several copies and store them in a vault.Who said this was a good idea anyway, naked media? It should be in a case, like the old mini-discs to protect it. The only advantage of DVD is the ability to jump to certain scenes. Oh well. I'm stuck with it. So long video tapes, I'll miss you!
Well the VHS tape is going the way of the 8 track!! So sad.
I know in this digital age analog is not popular, but taken as a whole
video tape was so much better than DVD!
I had billions of movies on tape--- just rent a flick and dub it to tape. And if I got tired of it, I could record over it with something new. And contrary to DVD anti-tape commentary, I had 10 and 15 year old tapes that still had great quality. If a tape messes up you can just cut out the bad part and still watch the rest. DVD has to be compressed to fit a regular DVD and then looks awful, or you have to buy over-priced, getting-hard-to-find dual layer. You can't erase and re-record. If you mess up while recording, the DVD is trashed.When you rent DVDs they're scratched half the time, which means no jackin off because they won't play at all. Everyone says "transfer your stuff to DVD it'll last forever". No it won't. It will inevitably get a minute scratch and be lost forever unless you make several copies and store them in a vault.Who said this was a good idea anyway, naked media? It should be in a case, like the old mini-discs to protect it. The only advantage of DVD is the ability to jump to certain scenes. Oh well. I'm stuck with it. So long video tapes, I'll miss you!
We had a Betamax VCR when I was kid. Remember those?
sucka4chix
05-11-2007, 06:29 PM
Well the VHS tape is going the way of the 8 track!! So sad.
I know in this digital age analog is not popular, but taken as a whole
video tape was so much better than DVD!
I had billions of movies on tape--- just rent a flick and dub it to tape. And if I got tired of it, I could record over it with something new. And contrary to DVD anti-tape commentary, I had 10 and 15 year old tapes that still had great quality. If a tape messes up you can just cut out the bad part and still watch the rest. DVD has to be compressed to fit a regular DVD and then looks awful, or you have to buy over-priced, getting-hard-to-find dual layer. You can't erase and re-record. If you mess up while recording, the DVD is trashed.When you rent DVDs they're scratched half the time, which means no jackin off because they won't play at all. Everyone says "transfer your stuff to DVD it'll last forever". No it won't. It will inevitably get a minute scratch and be lost forever unless you make several copies and store them in a vault.Who said this was a good idea anyway, naked media? It should be in a case, like the old mini-discs to protect it. The only advantage of DVD is the ability to jump to certain scenes. Oh well. I'm stuck with it. So long video tapes, I'll miss you!
We had a Betamax VCR when I was kid. Remember those?
Dammit, why'd you go there? LOL! Our first was a big ol' betamax top load machine. Matter of fact it just stopped working. I bought a top of the line super beta just before Sony stopped making them, and actually I dubbed most of my porn on that since (1) it was a better format (2) no one would ask to borrow. I still use it for my classic porn viewing. Can't get new tapes... luckily I had dozens!
wendy48088
05-11-2007, 06:57 PM
I have several VHS tape recorders, and intend to keep them until they go bad or I wear all the tapes out. Just because I hate spending money just to upgrade to new technology.
That said, nothing lasts forever. The tapes get noisy as the magnetic signals on the tape dissipate over time and the signal to noise level drops closer to the noise level. Same reason floppy disks lose data over the years - the tiny areas of magetic charge on the oxide coating of the thin mylar disk lose their charge over time (giving the dreaded "sector not found" or the even worse "disk not formatted" errors).
Over the past few years, I did finally buy a CD player, then a DVD player, and then a DVD video recorder when the price of each dropped low enough to make it worth having. I should note that the DVD recorder will not back up a commercial tape due to the copy protection (MacroVision I think) being detected by the recorder and shutting of the recording function. I think they had to put that in the design by law.
Anyways, now all my PCs have CD or CD/DVD read-writers in them. Amazing what the price coming down does for making it worth upgrading to the new technology. PC games that were on several CDs now come on a DVD. So that's the way the technology is going.
I just think it's important to identify what you exactly are trying to do, and go with what works best for that. When I was younger (in the early 70's) I used to use an audio tape recorder with the mic in front of the AM radio speaker to record my favorite 60's songs. Worked well enough for me.
Beta was better technology than VHS - I noticed when I had medical test all the recordings (ultrasound of my heart, my colonoscopy, etc.) was all recorded on Beta tapes.
Seems that CDs and DVDs are not all created equal, and don't last forever either...
http://usgovinfo.about.com/cs/technology/a/cdcaretips.htm?p=1
Tips for Longer CD, DVD Life form NIST
From Robert Longley, Your Guide to U.S. Gov Info / Resources.
Disks can last 30 years if given proper care
You should never use a pen, pencil or hard-tip marker to write on your CDs. That's just one of several recommendations made by computer scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), who sliced, diced and baked CDs and DVDs to see how long the digital information would survive.
Most CDs and DVDs will last 30 years or more if handled with care, but many factors can slash their longevity.
Direct exposure to sunlight can do a great deal of damage both from the sun’s ultraviolet rays and the heat.
Any rapid significant change in temperature or humidity can stress the materials.
Fingerprints and smudges frequently do more harm than scratches. NIST recommends handling discs by the outer edge or the center hole.
Discs may be cleaned with a cotton cloth by wiping in a straight line from the center of the disc toward the outer edge. Isopropyl alcohol may be used for extra cleaning power.
Discs last longest when stored in plastic cases in a cool, dark, dry environment. Because gravity can gradually bend the disc, storing it upright like a book is best for long-term storage.
Many libraries, archives and government agencies store information on optical media, and NIST collaborated with the Council on Library and Information Resources to issue the research report.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,116473-page,1/article.html
Burning Questions: When Good Discs Go Bad
Ever wonder what makes a disc bad? Here's why they vary in quality, and why you should worry about the discs you've entrusted with your data.
Melissa J. Perenson, PC World
Tuesday, June 15, 2004 1:00 AM PDT
Burning CDs and DVDs is the easy part.
Knowing your data will be there when you go back to it days, months, or even years later--well, that's a bit harder. Not all discs are created equal, as Fred Byers, information technology specialist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, can attest.
Byers is part of a team heading up an independent study of DVD media quality. Based on the first wave of testing results, the situation is murky at best.
"We've found the quality varies, depending upon the type of dye used to make the write-once discs and [on the] the manufacturer," reports Byers. Even discs from the same manufacturer, with the same brand, can test differently, Byers adds. "But there was more of a significant difference when you compared discs between manufacturers," he explains.
DVD Media Quality: The First Tests
In the first phase of testing, completed late last year, NIST focused on the most popular media: write-once, single-layer DVD-R and +R discs. Rewritable discs will be tested in the second phase, slated to start this fall. An interesting footnote to the study's methodology: NIST uses media purchased off store shelves and via Web sites; and while researchers are tracking the media by brand, they are not tracking the specific factory source of the media tested. For example, a given manufacturer's discs could originate from different production lines, which could account for a variation in disc quality by the same manufacturer.
Hearing that there's a difference between the generic, unbranded 100-spindle value-pack of media purchased online and the branded offerings you might find on a Best Buy store shelf is not surprising. After all, as David Bunzel, president of the Optical Storage Technology Association, points out: "With a generic product, there's no consumer recourse. It's buyer beware."
If a disc isn't properly manufactured, the consequences can be dire. At best, the disc will fail immediately during the burn process; this is a best-case scenario because then you know from the start that the disc is faulty. At worst, you may get an abundance of errors during the burn process. These errors won't interrupt the burning process, and since write-once and rewritable DVD media have built-in error correction to compensate for scratches and other abnormalities on the disc (as do their CD cousins), any errors will be virtually invisible to you. You'll only know they're there if you use a disc diagnostics program, such as those offered by Ahead Software or Plextor. Nor will these errors affect the playback of the disc--initially.
Down the road, however, such invisible-to-the-eye errors can reduce the effectiveness of a DVD's built-in error correction so that if some other issue develops on your disc, such as a scratch, you could end up with an unreadable disc when you go back to it months or years later.
But what would cause such a wide disparity in media quality between branded discs from the same vendor?
"We don't know why it's different--it could be a different dye, it could be a different manufacturing process," notes Byers. "Manufacturers are constantly trying to improve their dye formulas--in theory improving the disc."
Nonetheless, at the same time, competitive forces are driving manufacturers to find ways to economize on production costs. And cost-cutting measures can result in discs that don't perform as well as those generated during an earlier production run, either in terms of failing outright or not burning at the maximum possible speed on a given DVD drive. "It varies over time, as the output changes," Byers says.
Brand Disparity
As for the disparity between brands that NIST found, the distinguishing factors come down to quality control and the dyes used in disc production. Declining to name names, Byers points out that "some manufacturers make their own discs, and some purchase them from someplace else--which opens you to variations in the manufacturing plant, or changes in the source [of that media]."
Vendors like Maxell and Verbatim manufacture discs on their own production lines, as do Asian manufacturers CMC Magnetics, RiData, Taiyo Yuden, and others; other name brands contract with a third-party manufacturer to produce discs to their own specs; and still others just buy third-party-produced media wholesale, without imposing their own set of quality controls on the media production.
The intricacies of disc production and quality control aren't the only variables that seem to affect media. More surprising is the number of discs that seem to have a propensity for specific hardware.
"One thing we've found in compatibility testing [of DVD-R and +R media] is that it's a relationship between a specific brand of media and the manufacturer of the hardware," observes Byers. "There was no one drive that played every single type of compatible media, and there was no one media brand that played perfectly in every drive."
And, he adds, sounding as frustrated as any consumer might, "You can't say there's a clear, delineated set of reasons as to why."
A Grading System?
One of the most common questions I hear is, "What's a good brand of media to buy?" DVD and CD media are so commonplace nowadays that it's easy to forget the complexities that go into producing them. And if anything in that production process is off, it could, in time, affect the integrity of the data you've burned to a disc.
"It's very tough to answer that kind of question, because there are so many variables," says Byers. "You don't get 100 percent yield when you manufacture these discs. We can talk about the materials that produce a good disc, but it also has to do with the manufacturing process. So, just to say the materials to look for doesn't necessarily relate to it being a better disc." The same is true vice versa.
So how can you know that the media you're using will last you for the duration, so those archived photos will still be there when you go back to a disc 20 years from now--or more?
For the moment, you can't. All DVD and CD vendors make vague claims about disc life expectancy being somewhere between 60 and 100 years--when the discs are treated with care and stored properly.
But NIST's Byers is seeking to change that. At an OSTA meeting in San Francisco this week, Byers is proposing an industry-wide grading system to indicate disc quality.
Byers is motivated by the desire to see a uniform mechanism in place to guide institutions and individuals who'll be storing data, music, videos, and images for long periods of time. "They need to be confident in their purchasing, so they can plan for their strategies in storing their information," Byers says. "Long-term storage has different meanings: For some, 30 years might be enough. For others, 50 or 75 years might be archive, or long-term, quality."
Longevity
Under Byers's proposal, a series of tests would be developed to determine whether a DVD would last for a given number of years. "If you were to purchase a disc in a store with a grade that indicates it has passed a test to last X number of years, it removes a lot of uncertainty for the consumer, and it can save some expense in premature migration [to a new storage technology], or loss of data because they waited too long [and the disc was no longer playable]," he says.
Although some archivists--both individual and professional--are concerned about whether today's digital storage mediums will be readable 50 or 100 years from now, Byers believes the bigger concern for users will be when to migrate their data to the next technology, "before the existing technology is obsolete."
The Disc Rot Myth
Media obsolescence isn't the only thing people fear after committing a personal library's worth of data to CDs and DVDs. But some worries--namely, fear of disc rot--are not fully warranted.
Like a bad seed, the myth of disc rot self-perpetuates, cropping up every now and again as a sudden and mortal threat to your copious collection of prerecorded and self-created discs.
The myth was once rooted in fact. It is true that back in the 1980s, with the first generation of prerecorded audio CDs, the edges of the discs were not always sealed properly, which allowed moisture to get into the disc. Replicated, prerecorded discs use aluminum for the reflective layer; when moisture came into contact with the aluminum on prerecorded discs, explains Byers, it in turn oxidized, causing the aluminum to become dull. "That's where the term 'rot' started," he says.
But that problem was quickly identified and overcome. "The manufacturers learned what was going on, so now the edges of discs are sealed with a lacquer," according to Byers. Though the problem is typically associated with CDs, Byers notes that the potential for interaction with oxygen is the same with both CD-ROMs and DVD-ROMs.
The so-called rot issue does not apply to recordable discs. For one thing, recordable optical media do not use aluminum; instead, they use silver, and very rarely gold, or a silver-gold alloy, for the reflective layer. "If the silver comes into contact with sulfates [i.e., pollution, or high humidity], it could affect the silver, but the likelihood of that is less than the likelihood of moisture coming into contact with the aluminum on prerecorded discs," says Byers.
Enduring Myth
The term rot has persisted, however inaccurately, as a means of identifying a plethora of problems with optical discs. "If you get a faulty disc and see a problem that you can visually see, you call it rot, but it could be the way the disc was manufactured," says Byers. "Or if it was subjected to extreme moisture and that moisture came into contact with the aluminum, it could be that the reflectivity has changed. It's not really rot, it's oxidation of aluminum. It should be a rare event on a disc, unless it's defective."
Beyond the realm of defective discs, improper handling can cause otherwise good discs to go bad. Since there's little protection between the label side of a CD and the data layer itself, "scratches on the label side can scratch the metal, and that will ruin the data," says Byers. It's not an issue for DVDs, though, since the dye layer is sandwiched between two plastic layers.
Byers observed a similar problem occurring with press-on labels: "For long-term storage, we recommend not using press-on labels on CDs; when these start to dry up, they can peel the metal right up, damaging data."
sucka4chix
05-11-2007, 08:56 PM
You could always buy dvd+DL so you would not need
to re-compress. or re-author (split) the movie onto 2
dvd-r and not lose any quality.
That's what I do, when I can find them. But like I say, invariably they end up unplayable, sometimes I think from putting them in and out of the cases.You're gonna lay it down on a desk one day and pick up a mystery scratch and the movie that makes you the hottest but is no longer available at the video store is gone forever. Good thing I still have the original New Wave Hookers with under-aged Traci Lords safely on tape!
Vala_TS
05-11-2007, 09:59 PM
Although I do agree with some of your statements. Tapes are trash. Unless you buy a super high quality machine/tape. I've had tapes go bad after 1 viewing. And the stratches can be polished out, if the stratch is on the shiny side that is, if it's on the other side, you're screwed.
Vala,
kukm4
05-11-2007, 10:13 PM
Prices on hdd are dropping. I thikn 400gb is about 100.00 USD.
Something like iTV would be nice but lacks too much right now to be worth
it. I think the best option I heard was a 1st gen Xbox, Soft modded w/
Xbmc. Friend of mine love it, lets you play any type of media. Network
pc / xbox and stream from oc to xbox or just save to xbox hdd and watch what you will on your TV.
I've recently seen these but not sure about. Basically an external HDD w/
TV inputs.
from the site.
"Play, Store, download your Movies (Divx, AVI), MTV, Clips, Mpeg-1, Mpeg-2, Mpeg-4."
Its nice but still lacks a few other media types (MKV, OGG, FLV)
so many options but no true all in one solution.
ds5929
05-12-2007, 12:13 AM
I use multiple vcr's for tv taping, and will continue to use them. As for longevity, some of my archived tapes are over 20 years old and still work fine. As for convenience, there always seems to be one time when there are three or four programs I want to see that are on at the same time. Kinda hard to do that with a dvr. There are still some high end vcr's out there, altho they are hard to find. If you amass a set of S-VHS machines, or standard vhs with the ET function, the image quality is pretty good. Just don't play them on a high-def tv. All the high def tv's I've seen so far look like crap with a standard def signal. My hdtv looks great with dvd's, but looks like hell with a videotape or analog cable signal fed into it. Newer sets may be better (I've had mine for around four years), but I won't buy another until they make one that will play my accumulated library decently. Won't even think about hddvd until the current idiotic format wars are over.
Powered by vBulletin® Version 4.2.3 Copyright © 2024 vBulletin Solutions, Inc. All rights reserved.