rick85p
Member
A total waste of money. Blu-Ray collecting is the only way to go. Hard copy will soon go away as streaming is totally taking over. It's just a matter of time. It's all about money.
Laser discs are not good?
- Thread starter 91firebird
- Start date
rick85p
Member
VHS was far superior to laser disks during playback. When talking about the life span, laser disks will last longer.
MuseChaser
Super Member
????
No way VHS was better. LD had better video and audio quality and you didn't have to worry about the player eating it. Nothing was worse than having tape all mangled up inside a VHS player.
Was going to say a consumer tape format is far lower than a LD which is over 450 lines of horizontal resolution luma and 120 lines color. Even S-vhs is lower at 400 lines luma and 30 lines for color.
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But at a loss of overall quality, a CLV disc holds approx 64 mins/side of NTSC video and VHS 120 mins in the SP format so yes it has that advantage however unlike VHS or any other magnetic media Laserdisc is immune to magnets so erasure is out of the question, both are equally susceptible to physical damage however.
We can argue the pros & cons of the two formats like an old beer commercial, both have their advantages in the big picture. Personally I prefer the lifelike image quality of the Laserdisc over both the consumer disc formats be it DVD or BlueRay and the low resolution VHS & SVHS formats, laserdisc was never compressed or otherwise compromised since its inception in the late 70's and was the catalyst for both all of the digital disc formats starting with the Compact Disc.
Do keep in mind HiFi videotape using AFM was first developed by Sony for the Betamax format where four separate FM carriers were used to record left & right channels in an alternating pattern of high/low while VHS uses a depth multiplex method of recording two carriers over the top of the video FM similar to recording over a cassette without erasing it first. Regardless of the VHS audio the only thing it has is recording time, even the HiFi audio is substandard compared to laserdisc which uses the same 44.1Khz/16 bit/sample as a compact disc, VHS HiFi has roughly the same bandwidth of FM radio of 50-15KHz and a dynamic range of some 80 db which is about what you would get with a DBX encoded open-reel tape.
This was the format that mastered Laserdisc until D2 composite came into play, I have several "glass master" tapes I bought from a pressing house that were used to master Laserdiscs. The only thing I don't have is the BKH-2801 digital audio processor and interface cards but at 9.6 inch/sec linear tape speed the analog audio is about as good running Dolby with a S/N of some 68db. This machine weighs 168 Lbs... ask me how I know.
Hi-Fi VHS recorders were credited by many as killing the consumer reel to reel market except for higher end, read expensive, machines. 20 to 20 khz frequency response with over 80db s/n ratio are the specs I remember. I serviced enough of them and that, as I remember, were the audio specs. An issue they had was head switching noise and you could hear it, fluff, fluff... low level but I'm thinking it was not included in the signal to noise measurement. Most hi-fi units had automatic record level control, not an audio enthusiast feature, few of them had metered and adjustable level controls.
the effective tape speed with the helical scan head is a whole lot faster than the actual linear speed of the tape. Thats how it gets good audio response. In theory it should make for a heck of a recording method, but I suspect more VHS decks were sold more with the idea of recording video than audio so they simply didn't have all of the features you might want to get the most of it.
I forget what the effective tape speed was but seems I remember it being in the area of six feet per second. Sony training material had the spec. You could figure it, drum speed.
Regardless of the writing speed the audio is recorded using FM
justin_r_23
Active Member
There's an article in Mondo 2000 (ah, the cyberpunk hangover of the 80s and 90s!) that suggested that if you wanted to get into public radio, one way you could get a good recording that was two hours long was to use a Hi-Fi VHS deck to record your demo.
Since the length of the usual public radio show was 2 hours and it's better quality than cassette.
Since the length of the usual public radio show was 2 hours and it's better quality than cassette.
Nothing wrong with using VHS or Beta HiFi for high quality recordings, only issue is the head chatter which is more pronounced with VHS due to the depth multiplexing they use.