dvd vs. vhs - are there some films that just look better on video?

i think the terminator looks heaps better on crappy vhs. something about my dvd of it with the sound all nicely cleaned up and the print all clear doesnt look quite right. video might crop the shots but for crummy looking films that were never meant to be about perfect clarity, i think video is/was kinda perfect. saying that, my vcr is kaput and i need a new one. but im still considering on buying eraserhead on video (cheaper too). anyway, wont be long til dvds become the new landfill medium of choice and we just start buying entire film collections on one gigantic hard drive.

anyway, wont be long til dvds become the new landfill medium of choice and we just start buying entire film collections on one gigantic hard drive.

― titchy (titchyschneiderMk2), Wednesday, May 26, 2010 1:01 PM (1 minute ago)

uhhhhh.... lol @ "buying"

all 80's horror and exploitation films in general look better on video. just like all 80's rap and metal sounds better on tape.

I don't find The Exorcist scary at all on DVD or TV; shitty 3rd gen bootleg VHS, however, shit me up no end.

its like the difference between watching some terrible t.v. horror movie on hdtv or on fuzzy rabbit ears antenna t.v. the hdtv makes everything look so real that its completely unreal. the fuzzy t.v. makes you think that there is someone upstairs and THEY ARE GONNA KILL YOU.

could be nostalgia on my part though.

when i was 12 all the music i listened to was stuff i recorded off the radio by putting my radio shack tape recorder up to the speaker of my stereo and hitting record. sounded awesome.

Aye; I think music got that way, and TV / film got that way, is so awesome because you're straining harder and harder to get closer into it, to suck more detail out of it, aware that you're not experiencing everything available. And then you get it properly defined and realise it's fucking bobbins because there was no extra detail of any significance and the extra definition of a superior format can never trump the extra definition of superior imaginations.

xpost

HD is awful. makes everything somehow look cheaper.

its like a cheap format trying to be classy/superior.

this thread has made my mind up. eraserhead is getting bought on vhs.

u havent seen good HD

maybe. but i hate 'perfect' clarity on pretty much anything. whether its photos, music, or movies.

eraserhead and elephant man transition to DVD surprisingly better than Dune.

i wanted to start a thread asking the people 20-ish and under if they ever get overwhelmed by the amount of stuff there is out there that they can consume. is it all too much. when i was a kid i would go to the library and read about movies for YEARS before i ever actually got to see them. i would think about these movies and look at every picture i could find in books. it might be 20 years in some cases until i found a copy to watch.

um, a bit off-topic.

sounds like a pretty good new thread to me

(really! that might've come off as snark, but definitely not my intention)

thats a good thread idea. im still trying to see another girl another planet (the film, nothing to do with the only ones) after reading about it for a while.

im not early 20s but even i find it all a bit overwhelming (and also an easy way to make me pessimistic about modern media).

surprised nobody said Videodrome

also, I've never seen Vampire's Kiss on DVD, but I can imagine something being lost in the process...

oh - and the original Harrison Ford voice-over version of Bladerunner.

when i was a kid i would go to the library and read about movies for YEARS before i ever actually got to see them. i would think about these movies and look at every picture i could find in books. it might be 20 years in some cases until i found a copy to watch.

think I asked about aguirre wrath of god at every video store I walked into for about 15 years after siskel & ebert showed some clips

when i was a kid i would go to the library and read about movies for YEARS before i ever actually got to see them. i would think about these movies and look at every picture i could find in books. it might be 20 years in some cases until i found a copy to watch.

God, yes. That's how it was when Renoir and Bunuel movies weren't even available on VHS.

when i was a kid i would go to the library and read about movies for YEARS before i ever actually got to see them. i would think about these movies and look at every picture i could find in books.

this happened with records too - most people I know say they don't miss that and get all smarmy ("you could always not get it even though you know you can") but the existence of things you want but can't get yet was a fun part of the whole scene back when

Yeah, I definitely feel that, scott. Start the thread!

The point of this thread is a point I tried to make in the Blu-Ray ILX thread and got shot down over. I definitely feel like degradation (i.e. VHS-quality movies) is a valid aesthetic preference, particularly insofar as people's direct subjective experiences with art are concerned. If your experience is watching a VHS tape of Robocop complete with HBO bumpers, and which fuzzily transitions into a taped-over episode of Cagney and Lacy, the DVD is probably never going to feel quite right to you.

David Lynch on why he shot Inland Empire on crude (well lol, $1500 prosumer Sony DSR PD150) DV cam that was intentionally non-HD:

“We all love film: so much, it’s so beautiful. And I really respect [cinematographers] for getting better and better and better images. But what it comes down to is to getting the image – whatever it is – that is true to that idea.”

red desert looked better on VHS than it did on DVD, tho I only ever saw the crappy fox lorber DVD

those saturated reds and greens were fantastic on tape

think we maybe rehearsed some of scott's thread before on ILM on an old thread ned started about slowing down consumption

HD is incredible tho

2001 and the searchers in HD are o_O

the big box will always rule in my heart

http://www.critcononline.com/images/mutant%20hunt%20vhs%20front2.jpg

oops.

have an old beastmaster big box here at the store and i kinda hope nobody buys it. i like having it on display.

i do really well selling vhs tapes! i was surprised after i opened my store. i kept having to go out in search of more. cassette tapes too. i sell a ton.

the answer to the op is no

max is otm

i can remember wanting to see stuff and it being basically impossible, and fuck that

i used to travel 'cross country to see films... which was kind of fun but in retrospect, taking into account other shit (like how much it must have cost me), kind of stupid

and n e ways there is still loads of shit out there u can't see

i recently watched twin peaks on vhs, i guess the wow and flutter of the tape may have added to the creepiness, like the way the soundtrack would randomly start phasing somehow, and some of the night scenes were literally pitch black due to low resolution, but i think i'd have enjoyed it just as much if not more in hd or at least on regular dvd -- i wanted to see as much of this world as possible

after I found howls for de sade on soulseek I figured all bets were off

ITS ALL OUT THERE

xp

will admit A LOT is out there

trying 2 find straub-huillet's 'history lessons' tho

or early chris marker

If you're fine watching it on the computer, you can download History Lessons from surrealmoviez.info

maybe. but i hate 'perfect' clarity on pretty much anything. whether its photos, music, or movies.

― titchy (titchyschneiderMk2), Wednesday, May 26, 2010 4:23 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark

then the problem is the movie and how it was photographed, not the format.

i still have the vhs copies i made of twin peaks first season and the pilot movie. some commercials on them and abc promos.

love those old tv tapes

really spark the weirdest, most immediate nostalgia

kind of horrible in a way tbh

David Lynch on why he shot Inland Empire on crude (well lol, $1500 prosumer Sony DSR PD150) DV cam that was intentionally non-HD:

“We all love film: so much, it’s so beautiful. And I really respect [cinematographers] for getting better and better and better images. But what it comes down to is to getting the image – whatever it is – that is true to that idea.”

― _▂▅▇█▓▒░◕‿‿◕░▒▓█▇▅▂_ (Steve Shasta), Wednesday, May 26, 2010 5:18 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this doesnt really have anything to do w/ dvd vs. vhs

i wanted to start a thread asking the people 20-ish and under if they ever get overwhelmed by the amount of stuff there is out there that they can consume. is it all too much. when i was a kid i would go to the library and read about movies for YEARS before i ever actually got to see them. i would think about these movies and look at every picture i could find in books. it might be 20 years in some cases until i found a copy to watch.

um, a bit off-topic.

― scott seward, Wednesday, May 26, 2010 8:25 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

same here.

(also off topic re dvd/vhs)

music: spent hours looking through my dad's music books reading about elvis and other rock 'n' roll artists before ever hearing the songs. i 'knew' therefore that 'hound dog'/'don't be cruel' was this massive selling killer double a-side with 'hound dog' a seminal performance. all before i'd heard them. i even made up versions of what 'hound dog' sounded like while i was playing football on my own in the garden... then on my 11th birthday my dad gave me a cassette of a recording he'd made of a friend's copy of elvis 40 greatest hits (the pink vinyl issue in the uk), minus three tracks that skipped too much. he souped up the inlay card with a great elvis picture and wrote out all the tracks with their tape counter starting positions. that's when i got to hear 'hound dog' for the first time, on my new portable single speaker cassette player. life took off for me.

i was kind of disappointed that 'dont' be cruel' wasn't as brutal and hard-sounding as 'hound dog' but i've had 30 years to get over the disappointment!

anyway, ramble over, it's after 5am and i woke early. great thread idea, scott, go for it.

think we maybe rehearsed some of scott's thread before on ILM on an old thread ned started about slowing down consumption

We might well have done but damned if I can remember what it was even called...

There's probably hundreds of VHS tapes scattered around my house. Most of them suffer from degradation by decades of age and bad storage. Honestly, I don't miss the format one bit. The only ones I have nostalgia for are the copies I made myself of other videos and stuff recorded off TV. C'mon, the move to DVD (and subsequent to digital files that never degrade) was a wonderful godsend. Just on easier physical storage, let alone longer running times, extra features and superior picture and sound.

nostalgia will out

fuck vhs

i hated that format so much

the sound was so awful

the picture

the pan and scan

i really hated watching movies at home pre-dvd

I actually re-hooked up my VHS player a few months back to watch my old Rage recordings (music show on TV here that has guest musicians picking the tracks each week). I watched 3 hours of slightly off-sounding fuzzy They Might Be Giants songs and selected tunes by them, was awesome.

But otoh, I never ever bought movies on VHS. It seemed pointless, and by my recall it was expensive too!

On DVD I buy movies and TV shows by the ton.

can't believe you own that many rage against the machine tapes

fuck vhs

i hated that format so much

the sound was so awful

the picture

the pan and scan

i really hated watching movies at home pre-dvd

― NUDE. MAYNE. (s1ocki), Thursday, May 27, 2010 12:45 AM

^^

and thats not even close to a full list of why vhs sux

if scott doesn't start that thread i will b/c it's something i'm super interested in too

feel just overwhelmed w/ the amount of metal records i have stacking up, and that's before we get to other genres, books, articles, etc.

1 thing i do miss abou vhs is that taping of tv, you could kinda do your own rough edits and segues etc. whereas taping onto dvdrs, you have to basically let it finish as the stupid timer recorder decides. you cant 'rewind' it to the end point and cut it off. or at least i never figured out how to on mine. (ill get a hard disk recorder one day).

*off tv

dvd vs. vhs - are there some films that just look better on video?

As I wrote there: "(Hope it's not a big deal that I just went ahead and started this thread, but ppl, myself included, are really interested in this topic and I wanted to get the discussion off the ground.)"

oops: Too Much to Consume, Too Little Time

i posted this in the korine thread on ILF but meant to post it here (sorry, multi-tabbing confusion).

just saw this on the scala forever facebook group (for those of you in london)-
http://stilladvance.wordpress.com/2011/10/21/harmony-korine-vhs-double-bill-at-the-shackewell-arms-061111/

gummo and trash humpers double-screening (from video rather than dvd!). im prob gonna go just cos i still havent seen trash humpers, but have this weird urge to. and well, id rather see it with other people than at home.

there really was an extra layer of...something in watching videodrome on vhs because you were watching it on the medium it was having fun with. obviously that's pretty specific to thatvfilm though. i can't think of a horror movie that's played with dvd or digital formats in the same way, though i'm sure someone will come along to tell me i'm wrong.

it's funny how, for all lynch's frothing about people watching movies on their phones/computers, inland empire is one of the few films that seems RIGHT to me, both in the way its shot and the quality, with decent headphones and a laptop a foot or so from your face.

Paranormal Activity on my laptop was the perfect experience.....way more frightening than it was in a theatre

xp

isn't part of the joke of the first Ringu based on watching iffy unlabeled video tapes?

agree Videodrome does it earlier and better tho

Don't know about looking better, but I'm sure we could all name lots of '80s films that feel more right on VHS. I'd start with Fast Times at Ridgemont High. There, it's the right match of moment to medium. Which is not to say that VHSs aren't as clunky as 8-tracks.

the fuzzy, quavery look of taped TV shows is so classic

i wanted to start a thread asking the people 20-ish and under if they ever get overwhelmed by the amount of stuff there is out there that they can consume. is it all too much. when i was a kid i would go to the library and read about movies for YEARS before i ever actually got to see them. i would think about these movies and look at every picture i could find in books. it might be 20 years in some cases until i found a copy to watch.

i don't think i'd say i'm 'nostalgic' for this exactly but it is funny to remember a time when things were so hard to see. i must've seen like a million stills from the silent version of 'the lost world' before i actually got to see it.

so so difficult to watch, say, Bunuel films in the early nineties. My college library owned VHS copies of movies first recorded on reel to reel. The sound quality was at best, er, uneven. Of course it swathed a couple of those in mystery. However, B-movies like Susana benefited from the horrible transfer; it looked exactly as it did at the time of release.

subtitles are easier to read on DVD, especially on B&W movies

I first watched Ringu on a bootleg VHS a festival programmer gave me and it was a stormy night and all the lights were off and then my phone rang and I had an asthma attack

i love DVD on a big TV at home, it's better than any arthouse cinema especially sound wise.