Seriously? VHS is making a comeback?

[Paul MacLean]

Came across some Youtube videos spotlighting a new fad in home video viewing -- the resurgence of VHS tapes...



Ordinarily, I'd would have chalked this up to a niche of young people who are too young to remember how bad that format was. But 20th Century Studios actually sent a VHS tape to Comic Con to screen in promotion of Alien Romulus...



And people in the the comments section are saying ludicrous things like "I'd watch this movie on VHS!" and "Theres something about old school aesthetic that makes movies have more feeling, wether its horror, action or thriller, its more appealing for some reason."

Personally, I can hardly tell what I'm looking at in that promo.

What's next? Record companies going back to wax cylinders?

[Monterey Jack]

Do I have nostalgia for renting movies from a video stores? Yes. Would I want to go back to the days of fuzzy pan & scan videotapes with bad tracking? Good GOD, no.

[Paul MacLean]

Do I have nostalgia for renting movies from a video stores? Yes? Would I want to go back to the days of fuzzy pan & scan videotapes with bad tracking? Good GOD, no.

Going to the video store had a sense of occasion -- not quite like going to the cinema, where you were going to see a specific picture, but different; there was a sense of fun in deciding what to watch, or taking a chance on another movie when the one you wanted to rent was already out.

But I honestly think some people regard the aesthetic of 80s movies -- the way they were shot on celluloid, with more complex lighting and with practical effects (and decent scores!) as somehow part and parcel with the home video format of the era.

[Monterey Jack]

But I honestly think some people regard the aesthetic of 80s movies -- the way they were shot on celluloid, with more complex lighting and with practical effects (and decent scores!) as somehow part and parcel with the home video format of the era.

The thing is, there were "wait to watch it at home" people even in the early days of VHS, but you knew you'd be getting a much worse visual and audio presentation by doing so. It's not like today, when everyone has a 75'' 4K HD widescreen set and a set of surround speakers/headphones. Just getting a laserdisc player in 1996 was such a game-changer for me, because - while the resolution wasn't that much of a step up from VHS - you could at least watch movies properly letterboxed, and with much better sound.

[AndyDursin]

Resolution was MUCH higher on laserdisc than VHS -- nearly 2X as much.

Laserdisc has a horizontal resolution of 425 television lines (TVL) for NTSC and 440 TVL for PAL discs, while VHS featured only 240 TVL with NTSC

[Paul MacLean]

Resolution was MUCH higher on laserdisc than VHS -- nearly 2X as much.

Laserdisc has a horizontal resolution of 425 television lines (TVL) for NTSC and 440 TVL for PAL discs, while VHS featured only 240 TVL with NTSC

When i first visited the UK, I noticed a significant difference in PAL's resolution over that of NTSC. Moreover, none of the "tellys" had a tint knob -- there was no reason for it because the color was always accurately reproduced. There was also more color gradation in PAL than there was in NTSC as well. My best analogy would be the difference between an old computer monitor set to a range of 256 colors vs. one set to thousands.

I felt so ripped-off living in NTSC America! On the other hand anything shot on film (whether shown on air or released on home video) was time compressed over there!

[Eric Paddon]

PAL speedup is why I despised that format.

I too remember fondly the days of going to video stores to browse for something to rent, especially if it was an independently operated one where you had a much wider choice of selections in contrast to Blockbuster (though even Blockbuster at its peak could be fun to go to). But I prefer the days now of being able to get quality Blu-Ray end products and being able to buy them for not too much above the price of what it used to cost to rent them. And I certainly would never ever want to see a VHS movie again!

[TaranofPrydain]

I still have a VHS player, even if I don't use it much anymore, although I still have some tapes (some of which were films or TV offerings never put on DVD). I will note that even though tapes with very rare exceptions were always in the irritating pan-and-scan format, the picture quality on later tapes (the second half of the 90s to their fade out in 2006) was significantly better than that seen on tapes from the 80s.



I assume that this reemergence is due not so much to what the tapes have on them (given that you can find most of them in some other type of format), but rather it is out of the era what they stood for. People miss the feeling of being around others with the same interests or passions, the relative stability of the 80s and 90s as opposed to this gloomy current period of time, and films with more personality and originality that don't pander so much so obviously. And also, some of those who were children in the 80s and 90s have some nostalgic yearnings for them.