VHS
I loved VHS. It proved very satisfying to stick a rectangular black piece of plastic and metal into a larger rectangular box to cause a magical reaction resulting in pictures on an even larger more cubical box referred to as a television.
Now part of ancient history, video tapes are hardly seen and are hardly sold. Everything is about DVDs, but personally I think VHS still has its merits.
DVDs definitely have better quality. DVDs are also a lot more shiny and pretty, but really, when it comes to practicality, VHS are much more easy to fast forward, rewind, and play.
You can’t scene skip and there aren’t any special features with the VHS, but when I want to watch a movie, I want the movie part. I have almost never gone to any special feature sections (the only cases are when I was extremely bored or too tired to turn off the DVD player).
Sometimes people overdo it — they put too much stuff into one thing. Yeah, in papers and stuff things look a lot more impressive if you have a billion pages, but that’s just it. Looks.
When I research something, I search for short articles — the ones that I will actually be able to read. I search for things that will actually help me. I search for the things that have substance, not the ones that only look pretty.
VHS is short and sweet. It’s not too little and not too much. Just right.
— Alan Liang
Comments
Alan! So true! When DVDs first came out, I promised myself I would not get them just because I wanted to stick with my trusty VHS. But now, I have gone to the dark side…the side of the DVD, because I feel like I cannot find VHS almost anywhere.
Posted by: Dana | May 3, 2007 8:07 AM
Dude, you can fast-forward and rewind just as easily with dvds. Plus you can do it with different speeds.
Posted by: Kumars Salehi | May 3, 2007 8:31 AM
In case anyone’s interested, That’s Rentertainment is very interested in getting rid of what remains of their VHS collection (with a few exceptions, mostly rare foreign titles) - as of yesterday, they had about 1000 titles up for grabs, completely free. They just want them out of the store. Unfortunately, when I went to look, there was not one title that I would have been interested in, but others’ tastes may find something they like. One thing; they seemed to have a lot of anime, but I didn’t look closely at any of it.
Posted by: Frere Jean | May 3, 2007 10:11 AM
Would you still prefer VHS when high-definition DVDs hit the mainstream?
Posted by: Jason He | May 3, 2007 12:57 PM
Kumars - I think it’s more difficult on DVD players. When you hit rewind or fastforward there is some lag time and sometimes it skips too far ahead. Maybe it’s just my crap dvd player.
Mr. Garvey - ANIME?! Dang, I missed out.
Jason - Depends if I get a good HDTV. If not, I’d still take VHS.
Posted by: Alan Liang | May 3, 2007 1:06 PM
I like VHS because they dont get scratches as easily, like the ones you rent from te library that skip, etc. DVDs’ scene selections are really great, though.
Posted by: Isaure | May 3, 2007 6:29 PM