Re:Martin Scorsese's secret life as an obsessive VHS archivist
by airtag on Tuesday March 26, 2024 @08:29AM
(#39827010)
VHS is indeed horribble, if watched on today's TVs and wasn't that great back then. European PAL was a bit better than NTSC. And, while it's full of noise, it doesn't have the smear of digital noise reduction.
Scorsese grew up with this TV resolution and I'm sure he would have preferred high quality for things we cared about, but for day-to-day use, having VHS was fine. (If he really cared, he could have gotten a betamax recorder or a super-VHS recorder to record off the TV)
I'm pretty sure that he'll stream better copies - but for those not available, having a noisy VHS is great. And with streaming/digital "sales" you never know which films you're going to lose next...
Re:Martin Scorsese's secret life as an obsessive VHS archivist
by rchaud on Tuesday March 26, 2024 @10:59AM
(#39828771)
VHS resolution is 330p, and Youtube still has millions of videos that top out at 360p but still look fine for consumption purposes.
Re:Martin Scorsese's secret life as an obsessive VHS archivist
by porbelm on Tuesday March 26, 2024 @01:17PM
(#39830369)
It's not 330p as 330 is the HORIZONTAL resolution, not the vertical. Vertical is still the same as NTSC (525 lines) or PAL (625 lines) so you'd technically have "480p" (NTSC) or "576p" (PAL) visible, with half the horizontal resolution. You can't describe these old video formats in the newer NNNp or NNNi terminology.
He could have the best VHS records out there and the best tapes, but the source material being recorded would be painfully limited, as would the recordings.
I would have expected Scorsese to have requested, threatened, manipulated, bribed, and so on to obtain film reels.
This would not be possible for a lot of the content but surely for quite a few.
He could do the same for original VHS cassettes with the movies (like you would find in a rental store. Just unwatched ones.
Also that he would have people to buy DVD version when (if) they came out. Still if a DVD version was released that would indicate that the source film was available and Scorsese could have a copy of that instead.