There is one subject regards video capture and conversion that appears to divide the user depending upon which direction the subject is looked at; that is VHS or DVD-/+R; or rather the reliability and longevity of VHS compared with DVD-/+R. The two camps are: The Collector; those who want to keep, and The Restorer; those who want to improve and better the picture quality (I fall into both camps). Of course, the actual battle is academic as there are now more diverse ways to collect recordings but, between the two camps, the following is what I have picked up from different corners:

• VHS longevity has, in many cases, proved itself over time. There are many people who have VHS tapes that are over twenty to thirty years old that still play perfectly (myself included). It has to be noted that not all tapes survive as this depends on the quality of the media, but the higher proportion do seem to have kept well.
• If the the tape gets caught in the mechanism of the VCR, once carefully untangled, the tape is still playable. Although the picture quality of the crumpled segment of the tape will be full of drop-outs or make the picture roll (see below), the rest of the tape will be playable. Damage can also occur along an edge of a tape; this will cause terrible picture distortion, but it will still play. Other faults can be eradicated if one has the right equipment (See the VHS Capture Comparison page).
• If you wish to lend a VHS tape to someone there won't be any compatibility issue (provided they still have a VCR); unlike some DVD players where they will play DVD-Rs but won't play DVD+Rs.
• The detail that VHS can capture can, given the right source, have more detail on fast moving scenes. DVD pictures can become blocky if the scene is fast moving but this won't happen with a VHS picture.
• If you wanted to keep a recording you would just have to snap off the tab, on the tape's spine, so that there was no chance of accidentally recording over it.
• The length of a VHS tape can be up to four hours without major loss of picture quality (i.e. not in long play mode). DVD-/+R can only manage about two and a half hours at the most.
• The BBC's commercial DVD release of The Inivisible Enemy had an authouring fault at the end of episode three. Oddly it would re-arrange the two final scenes. On VHS this would always play in the correct order; unless someone physically went and re-edited the story's master tape!

• Although VHS has served us for a very long time, before a viable alternative came along, it has to be said that many now realise that the picture quality wasn't as good as it could have been. Yes, there were better versions (S-VHS) but they came in at the end just before DVDs became popular and never caught on; basic VHS converts a television picture into a chroma bled mess.
• VHS is quite fragile; the tape can get caught in the mechanism of the VCR and cause picture distortions or drop-outs (see The Drop-Out section below). Drop-outs can also appear for no reason or because of dirt that may get into the VHS cassette. A drop out can also cause the soundtrack to buzz at the same moment it appears; in one particular bad case a tape I owned had large drop-outs every five seconds which took the soundtrack with it.
• If copies are made of a tape, the second generation copy will deteriorate and each subsequent copy from a copy will get worse and worse.
• Tapes played often will deteriorate.
• Copies of tapes have to be done in real time i.e. two hours of video will take two hours to copy.
• Fast forwarding is needed to find, say, an episode or part of a film and at the end of the tape it has to be rewound.
• There can be issues when a tape is played on a VCR that it wasn't recorded from. For example, if the tracking on one recorder can't match the tracking of the tape the sound and/or picture can be poor.
• This must have happened to every VCR user: because there was no need to delete the contents of a VHS tape before it could be re-used, unlike DVD-/+RW, it was all too easy to accidentally record over something that was meant to be kept (and the user had forgotten to snap of the tab!) or watched.
• If a home Restorer is converting VHS to DVD they will make attempts to deal with issues like these but will not, under current technology, be able to convert VHS sourced material into DVD quality.

Being quite thin, the actual tape is very easy to damage: left is a screen capture from of my most treasured VHS, the BBC's 1984 release of Shoestring.

On one playback the tape got caught in the VCR's mechanism but, thankfully, during the credits and not during the episodes. The rolling white line (which rolls from the top of the picture down to the bottom then repeats) only appear on the end credits of the episode.

This second picture, from the same VHS, shows the drop-out (circled in red). A drop out appearance once every so often isn't too much of a problem but, as in this tape, the drop out appears repeatedly along a horizontal line throughout the last half of the episode. Drop-outs can appear as spots, blobs, lines, a whole frame or several frames. This is causes by the magnetic layer of the tape coming away from the tape itself either by age or (as above) tape damage.

• Off-air captures are, if the settings are correct, very close to the original broadcast. There may be some degradation in fast moving scenes but over-all the picture quality is far superior than VHS.
• Blank DVD media is very cheap.
• DVD-/+R has made it easier to present exact frame edited films and the menus can go directly to the required episode or scene immediately. At the end of the DVD there is no rewinding needed.
• Copies of a DVD-/+R are exactly the same as the original and subsequent copies will be also. They are usually very quick to do i.e. it won't take an hour to copy an hours worth of video.
• Copies of DVD-/+R can be done in minutes and the source file can be ripped back to one's computer, very quickly, for re-editing or re-authoring.
• The storage space needed for a DVD is much less than for a VHS tape.
• DVD-/+R gives the Restorer, when converting VHS to DVD, the chance to improve upon the VHS picture; they will never achieve DVD quality from a VHS source but will be able to get a better end product than what VHS alone can give.

• DVD-/+Rs have not been around long enough to proove that they have the longevity needed for archiving. There are many stories of totally unplayable discs and after only a few years storeage; I have read many comments on the net about fears that valuable home captures should not be totally trusted to DVD media.
• Although the capture is near to source it isn't perfect by any means; DVDs still compress the picture and certain aspects will suffer as a result. Mpeg, as with digital television, can sacrifice detail. In some instances fast moving scenes will cause a blockyness where the bitrate can't keep up with the action.
• If a DVD breaks (snaps, cracks) the whole DVD is lost forever. There maybe some professional companies that could be able to restore some of the data, but it probably would be a very expensive folly.
• It has become apparent that there are only a few DVD manufacturers that are trustworthy. Therefore, one has to be careful as to which media to buy. Certain makes are trustworthy, but it takes a bit of trial and error to find out which DVDs work with ones own particular DVD Recorders or PC DVD Burners.
• Discs burned on some DVD Recorders won't play properly on others and there can be compatibility problems; if you lend someone a DVD-R it may turn out that their DVD player can only play DVD+R.
• The home collector is loathe to trust all their collection to DVD-/+R; in many cases they will convert to DVD-/+R but keep the original VHS just in case. That'll be me again!
• This is more to do with commercial DVDs but this is something that happens a lot: I order the vast majority of commercial DVDs on-line. There are the occasions that the disc detaches itself from the DVD box's spindle and said disc has been rattling around in its packaging on its journey through the Post Office system.
• Some DVD players, mine included, have a problem with the layer change on DVD-9s. There is a pause in the playback; some DVD manufacturers do try and put a layer change in a part of the playback that might hide things (e.g. between episodes) but BBC/2 Entertain don't appear to.

In 1975 my Mother bought me, for my tenth birthday, my first cassette tape recorder; one of those piano looking type ones with the single speaker and the plug in microphone. It was second hand and it was the best thing that I had ever been bought. What my Mother also did was to buy some cheap cassette tapes from a market stall. She used these tapes to record some music and while playing the tape back watched helplessly as this cheap tape wound itself around the cassette recorder's mechanism, crunching as it went. I don't think we ever got it all out.

The lesson learned from this episode is never ever trust cheap media of any sort; you do get what you pay for: whether cassette, VHS, CD-R or DVD-/+R, cheap media is to be avoided (and this includes the cheaper Supermarket brands); especially if what you are recording is for keeping.

So sticking to the main brand names, I like VHS - because it is now an out of date format there is some romance about it: its 'old fashion-ness' (if that is a real word). It is a bit like playing an old LP; carefully removing the black vinyl disc from packaging where the sleeve notes weren't microscopic and covers had the space to be more imaginative.

I am also very grateful to VHS media that allowed me to see vintage television classics during the mid-eighties through to the late-nineties. I was only too pleased to be able to see old Doctor Who, Quatermass, Doomwatch etc, that it didn't matter (or I didn't notice) the picture quality of the VHS tapes that these were released on. For years I used a Panasonic VCR (purchased in 1993) and a 25" Sony Trinitron (purchased 1992) and didn't see a problem. In fact, I didn't notice the picture quality until 2002 when I bought a new VCR and a Loewe 32" widescreen television; suddenly VHS was very grainy. Newer technology showing up all the imperfections? Quite possibly...

Nearly all of my VHS tapes have been converted to DVD-R now but I am very unlikely to get rid of those off-air tapes for a while yet. As better software/hardware develops or my knowledge of video improves there is always a chance that I can create better conversions at a later date. This has already happened once: I had converted the whole series of Rockliffe's Babies (my all time favourite Police series) to VideoCD when I first dabbled in video conversion. I have converted the series again but this time to DVD-R with better equipment and software which has produced much better results.

Also if I want to watch any of these episodes it is better to view the converted DVD-/+R rather than risk the tape being damaged. After all, how long will it be before the technology exists so that the home user can start to convert old VHS tapes to DVD quality?

So, the Restorer in me wants to produce a DVD picture that is the best quality picture that I can manage, but the Collector will always keep the original tapes just in case the stories, about DVD-/+R not lasting very long, are true.

However, my off-air capturing has moved on: the picture quality of DVD-/+R is so much better and this makes the decision for me; all new off-air captures are made on my DVD Recorder or PC and the space I need, to store my DVD-Rs, is a fraction of what I would need if it were still all VHS.

I do have a lot of affection for VHS but I have moved on to a newer format; but that doesn't mean I will abandon VHS totally.

Colebox's Telly And Video Stuff
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