Funny old "Facts" about DVD VS VHS
07-03-08, 07:59 AM
#1
Funny old "Facts" about DVD VS VHS
The truth is that there have been a plethora of unsubstantiated myths and outright lies spread by the DVD industry in order to dupe people into buying their products. Some of these untruths are slight exaggerations, but others are knee-slapping howlers. Let's take a look at some of the more extravagant ones and debunk them point-by-point:
DVD picture quality is better
This is largely a smokescreen. While it's true that DVD theoretically has double the vertical resolution of VHS, this fact has nothing to do with how the picture is presented. The vertical resolution of your television set is fixed by your local standard (NTSC in the United States and PAL in Europe.) The fact of the matter is that DVD could *quadruple* the vertical resolution of VHS and there would be no visual gain from it! NTSC has a resolution of 648 x 486. PAL is slightly higher at 720 x 486. You can increase output resolution all you want, but as soon as you surpass the resolution of the display standard, it no longer matters.
Evidence about the alleged superiority of DVD picture versus VHS is largely anecdotal and suspicious, given the fact that it mostly originates from the DVD manufacturers themselves. In fact, the actual peer-reviewed evidence tends to point the other direction. In a recent study by Brown University, one hundred students were shown a clip of the movie "Big Momma's House" on VHS and then were shown the same clip on DVD. The students were not told which clip was which format. They were then asked which of the two clips had better video quality, or if they were about the same. Nearly two-thirds of the students (63%) thought that there was no difference. Of the remaining students, 19% thought that the VHS tape looked better! In other words, the students with a preference (narrowly) favored the image quality of the "inferior" VHS clip!
DVD sound quality is better
This might even be a bigger whopper than the picture quality myths. In the movie "The Rock", a character asks Nicholas Cage why he just spent $500 on an old Beatles LP record. The reply? "Two reasons. Number one, I'm a Beatle maniac. And number two, these sound better."
Cage could not be more correct. Quite frankly, the digital sound that is employed by DVDs and satellite television is dreadful, and the same is largely true of compact discs. They lack the analog warmth that is present in VHS performances and LPs. When analog is recorded and mastered, the sound undergoes slight alterations from the original intonation. Usually, this is a pleasing effect; it emphasizes the presence of the low end while giving a "sheen" to the upper end of the overall recording. It makes music and dialogue sound real .. as opposed to the cold, mechanical sound of a digital soundtrack. For reproducing sound, analog is the only way to go. Sound waves themselves are analog! Reducing them to a series of zeroes and ones will not make them sound any better.
It gets worse, though. Not only is DVD sound digital, it is compressed digital. Anybody who has ever heard the sound quality of an MP3 file when compared to its original source can tell you that digital compression makes already-bad audio sound even worse. Of course, if the DVD video is compressed, why should the zealots care if the audio is compressed?
Finally, it's worth mentioning that all of these high-end sound formats such as "Dolby Digital 5.1" and "DTS" are pure junk. Scientists have demonstrated that the human brain is not capable of separating out more than four simultaneous sound channels at once. Coincidentally, four channels is what you get with the tried-and-true Dolby Surround technology (an analog technlogy that is available on VHS tapes.) Digital formats that claim to offer five, six, or even seven channels might sound tempting, but remember that your brain cannot process this much information anyway, so the point is moot! (And beyond that, it's all compressed digital sound, so it's garbage to begin with.)
DVD preserves better than VHS tapes
Again, this is mostly a lie. Any parent who has young children and a collection of Disney VHS movies knows that those things can be watched a dozen times of day for three years straight without showing any appreciable wear. Yes, the digital nature of DVD means that the encoded bits will never "wear out", but VHS movies rarely "wear out", either.
In fact, movie damage is a far greater concern with DVD than it is with VHS tapes. A DVD is the same physical size as a compact disc, but a double-layer DVD can fit up to fourteen times the amount of data that a CD can hold. Those of you with CD players will certainly be familiar with the effect that scratches can have on your music. Even the smallest scratch can make your CD skip and generate annoying popping noises during playback. Well, how do you think that same scratch will affect a DVD .. a piece of media that has fourteen times the amount of information on it? A single tiny scratch will destroy a DVD forever. There's a lot of data on a DVD, but the downside is that the bits must be stored so close together that any imperfection at all will ruin the entire movie. When you take a DVD out of its case and load it into your player, the only way you're going to give that movie a fighting chance to last more than a month or two is to treat it as a brain surgeon treats a scalpel during a tricky operation. There is no reason that home theater has to be this inconvenient and clumsy.
VHS tapes, on the other hand, are virtually impossible to destroy. If a part of the tape gets dirty or crinkeled, you may have to put up with a few lines of static for a few seconds, but that's it. Unlike a DVD, it is not possible to easily destroy an entire movie, since doing so would require you to destroy an extended length of magnetic tape. Even in severe cases where defective players "eat" the video tape, all that one needs to do is wind the tape back up into the cartridge. Compared to their fragile digital brothers, VHS tapes are invincible.
DVD has lots of "special features"
So? You can put "special features" on a VHS tape, too .. they're just not as "convenient" to get at. This really isn't the point, however. The point is that the vast majority of "special features" that are placed on DVDs are 100% crap. They are garbage that some DVD manufacturer threw together at the last minute in order to try to trick you into buying the disc. You'll watch them once, say "Well, that was worthless", and you'll never watch them again.
Case in point: I was at a friend's house the other night watching the DVD version of the movie "Se7en", and he switched over to the "audio commentary" track. After about five minutes of listening to Morgan Freeman pontificate about how superior Broadway theater is, I was ready to stab both of my eyes out with a wooden fork. It was excruciating. We watched the rest of the "special features", and with very few exceptions, they were all embarassingly bad. I felt genuinely sorry for the person who had put this DVD together.
The fact of the matter is that VHS movies have higher-quality special features because there is less room for them, and they must be placed at strategic points (usually, at the beginning of the tape.) This means that VHS movie designers are forced to pick the best features .. the cream of the crop, if you will .. and leave the rest of them behind. When DVD zealots brag about having "more features", they might as well be bragging about having "more crap." Any special feature that is worth anything is going to also be included on the VHS version of the movie. The added extras on the DVD are discarded table scraps.
Those are the highlights. The truth is that for all practical purposes, VHS is a better all-around home theater format than DVD. There are many little things that make VHS a better choice; for one, you don't have to put up with the annoying pause when a DVD player switches between layers on the disc. Additionally, linear searches forward and back are much smoother than they are on a DVD player .. even the most brainwashed DVD junkies admit that searching DVDs is a bit choppy.
The dirty little secret that the DVD industry doesn't want you to hear is that you can get roughly the same picture and sound quality out of a two-head Technics VCR for $39 at Wal-Mart as you can out of a "high-end" $5,000 Harmon Kardon DVD player ordered from some foo-foo electronics "boutique." When your friends with DVD players smile at you condescendingly and tell you that you'll probably buy a DVD player soon, you can smile right back at them and point them at this article. Tell them that they are corporate shills who are living a hateful lie.
http://www.adequacy.org/stories/2001...12921.289.html
It is a slightly long read, but it is pretty funny what was originaly thought about DVD.
DVD picture quality is better
This is largely a smokescreen. While it's true that DVD theoretically has double the vertical resolution of VHS, this fact has nothing to do with how the picture is presented. The vertical resolution of your television set is fixed by your local standard (NTSC in the United States and PAL in Europe.) The fact of the matter is that DVD could *quadruple* the vertical resolution of VHS and there would be no visual gain from it! NTSC has a resolution of 648 x 486. PAL is slightly higher at 720 x 486. You can increase output resolution all you want, but as soon as you surpass the resolution of the display standard, it no longer matters.
Evidence about the alleged superiority of DVD picture versus VHS is largely anecdotal and suspicious, given the fact that it mostly originates from the DVD manufacturers themselves. In fact, the actual peer-reviewed evidence tends to point the other direction. In a recent study by Brown University, one hundred students were shown a clip of the movie "Big Momma's House" on VHS and then were shown the same clip on DVD. The students were not told which clip was which format. They were then asked which of the two clips had better video quality, or if they were about the same. Nearly two-thirds of the students (63%) thought that there was no difference. Of the remaining students, 19% thought that the VHS tape looked better! In other words, the students with a preference (narrowly) favored the image quality of the "inferior" VHS clip!
DVD sound quality is better
This might even be a bigger whopper than the picture quality myths. In the movie "The Rock", a character asks Nicholas Cage why he just spent $500 on an old Beatles LP record. The reply? "Two reasons. Number one, I'm a Beatle maniac. And number two, these sound better."
Cage could not be more correct. Quite frankly, the digital sound that is employed by DVDs and satellite television is dreadful, and the same is largely true of compact discs. They lack the analog warmth that is present in VHS performances and LPs. When analog is recorded and mastered, the sound undergoes slight alterations from the original intonation. Usually, this is a pleasing effect; it emphasizes the presence of the low end while giving a "sheen" to the upper end of the overall recording. It makes music and dialogue sound real .. as opposed to the cold, mechanical sound of a digital soundtrack. For reproducing sound, analog is the only way to go. Sound waves themselves are analog! Reducing them to a series of zeroes and ones will not make them sound any better.
It gets worse, though. Not only is DVD sound digital, it is compressed digital. Anybody who has ever heard the sound quality of an MP3 file when compared to its original source can tell you that digital compression makes already-bad audio sound even worse. Of course, if the DVD video is compressed, why should the zealots care if the audio is compressed?
Finally, it's worth mentioning that all of these high-end sound formats such as "Dolby Digital 5.1" and "DTS" are pure junk. Scientists have demonstrated that the human brain is not capable of separating out more than four simultaneous sound channels at once. Coincidentally, four channels is what you get with the tried-and-true Dolby Surround technology (an analog technlogy that is available on VHS tapes.) Digital formats that claim to offer five, six, or even seven channels might sound tempting, but remember that your brain cannot process this much information anyway, so the point is moot! (And beyond that, it's all compressed digital sound, so it's garbage to begin with.)
DVD preserves better than VHS tapes
Again, this is mostly a lie. Any parent who has young children and a collection of Disney VHS movies knows that those things can be watched a dozen times of day for three years straight without showing any appreciable wear. Yes, the digital nature of DVD means that the encoded bits will never "wear out", but VHS movies rarely "wear out", either.
In fact, movie damage is a far greater concern with DVD than it is with VHS tapes. A DVD is the same physical size as a compact disc, but a double-layer DVD can fit up to fourteen times the amount of data that a CD can hold. Those of you with CD players will certainly be familiar with the effect that scratches can have on your music. Even the smallest scratch can make your CD skip and generate annoying popping noises during playback. Well, how do you think that same scratch will affect a DVD .. a piece of media that has fourteen times the amount of information on it? A single tiny scratch will destroy a DVD forever. There's a lot of data on a DVD, but the downside is that the bits must be stored so close together that any imperfection at all will ruin the entire movie. When you take a DVD out of its case and load it into your player, the only way you're going to give that movie a fighting chance to last more than a month or two is to treat it as a brain surgeon treats a scalpel during a tricky operation. There is no reason that home theater has to be this inconvenient and clumsy.
VHS tapes, on the other hand, are virtually impossible to destroy. If a part of the tape gets dirty or crinkeled, you may have to put up with a few lines of static for a few seconds, but that's it. Unlike a DVD, it is not possible to easily destroy an entire movie, since doing so would require you to destroy an extended length of magnetic tape. Even in severe cases where defective players "eat" the video tape, all that one needs to do is wind the tape back up into the cartridge. Compared to their fragile digital brothers, VHS tapes are invincible.
DVD has lots of "special features"
So? You can put "special features" on a VHS tape, too .. they're just not as "convenient" to get at. This really isn't the point, however. The point is that the vast majority of "special features" that are placed on DVDs are 100% crap. They are garbage that some DVD manufacturer threw together at the last minute in order to try to trick you into buying the disc. You'll watch them once, say "Well, that was worthless", and you'll never watch them again.
Case in point: I was at a friend's house the other night watching the DVD version of the movie "Se7en", and he switched over to the "audio commentary" track. After about five minutes of listening to Morgan Freeman pontificate about how superior Broadway theater is, I was ready to stab both of my eyes out with a wooden fork. It was excruciating. We watched the rest of the "special features", and with very few exceptions, they were all embarassingly bad. I felt genuinely sorry for the person who had put this DVD together.
The fact of the matter is that VHS movies have higher-quality special features because there is less room for them, and they must be placed at strategic points (usually, at the beginning of the tape.) This means that VHS movie designers are forced to pick the best features .. the cream of the crop, if you will .. and leave the rest of them behind. When DVD zealots brag about having "more features", they might as well be bragging about having "more crap." Any special feature that is worth anything is going to also be included on the VHS version of the movie. The added extras on the DVD are discarded table scraps.
Those are the highlights. The truth is that for all practical purposes, VHS is a better all-around home theater format than DVD. There are many little things that make VHS a better choice; for one, you don't have to put up with the annoying pause when a DVD player switches between layers on the disc. Additionally, linear searches forward and back are much smoother than they are on a DVD player .. even the most brainwashed DVD junkies admit that searching DVDs is a bit choppy.
The dirty little secret that the DVD industry doesn't want you to hear is that you can get roughly the same picture and sound quality out of a two-head Technics VCR for $39 at Wal-Mart as you can out of a "high-end" $5,000 Harmon Kardon DVD player ordered from some foo-foo electronics "boutique." When your friends with DVD players smile at you condescendingly and tell you that you'll probably buy a DVD player soon, you can smile right back at them and point them at this article. Tell them that they are corporate shills who are living a hateful lie.
http://www.adequacy.org/stories/2001...12921.289.html
It is a slightly long read, but it is pretty funny what was originaly thought about DVD.
07-03-08, 08:05 AM
#2
DVD Talk Hall of Fame
That's pretty funny. What is possibly funnier, is that one is actually correct. Furthermore, the same could be said of DVD on an HD screen, or 1080p media on a non-1080p display.
07-03-08, 08:21 AM
#3
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It's almost a bad as when they switched to broadcasting TV in 'color' and convinced everyone how superior it was to the more naturalistic black and white. It's a common fact that classic black and white movies look better on black and white tv sets. But now, they're being converted from b&w to color, then back to b&w when it reaches your screen. You're automatically watching at best a 3rd generation copy.
D
D
07-03-08, 06:22 PM
#4
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LOL@^
I had a lot of problems with the points given in the article. Anybody with half a brain can see through the special examples and opinions. It's good for a laugh, but not very convincing...
I had a lot of problems with the points given in the article. Anybody with half a brain can see through the special examples and opinions. It's good for a laugh, but not very convincing...
Last edited by pat00139; 07-03-08 at 06:30 PM.
07-04-08, 10:16 AM
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Originally Posted by Spiky
Wait, people actually believe some of this crap? There's almost nothing accurate in that entire quote. Esp anything said about VHS.
07-08-08, 10:29 AM
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Well, the time period of VHS has a slight advantage of the time period of DVD. I don't think people were obsessed over the video/audio quality back then. People seemed to be more interested in watching the movies than being obsessed with watching the VHS cover/case, and the VHS quality of the video/audio. There have always been collectors, but it seems to be at a lowpoint of people buying dvds for the sake of buying movies to add to their collections, rather than watching.
I had a decent-sized VHS collection, but I definitely watched more of what I bought, than what I buy now on DVD.
Here's an example of how VHS is better than DVD: INDIANA JONES AND THE RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK...watch the opening scene of the movie (the idol, ball-rolling scenes) on both formats. One looks real. While the other looks like an obvious set. Guess which format makes it obvious that it's a set?........DVD!!!!
I had a decent-sized VHS collection, but I definitely watched more of what I bought, than what I buy now on DVD.
Here's an example of how VHS is better than DVD: INDIANA JONES AND THE RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK...watch the opening scene of the movie (the idol, ball-rolling scenes) on both formats. One looks real. While the other looks like an obvious set. Guess which format makes it obvious that it's a set?........DVD!!!!
07-08-08, 02:31 PM
#9
DVD Talk Hero
Originally Posted by toddly6666
Well, the time period of VHS has a slight advantage of the time period of DVD. I don't think people were obsessed over the video/audio quality back then. People seemed to be more interested in watching the movies than being obsessed with watching the VHS cover/case, and the VHS quality of the video/audio. There have always been collectors, but it seems to be at a lowpoint of people buying dvds for the sake of buying movies to add to their collections, rather than watching.
07-08-08, 02:44 PM
#10
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Trolls are fun toys!
PS: BETA rulezz!
Big ups Sony!
PS: BETA rulezz!
Big ups Sony!
07-08-08, 02:48 PM
#11
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Originally Posted by slop101
Oh there most certainly were people like that during the VHS days, you just didn't have the internet, so you couldn't read them bitch about it all like you can now.
As soon as I began to really know better, probably a couple of years before DVD came out, I would only shop in the widescreen VHS aisle at Best Buy. Granted, I didn't really understand everything about video transfers and such like I do now (though I'm certainly no expert now), but I was at least serious about trying to buy my movies in OAR. I can imagine that there were people far worse than how I was.
Last edited by clckworang; 07-16-08 at 09:43 PM.
07-08-08, 02:49 PM
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SLOP101,
When a new movie came out on VHS, were there people that complained about the video/audio quality? Just curious. I can understand bitching about an old movie finally getting a release on VHS and it may have had poor video/audio quality, but I don't remember new ones....I was very proactive with seeking out the widescreen versions of the VHS's. A couple years before DVD, I remember how widescreen VHS's were harder to find. I remember that some Electronic stores had a small "widescreen VHS" section...
The big "Widescreen" VHS releases for me were the Star Wars films and Terminator 2.
When a new movie came out on VHS, were there people that complained about the video/audio quality? Just curious. I can understand bitching about an old movie finally getting a release on VHS and it may have had poor video/audio quality, but I don't remember new ones....I was very proactive with seeking out the widescreen versions of the VHS's. A couple years before DVD, I remember how widescreen VHS's were harder to find. I remember that some Electronic stores had a small "widescreen VHS" section...
The big "Widescreen" VHS releases for me were the Star Wars films and Terminator 2.
07-08-08, 03:07 PM
#13
DVD Talk Hero
I'm just saying that there wasn't a forum for them to bitch on back then, so the ones that would have complaints, complained internally. While we may not have always had the internet, we've always had OCD.
07-08-08, 03:26 PM
#14
DVD Talk Hall of Fame
^^^ Exactly, as long as there have been collectors, there have been complainers. It's just that now those complainers have a much larger (and louder) platform in the Internet.
07-09-08, 09:07 PM
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Um, video discs predate VHS and have better quality. We LD owners would meet and discuss quality before and after the 'net came into existence. And we didn't generally buy that widescreen VHS crap. My LD Star Wars set remains the best available transfer of the original, original trilogy. I didn't join this craze until 1994, myself.
Maybe you boys have never heard of these?
You know nothing about video quality discussions unless you've had an idiot rich guy tell you you MUST buy a $3000 player from Japan that you'll have to pay someone to import for you to get good video. And a $4000 line-quadrupler and a $30000 projector.
Maybe you boys have never heard of these?
You know nothing about video quality discussions unless you've had an idiot rich guy tell you you MUST buy a $3000 player from Japan that you'll have to pay someone to import for you to get good video. And a $4000 line-quadrupler and a $30000 projector.
Last edited by Spiky; 07-09-08 at 09:09 PM.
07-10-08, 12:16 AM
#16
DVD Talk Hero
Originally Posted by GHackmann
Adequacy.org is a trolling site. The founders were (in)famous for going around geek blogs like Slashdot and Kuro5hin and posting well-written, inflammatory comments filled with intentional factual errors to rile up the other posters.
07-10-08, 11:08 AM
#17
DVD Talk Gold Edition
Originally Posted by Spiky
Um, video discs predate VHS and have better quality. We LD owners would meet and discuss quality before and after the 'net came into existence. And we didn't generally buy that widescreen VHS crap. My LD Star Wars set remains the best available transfer of the original, original trilogy. I didn't join this craze until 1994, myself.
Maybe you boys have never heard of these?
You know nothing about video quality discussions unless you've had an idiot rich guy tell you you MUST buy a $3000 player from Japan that you'll have to pay someone to import for you to get good video. And a $4000 line-quadrupler and a $30000 projector.
Maybe you boys have never heard of these?
You know nothing about video quality discussions unless you've had an idiot rich guy tell you you MUST buy a $3000 player from Japan that you'll have to pay someone to import for you to get good video. And a $4000 line-quadrupler and a $30000 projector.
07-13-08, 02:11 AM
#18
Finally, it's worth mentioning that all of these high-end sound formats such as "Dolby Digital 5.1" and "DTS" are pure junk.
Sir, you owe me a soda and a brand new pair of nostrels.
Sir, you owe me a soda and a brand new pair of nostrels.
07-15-08, 09:05 AM
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In a recent study by Brown University, one hundred students were shown a clip of the movie "Big Momma's House" on VHS and then were shown the same clip on DVD. The students were not told which clip was which format. They were then asked which of the two clips had better video quality, or if they were about the same. Nearly two-thirds of the students (63%) thought that there was no difference. Of the remaining students, 19% thought that the VHS tape looked better! In other words, the students with a preference (narrowly) favored the image quality of the "inferior" VHS clip!
Besides the fact that no one should be doing studies with Martin Lawrence films, this study forgot to mention what kind of tv was used (tube tv or HDTV). I'm betting that it was just a regular square tv, probably not bigger than 27 inches. So, of course DVDs and VHS video quality looks the same on a typical tv carted around a university.
Besides the fact that no one should be doing studies with Martin Lawrence films, this study forgot to mention what kind of tv was used (tube tv or HDTV). I'm betting that it was just a regular square tv, probably not bigger than 27 inches. So, of course DVDs and VHS video quality looks the same on a typical tv carted around a university.
07-16-08, 04:42 PM
#20
DVD Talk Hall of Fame
Originally Posted by Darth Maher
Those of us who didn't have $37,000 just lying around bought that widescreen VHS crap.
07-16-08, 05:48 PM
#21
DVD Talk Legend
Originally Posted by clckworang
As soon as I began to really know better, probably a couple of years before DVD came out, I would only shop in the widescreen VHS aisle at Best Buy. Granted, I didn't really understand everything about video transfers and such like I do know (though I'm certainly no expert now), but I was at least serious about trying to buy my movies in OAR.
07-20-08, 10:57 AM
#22
DVD Talk Legend
Originally Posted by toddly6666
Besides the fact that no one should be doing studies with Martin Lawrence films, this study forgot to mention what kind of tv was used (tube tv or HDTV).
07-20-08, 10:58 AM
#23
DVD Talk Legend
Originally Posted by clckworang
And we were happy to be getting that VHS crap in widescreen!
07-21-08, 10:16 AM
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Does anyone remember their "hardest-to-find" letterboxed VHS tape?
I'm not sure what movie it was for me, but I remember that I bought a PAL VHS of a movie in Europe, since this was released only as letterboxed in Europe and not in USA, and I even bought some bulky converter so I can watch this PAL VHS tape on my NTSC USA TV and VCR...it's annoying that I can't remember the movie title - I just remember the whole experience..
I'm not sure what movie it was for me, but I remember that I bought a PAL VHS of a movie in Europe, since this was released only as letterboxed in Europe and not in USA, and I even bought some bulky converter so I can watch this PAL VHS tape on my NTSC USA TV and VCR...it's annoying that I can't remember the movie title - I just remember the whole experience..
07-28-08, 02:08 PM
#25
DVD Talk Hall of Fame
[QUOTE=toddly6666]Does anyone remember their "hardest-to-find" letterboxed VHS tape?QUOTE]
Are you kidding? Finding anything in that format was hard! I got by with a 13" color TV for, like, 8 years before I finally decided when leaving work one night to splurge and buy a 32". That was the first time I was even open to listening to the debate about widescreen, and I confess to being a slow convert. Then a coworker gave me the example of Desperado, and how in the pan & scan version, you only got to see Banderas pull out the guns, but in widescreen, you got to see the guys on either side go down, too. I only had a minor affair with widescreen VHS before DVD and I got together, but the few titles I managed to track down included The Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia and The Untouchables.
I have to say, though, that it was the unavailability of Tombstone in widescreen on VHS that actually pushed me into buying my first DVD player. It was available on laserdisc and DVD in widescreen, however, and since LD players were no longer readily available where I live in 1999, and since looking forward I had much more faith in DVD as a format anyway, I plunked down $200 for an RCA DVD player and $35 for Tombstone on DVD. [Edited to include new awareness of the laserdisc.]
Are you kidding? Finding anything in that format was hard! I got by with a 13" color TV for, like, 8 years before I finally decided when leaving work one night to splurge and buy a 32". That was the first time I was even open to listening to the debate about widescreen, and I confess to being a slow convert. Then a coworker gave me the example of Desperado, and how in the pan & scan version, you only got to see Banderas pull out the guns, but in widescreen, you got to see the guys on either side go down, too. I only had a minor affair with widescreen VHS before DVD and I got together, but the few titles I managed to track down included The Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia and The Untouchables.
I have to say, though, that it was the unavailability of Tombstone in widescreen on VHS that actually pushed me into buying my first DVD player. It was available on laserdisc and DVD in widescreen, however, and since LD players were no longer readily available where I live in 1999, and since looking forward I had much more faith in DVD as a format anyway, I plunked down $200 for an RCA DVD player and $35 for Tombstone on DVD. [Edited to include new awareness of the laserdisc.]
Last edited by Travis McClain; 07-28-08 at 07:13 PM.