[tablespoon]

> I think we all forget though just how poor the quality was back then, and what we've become accustomed to, with VHS being 240 lines, DVD 480p, etc. It's like reminiscing about the first iPhone and then looking at one and realizing how damn small it actually was compared to modern versions.

I think the "what we've become accustomed to" is the most important factor there. Back in the VHS/NTSC days, without experience of anything else, I had not complaints about the quality.

[laumars]

Really? I did.

- Tapes would get chewed by the player

- Took an age to find the right recording (you’d spend an age constantly rewinding)

- Tapes would degrade the more you used them

- sometimes they wouldn’t even sync vertically with your TV. Requiring all sorts of fun and games tuning your hardware

- audio was often muffled and sounded like it was played through a sock

- if you shared a household there was always the risk that someone would tape over your favourite recording

- and even just getting the same content recorded was a game of chance. If the TV network was early or late airing your show or movie, there was a good chance you’ll end up missing some of it (back then there wasn’t an EPG so you had to programmed the VCR to start at a specific time rather than the start of a specific show).

Not to mention my younger brother kept jamming Lego into the VCR (but at least that’s not the fault of the technology).

I hated VHS. Switched to DVD the moment I could. Even though my computer wasn’t powerful enough to playback DVD properly I still massively preferred it.

[tablespoon]

> Really? I did.

I was talking about video quality, not that other stuff.

> - if you shared a household there was always the risk that someone would tape over your favourite recording

This is actually significantly worse now, since most households lack the ability to "tape" anything.

[laumars]

> I was talking about video quality, not that other stuff.

I covered video quality too

> This is actually significantly worse now, since most households lack the ability to "tape" anything.

It’s definitely not worse now. Or at least not in the U.K. Regular broadcasters all have on demand / catch up services (like BBC iPlayer). These services are neatly integrated into nearly all smart TVs via Freeview Play and have been for roughly a decade already.

Then you have purely streamed content that has all of the benefits of the above minus the drawbacks of following a TV schedule. Which is great because the 30 to 50 year olds (yes, I actually know these figures because I’ve worked in broadcasting) generally prefer binge watching content rather than weekly instalments.

Then you have younger generations who prefer streamed content like Twitch and YouTube. Both of which also support rewatching previously live content.

In addition to all that, for households that don’t have good internet, there are still PVRs available free with premium subscription TV like Sky+/Q. And just to be clear, you absolutely do not need a Sky subscription to use a PVR. My mum has one hooked up and she only has access to terrestrial TV (Freeview). Some TVs even have PVR software built in and all thus you need is to plug a USB storage device into in.

Finally, for us nerds, there are a plethora of additional options available like Kodi, Plex, AppleTV plus convenience protocols like DLNA, ChromeCast, AirPlay, etc.

It has literally never been easier to consume video content and catch up on missed TV. And the fact that terrestrial TV viewing figures are dropping rapidly (again, I’ve worked in the industry so have seen the actual statistics on these things) is proof that people are choosing to consume TV in different ways then they did back in the days of VHS. (And there’s literally nothing stopping anyone from still using VHS if they really wanted to).

[SenHeng]

Back here in Asia, aka land of the pirates and DivX, we could quickly moved to CDs, CDRs and VCDs. I think the huge proliferation of VCDs in Asia stunted the spread of DVDs for quite some time because they were just so cheap.

It was a hassle having to switching discs midway through a movie, but there were a few enterprising people who sold players that let you insert two discs!

[blantonl]

I remember purchasing a Dolby pro logic processor and thinking I had unlocked some new home theater super dimension.

and now we have 4k and ATMOS