Renting videotapes

[oldtimer]

Nice idea but yeah mad

I know about the resurgence in vinyl and you can get quite a few new record players. But videos ??

I love retro stuff but nah i love stuff like Plex etc where in seconds i can watch a film. I have a lot of dvds but theyre gathering dust and i'm converted fully to digital stuff

"But with digital you dont own anything physical ?" Yeah i dont mind, still got tons of VHS tapes gathering dust, now the DVDs are

Brave move by this guy and having the arcade machine is quite cool but cant see the business lasting. Has to rent a ton of tapes out i'm sure to cover his costs

Good VHS Machines have slowly begun to rise again in value over the past year ive noticed and some charity shops are beginning to sell them again.

[English Invader]

I'm currently in the process of downsizing my Blu-Rays, HD-DVDs, DVDs and VHS to a more manageable level. My master plan is to have the lion's share of films in Blu-Ray and keep the legacy formats for films that are either unavailable on BR, have special features that are unavailable on BR, have a certain aesthetic or visual appeal that is lacking on BR or go back a long way from a nostalgic point of view.

I'm not convinced that 4K Ultra HD will last in the long run. It might have an appeal for the Home Theatre devotees but it's too expensive for most people and most films don't take advantage of 4K anyway.

[paranoid marvin]

I'm currently in the process of downsizing my Blu-Rays, HD-DVDs, DVDs and VHS to a more manageable level. My master plan is to have the lion's share of films in Blu-Ray and keep the legacy formats for films that are either unavailable on BR, have special features that are unavailable on BR, have a certain aesthetic or visual appeal that is lacking on BR or go back a long way from a nostalgic point of view.

I'm not convinced that 4K Ultra HD will last in the long run. It might have an appeal for the Home Theatre devotees but it's too expensive for most people and most films don't take advantage of 4K anyway.

I've watched a couple of ultra hi-def films (including Bladerunner 2049) from Google store. I honestly couldn't tell any noticable increase in quality from watching on a pretty decent 49 inch tv. I've seen tech demos in shops and uhd can look utterly stunning - but that was only tech demos. Anyone recommend a movie to watch that looks significantly better in uhd?

[Antiriad2097]

Will the difference be that noticeable on a screen that size? The difference between SD and HD wasn't significant until you had a screen that was 42" or larger, perhaps 49" is at the low end of the scale to see the difference from HD to UHD.

[silvergunner]

Depending on your viewing distance you would really need a 55”+ screen.

Also you have to take compression into account. Dvd and 1080p quality streams are about the same as their disc based equivalent.

4K is a different beast altogether. The compression is high so even though it looks great it’s actually very poor compared to 4K discs. It’s around upto 40mbps for a stream and a 4K disc depending on the master around 100+mbps. Literally around a third of what a disc gives you.

Also the audio with streams is very poor as it’s also heavily compressed compared to full hi def audio off discs.

[kiwimike]

Lol I have a few very rare VHS tapes I got converted to DVD. The quality gave me a massive shock at how poor it is when we were watching them again!We used to think it was great! I still have to keep them though as cannot get them any other way.

The visual quality now is astounding. I know DVD is dated nowadays, but most of mine are on that, a few on Blu ray, and that's good enough for me really despite advancing tech

[psj3809]

Will the difference be that noticeable on a screen that size? The difference between SD and HD wasn't significant until you had a screen that was 42" or larger, perhaps 49" is at the low end of the scale to see the difference from HD to UHD.

Yeah i thought it was just as i was getting old ! I could never tell much difference between a DVD or Blu Ray on my old 42 inch tv. The blu ray might have seemed a 'fraction' clearer but nothing for me to get excited about

Now got a 65 inch and yeah blu ray/Ultra HD stuff on Netflix looks amazing. Now i see my mums 42 inch tv and it looks tiny whereas before that seemed a huge huge jump up from those heavy 28 inch tv's people had before that

[greenberet79]

Experience: I manage the last Blockbuster in the world

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyl ... -the-world

[arcadez]

Ah memories of heading into the video shop as a lad with my "little knowledge of the movies" elderly granny and getting her to rent out the nastiest of the video nastys

[oldtimer]

I still think HD-DVD looks better than bluray on my 50"UHD tv, but that's me.

[You've Been Gamed]

We got our first VCR in 1987 and it changed my life! Such great memories...

[oldtimer]

We got our first VCR in 1987 and it changed my life! Such great memories...

Our first one was a flipping Betamax!

[keedor]

I remember the whole family going to Sheffield to buy our first VCR machine in the late 1980's.

The first film we rented was THE THING, directed by John Carpenter, and the first film I saw at a friend's house one Friday night was A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, which had been unavailable at the local video store due to high demand for several weeks!

Sometimes a man would visit the street in a van, renting videos. Nowadays that sounds a bid dodgy, no doubt, but at the time it proved highly popular.

[oldtimer]

When DVDs took over from Videotapes , most people dumped them on mass , i remember seeing an entire skip at the dump just for videotapes , the charity shops would not take them and carboots were selling them at 10p each "".
But now it seems that Videotapes are becoming collectable and the prices are rising fast , i kept all of my pre recorded ones (about 200) in the loft so they might be worth something one day, ive even got prerecorded betamax and V2000 ones.