Tape v Disc?

[anotheoldgit]

Who apart from myself agree that we have been brain-washed into accepting DVD technology?

Take the old out of date VCR, much, much better than even the latest DVD recorder, I know I have two of these top of the range machines. Simpler to just pop in a tape and record or play.

Even the old audio tape was much better than CDs, pop it in, record off your vinyls, radio or another tape. Can't do that with CDs.

Oh for the good old days, life was much simpler.

[weeal]

nooooooo tapes were awful, you had to keep rewinding/fast forwarding to find stuff and they take up loads of room on shelves, then the tape goes all baggy and warped

you were jokin right? lol

[tigersam258]

I agree with both of you. Convenience for using the items was better in the past. Shove in the tape and press a couple of button, Bobs your uncle. But then again, the quality was crap on VHS, the tapes wear out, get stuck in the machine and are a lot more bulky.

I think that the benfits of DVDs outweigh the time savings. I cant remember the last time that I was in a rush to record anything anyway as there is so much junk on TV at the moment so I will have to go with the later technology as being better. Sorry anotheoldgit!

[Cockney_si]

Nah the argument is flawed.

Record a TV show onto a DVD from a dvd recorder and the quality speaks for itself when compared to an old VHS tape.

Play an old VHS tape from around 10 years ago and you will notice the blended in colours, the glitches the jumping in the tracking.

A short while ago when not many people had dvd players in their homes it would have been difficult to watch a dvd you'd recorded it on your recorder and took to your mates house but now most of that's changed.

[Ethel]

I've had a hard drive dvd recorder that archives to disks for 3 years and love it.

Bring up programme guide, press record and that's it. If I want to keep the recording, it takes less than 5 minutes to burn to a dvd disk. Quality is fantastic, and if I don't intend keeping the recording, easily deleted from hard drive

Turn the recorder on - and all my recordings are there to be played as I like - no shoving cassettes in hoping that's the right one, fast forward and rewinding.

No contest. And I can record from radio and vinyl onto dvd. Why can't you?

[ianmunt]

If all you were doing was time-shifting a programme,as opposed to making a long term copy,then I consider VHS was much more convenient and adequate quality for general use.

[vehelpfulguy]

anotheoldgit, do you understand the concept of digital technology as opposed to analogue?

Digital technology means storing information as a string of zeroes and ones (0 and 1), rather like data is stored in a computer.

That means when you have a film on a DVD it is stored as MILLIONS of zeros and ones.

The great thing about that is that is cannot degrade, it starts as zeros and ones, and whatever you do to it then it stays as zeros and ones.

No matter how long you store it it will always be just zeros and ones.

more....

[vehelpfulguy]

continued....

VHS tapes were analogue which means the longer it is stored the quality degrades, the tape degrades, the color degrades.

Almost all technology is moving (or has moved) from analogue to digital.

Cameras are now digital, phones are now digital, music on CDs is digital, films on DVDs are digital, TV is moving to digital, DAB radios are digital.

Books and newspapers are moving to digital. Many libraries are storing their paintings and books in digital format.

Soon virtually ALL the information in the world will be stored in digital.

VHS tapes are just a symbol of that world where we put up with poor analogue quality and we are well rid of them.

[vehelpfulguy]

>then I consider VHS was much more convenient and adequate quality for general use.

I suggest you get hard disk recorder if you want to see REAL convinience.

I have a Sky+ box and an record programs to hard disk.

I can be sitting in my seat, and if a program starts and all of a sudden I decide to record it I press one button on my remote control and the Sky+ box records it.

It also stops recording at the end of the program without me having to stop it myself.

I can press "series link" and it records each episode of a series without me having to set the start and stops times or load any tapes into the player.

My whole family love the Sky+ box and would HATE to go back to the days of VHS tapes.

[ACtheTROLL]

.... do I call you another ... old .... or just git ;-)?

are you talking useability ... or quality ...
if it's quality ... as everyone says ... no contest.
if it's storability ... again no contest ....
Durability ... well you get the idea ... DVD wins hands down.

if it's usability ... I think I know where you are going ...

My mum (78) is on her second hdd/DVD recorder (the first was refurbed ... just to see if she could cope - she did -
it was relatively simple .... and within a couple of weeks she could do the basics -but it had a bad habit of locking up which confused her no end

at the same time she also got freeview ... at first she was overwhelmed .... but she stuck with it 'cause she wanted the programs .... and eventually she got quite compitent.

Now she's got an all singing sony ... which realy is impressive .... trouble is ... she won't use 90% of the facilities (photo album. usb jukebox!!!)

she wants to record telly to HDD... and if she wants .. to transfer to DVD - no more, no less.

unfortunately the EPG and menus are white on a transparent light blue background ... so she has to almost press her nose to the screen to read it. (it's a 22" CRT not 42 inches of high contrast ... blah blah.

the epg (like my telly) shows station names ... but no numbers .... she knows the chanel numbers like the back of her hand .... so she was a bit put out to start with

....... having said all that ... the other day she said that her new machine was as easy to use as her old video ... praise indeed!

her machine will do everything you said and more ...
but with the bewildering range of facilities, cables, menus and terminology ...

transfer from HDD to DVD doesn't mention copying ... it's become dubbing !!
copy DVD to another DVD ... is backing up
the radio

[rojash]

There's something else about analogue that was advantageous, and it applies to radio (DAB v FM) TV (Digital V Analog) Recording (CD v Record, VHS v DVD), and that is this:
When noise occurs on analogue systems, the quality gradually degrades, but the content is still usable, even with a fairly high degree of degradation, whereas with digital, the content may remain of high quality even in adverse conditions UP TO A POINT, and then it breaks down entirely.
Just think, with an analogue TV in less than ideal reception conditions, you get a reasonable picture, and when the weather is bad, maybe you get a little ghosting or snow. With digital TV, in similar circumstances, you may or may not get a picture, and when the weather is bad - read a book.

Another area is reliability: - average life of record deck - 30 years, average life of CD player - 3 years

[anotheoldgit]

Well it seems that I am out numbered, most of you prefer Digital, even though vehelpfulguy tended to act a little superior than thy.

Ethel how do you record from viny, have you got it hooked up to your turntable? What I was l trying to explain was I have a stacked music center with turntable, twin cassette decks and tuner, so it is very convenient, no spaghetti junction of cables. Oh and I have also 2 hard drive recorders. But before I hold my hands up in defeat, let me make the following points.

1/ With analogue one could set the time of recordings by typing in numbers that are published in most programme listings.

2/ One could also set it so that if the programme started late or overun this would be taken care of.

3/ Digital images seem to freeze from time to time.

4/ I am still not convinced about the longevity of Digital discs.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music /3940669.stm

http://www.answers.com/topic/cd-rot?cat=techno logy

[netibiza]

Sorry don't agree, I would have done at first, but dvd discs are so much better and you can FF without losing the plot.