Skip to main content

I Still Remember

Image result for vcrVCR the official device of 1st birthday home videos and loud “coming soon to own on dvd & video” previews. VCR stands for videocassette recorder and was introduced to the world by JVC. VCR came about due to the demand in which people wanted to watch or rewatch movies without the need of leaving home and sitting down in a movie theater full of anonymous people. So in 1975 this ignited the famous “format war” which would be later called. This so called war was set between Sony’s Betamax (do not worry not a lot of people know what this is) and good old JVC’s VHS in the show of dominance over which format will people set as the standard in their living rooms. Even though Betamax had superior recording capability… that is all it had going for it, and to add salt to the wound, people could not even tell the difference between the quality of the recording. While on the other hand VHS had lengthier record times with its 2 hour recording or, if you do not mind colored static, 4 hour record times by degrading video quality. What really put nail in the coffin for Betamax was rental stores mostly stocking VHS tapes, yes rental stores... this is really showing this technology’s age. Due to tapes being quite expensive around $80-$90 in 1985, adjusted for inflation that is $186.50 to $209.45 in 2017! That what made people want to lean more towards rental of a movie due to them watching it once or twice anyways and not having to shell out $100 for a copy of The Karate Kid.
Image result for betamax vs vhs
VCR work similarly to how compact cassettes players work with the use of magnetic tapes. When a VHS is inserted the top plastic cover of the VHS would be removed exposing the where two adjustable guide rollers would guide the tape to the video drum head and the audio and tracker head. To prevent too much or too little of the tape to be fed to the head there are tension pins, supply guide pin, guide post, and pinch rollers to keep the tape running at a constant velocity. The most interesting part of this system is the orientation of the video drum head, it is slightly tilted because the magnetizable ferric oxide powder in the tape itself are slightly tilted in order to fit more movie in it. While in the other hand the audio track due to it running through another head is just straight line, nothing fancy going on with that.

Now VCRs are heavy black behemoth which are only used by hipsters or kept in closet due to better alternatives out there to enjoy a film. Video quality of a VCR in today's standard are truly awful, even in 1990s standard they were pretty bland, and if that was not enough the quality would degrade every time the tape is played because of those very same ferric oxide wearing out. VCR are much like an old board game like Monopoly, it spends most of it’s time shoved back behind a bunch of clothes and such, until one day, you get that urge to revisit it, to wind back to much simpler times in life.  

FUN FACT: IN 2001 THERE WAS ENOUGH VHS TAPES MANUFACTURED TO GO FROM EARTH TO THE MOON 987 TIMES

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VHS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Videocassette_recorder
https://allaboutmagnets.wikispaces.com/How+VHS+Tapes+Work
https://www.videomaker.com/article/f2/10509-fun-video-factoids

Comments

  1. AnonymousOctober 9, 2017 at 8:32 PM

    Guess I'm a hipster then. I love VHS tapes for so many reasons. I can hit up the thrift store or Rasputin and buy about 10 movies for the price of a single movie ticket. That's a steal! And plus, VHS is a good, cheap way to watch something before I decide I'd like to own it on a better format (Blade Runner??). And then there's that good ol' nostalgic feel of tapes: ain't no beating it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousOctober 9, 2017 at 10:00 PM

    I've always wanted to know the breakdown of how film work in a VCR, and you have clearly illuminated how complex and innovative these devices where for the time...Awesome!!!

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousOctober 9, 2017 at 10:05 PM

    Even though they are antiquated and certainly annoying to store, the memories of watching old cassettes as a child won't allow me to ever get rid of them. Nice post.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dorito Power

Rotary engines, the official motor when burning oil is actually a good thing. The rotary engine or Wankel engine is much like chocolate ice cream in the car world, you hate it or you don’t. It is actually interesting concept because unlike other engine configurations, there is no cylinders. Instead they have a rotor which some claim to look like a Dorito spinning. The inventor of this odd engine was a Felix Wankel. Wankel was born in August 1902 in Lahr, Germany. He came up with the idea at the age of 17. It was only after 2 World Wars when he began working with NSU Mototenwerke in the research department without ever getting a degree or a driver license. He complete his design in 1954 and in 1957 and 1958 the prototypes were tested. In 1961 Mazda had contracted with NSU to produce the engine and install them in their cars. The engine was proven to be quite powerful in the 1960s and soon the engine was used by other car companies. The engine would began to lose its popularity in ...
3 comments
Read more

Produce, Crush, Recycle

EV1, the Prius of the late 1990s. I decided to celebrate Earth day with something that is the embodiment of going green… the electric car. I could have gone with Tesla or the previously mentioned Prius, but of course, those are cars as not obscure as the EV1 since they're either crashed or not legally allowed on the road anymore. The EV1, for those who did not see the video in Economics last year, stands for the creative name Electric Vehicle 1 and one of the first mass produce modern electric car. The car soon had a created major up roar by buyers because of GM repossession them and crushing them. The creation of the EV1 started when California CARB or California Air Resource Board in the 1990s started to impose stricter emission due to combat the horrible air pollution at the time. The air quality was so bad in California that it was worse than the other 49 states combined. Thus strongly encouraged major car companies like GM, Honda, Toyota, etc to create emission free veh...
3 comments
Read more

Just My Type

Typewriter, the official device of that satisfying click sound from the movies. Typewriters were once a popular form of typing up essays and document in a clear and formal way in which regular handwritten documents could not replicate. Now they are relics of the past due to the rise of personal computers, allowing so much for functionality with less hoops to jump through. The first commercially produced  typewriters appeared on scene in 1874, but became widespread in offices until the mid 1880s. Throughout this time there has been many manufactures and companies who added improvements over time. Historians believes that the typewriter was invented 52 time in some form by other inventors and thinkers. This helped to create competition and develope many types of typewriters. The common mechanical typewriters works like this, the keyboard is in the same order as the keys on a computer or on a digital one on a cellphone. When a is press, for example the F key, a lever swings...
2 comments
Read more